Adventures in Renovation

Everything is moved! Thanks to my Dad, my brother John and especially his friend Charlie. What a big help. Thank you all. I didn't realize how much it was weighing on my mind until we were done. What a relief!

Afterwards we celebrated with burgers at The Golden West where we debated the best way to divide up the floor space upstairs. Everyone has a different opinion on that issue. There's a lot of things I COULD do if I had all the time and money in the world. But as it is, I'm leaving it pretty much unchanged to make everything simpler.

John says I should have the entire top floor open. I would love to do that but it would essentially make my house a no bedroom house. And for the sake of resale, I think it would look better on paper to have a two bedroom house cost $100,000 rather than a one bedroom house. The biggest reason to divide the rooms is for ferret proofing. It's nice to be able to keep the ferret (and the ferret smell) from your clothes and bed.

I'm looking at building a transom-like window in the wall that separates the bedroom so that light from the bay window will extend to the center of the floor. I made a sketch in photoshop to get an idea of what that might look like (see photo to the left). Another very cool option would be to go with sliding Japanese shoji screens. I really like this idea but I'm afraid the ferret will infiltrate these screens too easily. Plus, eliminating interior walls makes for more difficult wiring. The plans keep changing but it's time to start framing next. I need to decide!