Archives for 2011

Additional Additions

January 5, 2011 by Amy 6 Comments

Thanks for the input yesterday. I’m encouraged by the positive response we’ve had, especially from our mothers :). I know secretly they just want a grandson out of the whole deal but that’s ok. Just kidding, guys! Sorta!

Anyway, we had a couple of other great ideas and thought we’d share. Here’s the original plan again:

And I do want to be clear that the boxes in between the Master and Girls Bedroom are each of our closets.

This first additional option was from Allison and that is to take out those closets instead of cutting through the girls room to make the hallway. We do have a tad of an issue because the closets are only 34” and code says it has to be 36” wide. Also there is a question on what to do with our old entrance to our room but I think it could definitely work. It would only take out a small corner of the room instead of a large chunk and we’d build their new closet as part of the new addition.

Another option takes out a need for a hallway through a bedroom at all and that is to close in the girls bedroom completely and make that the closet for the new suite. In this case, we’d only have 3 bedrooms but the flow is much better. We’d also get a cool deck leading out to the pool in the backyard. Scott isn’t much of a fan of this one and seems to think he’d rather do a 4th room in case the girls eventually want to split rooms (which I expect but is not required). This way also knocks out the closets, giving the current master bedroom another 3 feet of space, giving the girls more room since it would be a combined bedroom/playroom. Another option with the deck is to close that in and make a second closet for the current master bedroom for our impending two teenage girls sharing that room :). Or, you know, make a HUGE master bathroom.

So there ya go. I’m pretty excited about this and feel from several sides that God is prodding us to move forward quickly with it.

Do you like any of these plans better/worse?

UPDATE:

Scott found a way to use the closets as the hallway. Our other closet was posing an issue but I think he has it worked out. Latest favorite is this:

The Bachelor – Week One

January 4, 2011 by Amy 7 Comments

OK, we all know I love The Bachelor but gave it up last season and I didn’t watch it last night. Well, I did. For about 3 minutes. And I couldn’t stand the catty women fighting over Brad so I turned it off. But I kept an eye on some tweets and several mentioned Emily as a frontrunner. I decided to look her up and turns out she’s from Charlotte! And not only that, she’s the wife of the late Ricky Hendrick. Which people, no disrespect, but that’s huge. Charlotte is called the Queen city and the Hendricks are part of that royalty. NASCAR royalty to be exact. Car dealership royalty. Their name is all over the place. So I had to look up her scenes and ya’ll, I might have to watch The Bachelor this year. I’m just not sure Brad is good enough for our Southern royalty though!

I loved her! She’s sweet and sincere, calm, poised and beautiful. And Brad was falling all over himself with her!

Did you watch? If so, do you think Emily is a frontrunner?

PS I think that was Central Church of God where I went to church during middle/high school!

Addition

January 4, 2011 by Amy 9 Comments

And not in the subtraction kind of way. Scott and I spent some time this weekend considering an addition on the house. As I mentioned, we’re still considering adoption. But really, we don’t have the proper room for it. Yes, we could make it work with the 3 rooms we have. We could condense the girls’ toys, put their bed on stilts and cram it all in their room. The second option I’m not a fan of but we could switch rooms with the girls so that the girls have a bigger room to fit them and their toys. We lose a personal bathroom and well, that’s a bummer.

Why not just buy a new house? Well, we can’t even let go of a recliner. Think about how we feel about moving. Really, we are in a fabulous location, have a nice piece of property, like the school, etc. I’m not saying NO to it, but all of us want to consider an addition. So I thought we might all want to consider it together. Yes?

OK, so here’s the front of our house. It looks oh so…wintry. Wahhh…when is Spring coming??

Here’s the same side but from the back.

Photo Jan 04, 10 05 44 AM

And here’s the current floor plan on that side of the house

So basically that room you see jutting out of the back of the house is my office (where I’m currently sitting). It used to be our back porch and Scott closed it in. I just looked and wow, it has been 6 years since he did that. The room on the back corner is our room and the two windows on the left side of the house are the girls’ play room and bedroom. Here’s a shot down the hallway. Playroom to the left, their room straight down the hall and our bedroom is the last door on the right and as I said, is in the back of the house.

Actually, here’s a really old house tour if you’d like a better feel for the inside. I’m almost embarrassed by it though…not ONE of those rooms look the same but the floor plan is still legit.

OK, whew, I hope you get the idea of the current state of our floor plan. So there are really only two options for an addition. In both cases, the idea is to add on a master suite, let the girls share our room, and let whomever (whether it be adoptee or just guests) have their bedroom.

