New and Improved

After meeting our designer Jesse over the summer months, this is what we submitted in October 2010 to the city for approval:

More functional living space on the ground floor

The dining room and kitchen are an addition measuring approximately 12 feet by 21 feet.  The new living room is where my husband's cave of an office used to be.

See that little office off the kitchen? That's going to be my office - some may think it a strange location, but I'm looking forward to being able to work there.  Right now I work on the dining room table.  Every time I have any work to do, I have to pull it all out, only to have to put it away when it's time to eat.  That's how I spent the last two years of my business degree.  It was a major pain, and not conducive to getting stuff done.

New and improved upstairs

Bed 2 and Bed 3 are where our kitchen and dining room used to be, and the new Family Room is what used to be the old Living Room.  The new plan gives us five bedrooms on one level.

The Layout

We love our neighbourhood – we’re close to great schools, our kids have tons of friends on our street, we back onto one of the prettiest parks in the city, and we have an awesome view. Oh, and we have nothing but farmland behind us.  It’s quiet and serene. Well, as quiet and serene as it gets with four kids and a beagle.

While the location was ideal, the layout was not.  A few years ago, my dad and his wife visited us on their way home to Australia.  My dad is a draftsman, and I talked to him about my renovation ideas.  He went around and measured the house, and came up with some rough sketches that would involve adding a small bump out on the ground floor for a dining room. He knew we had a limited budget and this seemed like a pretty good compromise.

I explained in this post about our layout – how the kitchen, dining and living rooms are upstairs, along with three bedrooms.  The ground floor is for some unexplained reason called ‘the basement’ even though it’s completely above ground.  Dad’s plan called for moving all of our living space to the ground floor, and adding two bedrooms upstairs where the kitchen and dining room had been previously.

Dad's Plan for The Ground Floor aka 'The Basement'

Upstairs

For the next four years I dreamed about making our house more functional for our family.  Over that time, Dad’s plan remained the basis for what was to come – we’ve stayed pretty true to what he suggested. 

In the summer of 2010, we decided to take the plunge.  We hired a designer to take Dad’s sketches and my plans, and make something we could take to the city for permits.  Along the way, we decided to add some more square footage on the ground floor to give us a pantry, a couple of offices and more family space.

For more on our new house plans, click here.