Plans for the house

A few weeks ago, we knocked down a ridiculous wall that separated our powder room from our laundry area.
Our house was built in 1956 and was remodeled a few years ago. The person doing the remodeling was a little strange.
Our laundry room is right off of our kitchen (they remodeler removed the door) and the powder room is in the back part of it. The remodeler put in a 24" wide counter in front of the washer a dryer, leaving about 24" of space for doing laundry. NOT good. Terrible actually.
As if limiting the space wasn't enough, the door separating the laundry and powder room was about 19" wide and they put in an accordion style partition door. Yup.
WHY would you separate a toilet right off of a kitchen with only a flimsy accordion door? WHY?!

So we took out the wall that created that narrow little doorway and discovered that there was once a pocket door there. Our remodeler took out a perfectly wonderful pocket door, framed in a smaller opening and put in a door that you'd find in an RV.


Have I mentioned that my dad is a contractor?
I had him come over to give me a game plan on where to start and he totally scope creeped me! Jon isn't particularly thrilled that I now want to take out an exterior wall (that means putting in a beam), but it gives us 33 extra inches which means a more private area for a toilet with an actual door and a lot better use of the existing space.

I've been trying to figure out a floor plan for the area for a couple of weeks. It's been interesting because I don't love my kitchen. There is a section of load bearing wall that limits the space of our kitchen a LOT. We have an extra long table so that we can fit 3 chairs down one side of it and on each end since the other long side has to be pushed against the wall.
And while I do have a decent amount of counter space, I only have a corner that works well for my work area. It's not great. The other problem is that my front door opens right into my living room which is right next to my kitchen.

An island would be great, but that would require more space and no wall. And I do not want my front door in my kitchen either.

When it came down to doing the mud/laundry room area, I knew I needed to figure out the kitchen plan as well so that I wouldn't have to redo anything. Always good to have a master plan.

I only have the after of my floor plan, but the gist is that the wall that the fridge and stove are on went straight back. The after has a 33" bump out into my garage and the door into the kitchen is not there (it was in the corner of the kitchen next to the wall of the laundry room).
There was a closet next to the front door which I put into the kitchen as extra counter space. That closet is currently in the living room and the wall separating the kitchen is to the side of that.
That all makes perfect sense, right?

Anyway, here is the after plan.

The best part is that I thought I would have to build a kitchen out into my current garage one day to get the big open kitchen and living room that I wanted, but I think this will do nicely.



This house is a project and some times I wonder if it would be better to build new, but I love our location and our large lot and I love the idea of not having to ever move. I also really love having a reasonable house payment. Instead of paying at lease twice as much for 30 years, we are able to use the money we save every month for projects to improve our house bit by bit. Once we get a project paid for, we are back to the reasonable house payment. It's intense now, but it will be awesome down the road.

In the three and a half years that we've been here, it's awesome to see all that we've done. I need to do an updated list with some pictures. Our trees and bushes we planted in the fall  are awesome!

And of course just when I think we're in the home stretch with only one major project and a small project and then a kitchen down the line, the small project turns into a semi major project and the kitchen plan solidifies. Which makes me want to do it ASAP. How do you wait for something so awesome for years?! Sigh. Kitchens.