OPTION 1

The first is to close in that back corner of the house where the trampoline is. You might want to scroll back up to the pic from the back yard.

The door to the new bedroom would come off the office. You can see I added in where the furniture would go.

The back of the house would look something like this:

The good part about this is you don’t change the front of the house. You wouldn’t even know it was different if you were driving down the road.
You also don’t really lose any square footage from the house. Yes, we’d have to do some rearranging in the office to get a door from there but overall, no square footage is lost.
The one really big downside is you’d lose the window in the office, the window to the master bathroom AND one in the bedroom. Our house already is pretty dark and that’s the side of the house where we get a lot of sun.
We’d also lose the back yard for the trampoline, where it is currently hidden from passersby. However, we do have room for it still.
The bedroom would be roughly 16×17 and include a closet and bathroom.

OPTION 2

The second option is to go wide. We’d tack the room on to the end of the house.

The tricky thing about this is how to get to the room. We’d have to extend our hallway into the current girls bedroom , make a new wall for their room (see the dashed line) and have our doorway at the end of the hall.

The front would look roughly like this. This is rough, but the last two windows would be the addition. The ones in the middle are the current girls’ room:

And the back, you can see it to the right there:

The bad part about this is obviously the second bedroom loses a lot of square footage. The room is not big already and I think this change would make it as small as the first one, which is like 8×10.
Another downside is we’d for sure have to redo all the siding and possibly carpet.
The good news is the room could be much larger, up to 22×20 if needed.
We have lots of space in our side yard that is not used.
We keep all the windows in the back as well as the trampoline space.
All the bedrooms are still accessed from the hall.

Given all that, we are definitely leaning towards putting it on the end. I know we’d lose some of the bedroom but I think it’s better than losing back yard and all my windows and office space. And really, I think it’s a better looking solution.

So did I lose you? Follow that at all? What do you think? Side or back? Or bad idea altogether?

It’s the Small Things

January 4, 2011 by Amy 2 Comments

Small screens, in this case. Scott bought me this printer for Christmas years ago. It has to be at least 5 years old. Within six months the screen went out and Epson shipped us a new one. Within another 6 months the screen went out again and Epson wouldn’t ship us a new one. A few years went by and I did some research and it turns out there was some sort of defect with a fuse on a board. Just a little solder and it would be fixed. I mentioned it to Scott and he didn’t seem too enthused. I didn’t push it because really, I’d rather have a working printer with a broken screen rather than a broken printer.

Yesterday Jaynee’s husband posted on Facebook about soldering a part in a cable box and fixing it. It prompted me to nudge Scott about the printer again and he agreed to take a look. Well, as you can see it all worked and omigosh, I have my printer back again. I hear this fix lasts for years and man, it’s like I have a brand new printer again and we didn’t even pay a dime! LOVE.

One Word 2011

January 3, 2011 by Amy 13 Comments

I hadn’t planned to do this. Not because it’s not a valid thing to do or I didn’t want to. I think I just didn’t want to not do it justice. I’m not a resolutions type girl. And really, I’m quite indecisive so picking just one word to infuse into my entire year was daunting to say the least. But over the weekend I just can not get my word out of my head. I feel like it’s already seeping its way into 2011 without me ever committing to it.

I originally thought I wanted to do “giving”. One thing I do want to continue to do from 2010 is to loosen my grip on my possessions and money and give with an open hand. My first verse of Beth Moore’s Scripture Memory team is Deuteronomy 15:10.

“You shall give to him generously and without begrudging it; because of this the Lord will bless your work and all you undertake.”

You may think I want to give for the second half of that verse…for the blessings. But my true goal is to learn to give without begrudging it. I never begrudge it when I think the person “deserves” it but I want to learn GRACEFUL GIVING. Giving when they person DOESN’T deserve it. I admit, it’s a difficult pill to swallow but I think it’s a Biblical one. God gives us so much grace and I think we would all do well to extend it more.

We’re still thinking a lot about adoption. I know I haven’t blogged much about it. In fact, I’m not sure I’ve said a word about it since a year ago. But we talk a lot about it, are discussing it with people, making plans. We’re still not 100% sure what direction He’s leading us in this area but I wanted a word that would encompass that journey.

There were some other things I wanted to include that honestly, I can barely remember but it all came down to one word. One word that would suffice for every situation I was thinking of and that is

It feels like a Sunday School answer to the question. But I’m learning sometimes Sunday School answers are just the right ones. If I can learn to love my fellow brothers and sisters like Christ loves them, the rest will fall into place. I will have more compassion, more mercy, more grace, open hands, open arms, an open heart. And one wonderful year. May it be so.