Contrary to the logic of some, now that all of our children are adults and living on their own, we decided to build an addition onto the house. Our plans did start out grander than they ended up, with a two-story lofted addition and a gorgeous wall of south-facing windows, but reason came to bear and those plans were scaled back to concentrate what we truly needed and could comfortably afford. The addition gave us a large dining/living area that we call the great room, complete with a table that can seat 10 adults comfortably, a guest bedroom, a ground floor laundry room, and a second full bathroom. It also allowed us to convert the former living room into a library and expand the kitchen space to allow for more counter space, more storage, and a dishwasher. That dishwasher is a pretty exciting addition since in my entire adulthood I had never lived in a house that had a dishwasher until now!
As we considered this bold project, we had several goals in mind:
- We wanted enough space to comfortably entertain all of our children/grandchildren in our home. We wanted all of them to have good memories of times spent together in our home.
- We wanted to be able to practice more hospitality with others, including friends and meals in our home that we could donate at local charity events.
- With children on both coasts, we wanted to have comfortable spaces for them to stay with us when they come to visit.
- Maintain our outdoor living space with its large deck, patio, space, and herb, flower, and vegetable gardens.
In the span of just over a year since the building project was finished, we have made lots of great memories in the additional space. We even boarded a teacher who was working as a long-term substitute at the high school for 5 months!
Did it make total sense to invest that amount of money at this stage of our lives? Some may argue that it maybe didn’t. Do we have any regrets about having done it? Absolutely not! The extra space makes our home much more livable and we think that will be a plus for future owners when the time comes to move into something smaller in a future season of our lives. In the meantime, the memories we are making here are priceless.