one of the challenges of our house is the lack of connection to the back yard. as with many older homes it has been added on to haphazardly over time according to what each owner needed or wanted. the result is that a laundry room and bathroom dominate the back portion of the house and there is almost no connection to the back yard. there are only two windows actually over looking the back yard, one small one next to the dining table and another in the bathroom! I often have to stand in the bathroom to watch the kids play in the yard! the bathroom is also overly large and wasted space , plus you look at the toilet from the table and even the front door if the bathroom door is left open. ugh. basically no thought was put into these things other than we need a bathroom so let's add it to the back. also, strangely, there is only one side window in the kitchen looking over the driveway? the lack of light is depressing and the disconnection from the big green back yard frustrating. so, those are some if the negatives.
of course there are a lot of positives too. for one thing the kitchen is in pretty good condition. the cabinets are old and it all is a bit dated but certainly very liveable which was a big criteria when we bought this house. indeed most people comment on how nice our kitchen is when they first come over. i think one reason is its spaciousness. the kitchen is a large L shaped room (though a lot of it again is wasted space). at some point recently someone bumped out part of it to add the small window and large double doors on the side which help with light and allowed for a dining space. unfortunately the space isn't quite big enough for a good size table. we have five at the table regularly and often have guests. we need the other rooms off the kitchen so they wouldn't work for dining. we are left wondering what to do to make better use of the space.
after two years of living in this house and imagining different possibilities it seems another bump out is the best if also most complicated solution. the small window next to the table is where the last change was made and we think if we moved the back bathroom and then extended that bit of the wall to fill in that little bit of corner space it would allow us to completely open up the back of the house. we would remove the wall between the dining space and bathroom and that would instead become the new kitchen space with windows over looking the back yard! the current kitchen space would become a large dining room (which would also put it next to the living room). we could then move the double doors to the wall where the stove is now which would also add more light into the living room. easy right? ha! we are pretty crazy i know. we have debated many times whether there could be a simpler way but keep coming back to this. it would be an amazing transformation of the space and add a tremendous value to the house I believe. every time i sit at that table and see the damn toilet (because it is a losing battle trying to get the kids to keep it closed) i just imagine that beautiful kitchen in my head. can we ever make it a reality? that is the crazy choice we have to make. * hopefully all of this makes sense? i'm on my phone still and trying to mix text with pictures is difficult. i will go into better detail as we share more in the future.
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