Space, is at a premium

Our house is 1,100 square feet of useable liveable space.  This useable space has been in existence since 1867.  This house has seen a lot of life.  While we are the stewards of this house, we are raising three children, all of whom share a room.

We moved into this house when Merri was just 11 months old.  She was already walking by that time, she had her first birthday here surrounded by boxes and boxes of our worldly posessions.  We have made several changes to this space and we are constantly editing as we must use all of our space.  We brought both of the boys home to this house, I snuggled up in my slanty ceiling room to nurse each of them.  It is a cozy place.

About a year ago or so, we had some plans drawn up by my talented brother to further our dream of an addition.   An addition to our house with crooked original wide pine floors and original hinges on the doors - oh how we love it so.  With the attached barn that has tree trunks for posts.  Everyone tells us to convert the barn, "Oh no, we won't do that, some other owner can do that.  We love and use the barn!"

With the addition we will add a bedroom, a family room and move the bathroom from our kitchen.  This will enable Merri to have her own room.  Although today they all three share a room and get upset and/or lonely when one of them is not in their room, it will be good when she is older to have her own space.  I had always said that by the time she is nine we should have the addition.  Well she just turned seven.  Here is the scale model of our house.

Here is the plan view of the addition.  The roof lines match up and we have a dormer in our bedroom.  It adds roughly 500 square feet to our little house, all the while not changing the facade which is important to us.  We have not yet priced this out.  But oh the dreams that these plans incite are wonderful!

We did enroll in a personal finance course this winter which has taught us how to manage our money.  We are much closer to this addition now that we have paid off some of our debt.  We are actually making plans and telling our money what to do rather than our money telling us what we are doing.  We are doing really great. Now that we are working towards paying off all of our debt to saving to pay cash for this addition. 

At least that is where we were headed, until...

WHOA!

#4

Totally surprised. 

Totally unplanned. 

Totally excited. 

Totally scared. 

But more than anything, we are BLESSED!
Space is certainly at a premium. 

But in our hearts there is plenty of room for our new baby.