Remodeling Addicts

So it seems as if though my husband and I are glutens for punishment.  We are addicted to remodeling. There, I said it.  Admitting it is the first step, right?  Before we bought our current home, we lived in a lovely two story home about 2 blocks away from our home now.  We bought that house in 1999, one year after we got married and we lived there for a total of ten years.  When we first bought the house, we were newlyweds with no kids and ready to tackle tons of DIY projects.  We learned a lot about what we were, and were not capable of doing when it comes to home improvement.  In 2004, we welcomed our second child and were quickly running out of space.  We did some house hunting and ultimately came to the conclusion that adding on to our home made the most sense.  And so it began.......

The project included, adding on two bedrooms and a family room.  In the existing house, moving the kitchen to where the family room was, turning the old kitchen into a mudroom and powder room, turning one of the old bedrooms into a master bathroom/closet and moving the laundry room to the second floor.  

Here's a picture of the outside during construction.

Here is the finished product. 

This is what our house looked like after the first day of demolition.  

Yes, that's my two year old and 9 month old playing in the middle of this giant mess.  

This room was our family room and there was a powder room in there as well.  

The window in the middle went away and that's where the existing house was opened up to the addition.  

We suffered through this entire project and lived right smack dab 

in the middle of the construction zone the entire time. 

As soon as the new kitchen was usable, we moved right in and they started tearing up the old kitchen.  

This is a view into the new kitchen from the old kitchen.

This is the new opening into the family room addition. 

And here is a view from the new family room into the new kitchen. 

Ah, finally, all finished.  Look familiar?  White cabinets, dark island (just like our current home).

The new family room. 

And lastly, the new mudroom.  This is where the kitchen used to be.  

The refrigerator used to be right where these cubbies are.  

Every time we would open the back door, the doorknob would slam into the refrigerator.  

Drove me NUTS!!!

I'll show you the rest of the project later.  I'm sure you're thinking, why in the world would you tackle a project like this and then move.  A couple of reasons:

1)  the remodeling addiction
2)  we had a third child and wanted a bit more room
3)  location, location, location (our house was squeezed in between two other houses and there were    houses behind us.  We kind of felt like we were in a fish bowl and we wanted some more breathing room)
4) the market conditions (even though we didn't make as much on our house as we would have liked, we were able to get a really great deal on the house we bought due to the market conditions)

After going through the first remodeling project, we were pretty apprehensive about taking on another whole house remodel, but it was too good of an opportunity to pass up.

I had a dream last night that we bought another fixer upper.  I woke up in a cold sweat. Turns out it was a nightmare!  I don't think I have it in me to personally go through another remodeling project anytime soon.

However, since I am a remodeling addict, I would love to help others going through the process.
I learned a ton and have a great deal of resources I could share.

E-mail me if you're interested (dsurrey@fuse.net).  It would help me get my "fix".