One Giant Snowball

I know you guys have heard me complain about the half wall between my kitchen and living area that I despise.  It doesn’t serve any purpose but to block the sight of people in the living room, and to block the sight of people in the kitchen.  Tell me how ridiculous this is:

So I decided to have the wall taken out.  I talked to a few people who do this sort of thing.  The guy I went with had some really great ideas for lighting and what to do with the columns that would remain.  He had such great ideas that I asked him about some other things that were bothering me.  Like…a recessed wall where the TV is supposed to go, but where nothing really fits.  He said, easy-peasey.  An entertainment center is what you need.  We can get it built, finished, delivered and installed.  I said yeah yeah, do that.  And what about that front door that’s all glass and people can see all the way to the back of my house and they look in?  He said, simple solution.  You pick a door and I know where to get it cheaper than anywhere, quality construction, installed.  I said, okay, let’s do that.

This has all been really fun, but last week, I went to see some of this guy’s work.  The woman was happy to show me (and the work was excellent).  She had expanded her kitchen, enclosed an old patio and added walls and taken down others to make it part of the now swank den, then expanded her patio and put in an awning.  Oh, and she redid the master bath.  But she said something that sobered me:  She had called this contractor because she really wanted to put in a double oven in her kitchen.  This all started with a double oven.  A double oven!  And I figured she was well into six figures now, which started with a renovation that might have been a couple of thousand dollars.

I thought about my wall, which currently looks like this (almost gone!):

And the entertainment hutch thing.  And the door.  And how I toyed with the idea of a new bathroom.  And some changes upstairs.  It was a cautionary tale, sent to me from the universe.  It whispers, stop.  Stop now.    I needed to see how a double oven could become an entire construction project with no one to help me pay for it but me. Whew!  Dodged a bullet there!

Have you ever done a renovation project?  Have you ever gotten carried away on a grand scale and watched an enormous snowball forming?  What about your house would you change if you could? What is your house missing?  What do you love about your house?

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