The wall

Like I've said - we like excitement around here! I've talked in the past about trying to make a small(er) house functional with four small children. With three bedrooms and four children, we have our three girls share a room. We recently built the coolest hanging bed for Mairead, and it's great! It totally saves a ton of space and gives the girls plenty of room to play.

So, what about the downstairs? Well, it's a tiny bit more functional than the bedroom situation, but in all reality, it doesn't work very well. During one of my long runs, I thought about tearing down the wall between our eat-in kitchen and our family room/playroom/office. Kevin hates when I think during my runs because I come up with crazy ideas and thoughts - remember when I came up with the idea to pull the kids out of school after Kevin retires, buy a sailboat/yacht and sail the caribbean for a year? Yeah. 

Anyways, our dining room is really dysfunctional. It is small, and our dining room table only seats 6, which leaves ummmmmm......no seats for houseguests. Yeah, we could get a bigger table, but our dining room is on the small side, so a bigger table would really not be feasible. Our family room is also long and narrow, and a bit dysfunctional, too. Well, it has a lot of functions - it's our "office/computer room", our TV room and our playroom. Lately when the kids want to play on the computer, they get distracted by the TV or the others playing, or when Mairead has schoolwork to do, she has to do it at the eat-in kitchen table, which is also distracting. 

So, my idea is to take down the wall in between the eat-in kitchen and family room. Build a DIY farm table that would seat at least 10, and use the dining room as our school room/office/playroom. Our family room would become a real inviting family room with a sectional couch that would scream cozy! 

Thankfully my idea wasn't crazy enough for Kevin to laugh at me.....he tried, but as he thought about it, he realized it was a really good idea! He's so lucky to have a wife with such great ideas :)

And after 4 years of owning this house and gutting it with our own two hands, we've gotten smart and decided to hire someone to make the mess, do what we want and clean up after themselves! Can't wait to share the finish project with you!