Remodel--99.9% Complete

It's been a dusty, loud, messy, and totally unorganized past two months.  And It was totally worth it!  We added a whole new room without expanding the walls of our house, but instead by adding a ceiling over the family room and filling in all that dead, wasted space that accompanied the 22-foot vaulted ceiling.  

I have been dreaming up this big room for months, and it has turned out exactly how I envisioned.

The kids, especially the younger ones, have love love loved the massive magnetic whiteboard on the wall.  Almost daily after school, EmmaClaire gathers a few neighbor kids and plays "school" with them. Buster and Kate are always willing participants.  I love that they are so creative with their free time.

And massive toy/game closet.  How have we lived without all this storage space???

The old loft was framed, all walled up, and turned into a linen closet, full bathroom, and another bedroom- which will turn into a baby room in a few months when this little guy arrives.

And another genius change was removing the cupboards( that were so narrow, you couldn't even fit folded towels in them. . . kind of useless space) and building a large, deep closet instead.  Now, we can fit cleaning supplies, a vacuum, coats that aren't worn by much, holiday decor, and big tubs for each of the kids' prized art work and writings from school.

And the only thing we lost was a 22- foot vaulted ceiling in our family room.  John and I actually like the feel of the new 10- foot ceiling better anyways.

Before the remodel, all the lighting we had in that lofty ceiling was one ceiling fan with three dim light bulbs.  And the fixture was so high up, we couldn't ever change a light bulb without a 15- foot ladder.  Or clean the fan, for that matter.  Now, we have a ceiling fan with light, 2 lamps connected to switches, and 9 can lights.  And upstairs above the family room, we added two ceiling fans and 9 can lights as well.  

We are really enjoying our new space and are soooo happy to have a functional, organized, clean house back again.