We're In This Deep

Once we committed to the idea of adding on to the house, we came down with a bad case of the "mightaswells." As long as we planned to add a dining room we mightaswell make the basement bigger. While we're at it, we mightaswell finish part of the basement. Since we need to add to the ductwork to get air into the new room, we mightaswell replace the whole system so we can get air conditioning up to the bedrooms where the one zone the house was built with just never could reach. Since the wall between the kitchen and two older bathrooms would be open for the re-construction, we mightaswell re-model those bathrooms too. And, as we'll have to put new siding on the addition anyway, rather than match a color I was never all that crazy to begin with - plus the fact that our new neighbors next door installed the exact same siding on their house thus creating the appearance of a modern-day Kennedy compound - we mightaswell change the siding too.

Then there's the foyer. Ours happens to be on the ground level, with five steps leading up to the living room level. However, it isn't just any run-of-the-mill five steps; they're on an angle, with a large semi-circular landing, and in the space between the steps and the back wall of the foyer is a brick planter. All told, this must have presented quite the image back before color television, but the look hasn't aged well. When we moved in, the planter was covered by a piece of plywood with a bowl of plastic flowers on top. 'Nuff said. We took the plywood off and waterproofed the planter, creating a goldfish pond with water plants and a circulating fountain. My brother took one look at it and wanted to know if he could order without MSG. Then it became a planter with real plants, until our puppy discovered they made great pull toys and how much fun it was to get potting soil all over the foyer and adjoining rooms. Finally, its last incarnation was a rock garden with a free-standing fountain and cactus (the puppy grew into a quick study). Through it all, though, it always looked like June Cleaver should be watering it, so we mightaswell get rid of the whole set-up and start over.

Since we're re-doing the foyer anyway, we mightaswell change the dated front door. And, since our house was built to the highest of 1961 standards, there is no sheetrock in our garage except on the wall adjoining the house. So, we mightaswell finish off the garage since we'll be having so much sheetrocking done anyway. The list kept growing, like a mushroom cloud.

And yes, we did consider moving, for about an hour. But then we remembered why we first fell in love with our house - the neighborhood, woods, location, the feel of it, plus all the work we'd done to make it our own. So, our only goal was to not spend more than we had on buying the house in the first place.