A Whole New House!

Actually, half of a new house. After living in our house for a decade, we decided to renovate and make it into more of what we want. 

We started with the downstairs guest "wing" renovation. We were able to alter a hall closet and switch the placement of the guest room closet to create a 2-sink en suite guest suite. Now our guests don't have to enter the hallway to shower or between brushing their teeth and bedtime. We also removed the shower/bath combo to make it more of an adult oriented shower space. 

Hung new mirrors and lights, changed the color scheme from brown/beige to brighter creams and grays. It is so functional and spacious, and with the extended cabinets, I don't miss the linen closet that we pulled out. 

The bedroom was another area of improvement. We tore out the room's closet and built out beyond our exterior wall to create a new closet that doesn't eat into the layout of the room. This way, we can now fit a split king bed, a reading nook and a window seat. We have been very happy with the changes and guests have given lots of good feedback on the comfort of the space. 

The much more dramatic change that we made was to close in our tall, 2-story living room and creating a new room above. After months of measuring and imagining and fretting that we were making a huge mistake, our excellent contractor Doing What's Right  helped guide us through the very dusty process of framing and demolition and all of the decisions associated with this kind of change. Where will the switches/ceiling lights/dimmers/trim/fans/outlets go? These are my least favorite kinds of decisions so we relied heavily on our friends with experience and expertise in these areas to help make some of these choices. 

And the new room is now a completely interior movie room:

Empty

With Seating

Add technology

From the downstairs:

That left the original movie room to be brightened up with windows and made into a home gym. 

The space suits us more than it ever has. We have more space, more sleep area and a Texas "basement" that is located upstairs. It was a lot of mess for a longer time than we had anticipated, but certainly worth the wait.