Big Updates Coming To Our Home

I knew that with two children there would be some big changes beyond the obvious ones.  I am doing a whole lot more laundry and dishes than ever before.  I never even thought about this until number two arrived.  Ha!!!  The joke is on me.  We currently have our laundry room or laundry closet right off our kitchen, and it is combined with a pantry.  We used the Easy Closets system to create a pantry which I love.  However, having a stacked washer and dryer in a space not much bigger than a small closet is not great.

New Laundry Room

We have made it work, but we don’t think it is practical in its current setup.  We don’t have a place for our ironing board, so it seems to live in our bedroom.   Right off our second floor bedroom through some French doors is a balcony. When we bought the house, we were those people saying that we would use it all of the time.  But…..we also have a front porch, a cocktail porch, and a back porch that do get used.  The only time we have used that balcony is when we needed to dry some clothes after spraying them with mosquito repellent before we traveled.

(This is the picture from the listing.)

After consulting with an architect, we have come up with a plan to transform the balcony into a laundry room and add a few other features. We are going to bump out and build where the balcony is now located.  You cannot tell from this photo, but it is located over our back porch.  I remember seeing a laundry room off of a master bedroom in another house, and I loved that idea.  I am the one who does the laundry, and I like that the laundry room will be upstairs, out of sight, and close to the bedrooms.  Mom has always had a second floor laundry room, and I know how convenient it it.

Here is our bathroom which is dated, but it will not be included in this Phase 1.  We will have the laundry behind the bathroom.  We will add a door with a pocket door beside the tub where the window currently is located.  The tub makes it tighter than it should be, but I actually love this tub.  I use it at least once a week, and it works for me.  While the style isn’t my favorite and the bathroom is dated, it works great, and that tub is something I am not ready to part with at this point in my life.

Along with the laundry room, we are going to push out the master bedroom’s exterior wall  and add a walk-in closet and a small office for my husband.  We have an office that I use, but he is not a fan of the hot pink desk or ghost chair for sitting.  He would rather have an office out of the way and more masculine.

In-Law Suite

The other half of this project deals with our garage.

This is the picture from the listing.  Unfortunately, our grass isn’t that lush.  Thanks to the dog and heat, our back yard is looking rough right now.   We are going to build a second floor and add an in-law suite to the top of the garage.  Now that we have two children, we lost our guest room.  We want our families to be comfortable and have their own space when they visit, so we need to create some space.  Plus, we might be able to Airbnb the garage bedroom eventually.  We are so close to Uptown Charlotte that we feel we would have good success in renting out our place on a short term basis should we go that direction.

So, there you go.   Some big plans are in the works.  We are tweaking a few more things on our plans. and then we should be ready to start taking bids.  We are not sure when we will get started, but seeing the plans is getting us excited.  We are told that this is a small project, and right now with how busy the building industry is in Charlotte, contractors might not want to take it on. We are ready, and I know my parents will be ready and excited when it is finished.

Cheers!

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