Playroom Addition Stage 1

Several months ago it was decided to build a playroom onto our house. I use the passive voice deliberately in this case because I didn't decide anything. I agreed to my husband's decision to build the playroom. And since he is going to do all the work, who am I to stand in his way?

Why didn't I immediately jump at the opportunity? Well, because when you are married to a builder and live in an older home, you are pretty much constantly in the middle of a remodeling project. Everything has to be updated, or--I don't know, he will lose all credibility as a builder or something. But since he has to do everything on his time off, and we occasionally like to do things as a family (read: Mama doesn't have to wrangle the kids by herself) it takes longer to finish said project than it would if we hired someone (or if I helped, but that ain't gonna happen. Believe me, he does not WANT my help.)

Plus, I didn't want to spend the money. But we got the money together and I agreed it would be nice to have another room for all the toys, plus a bigger computer area. So now the remodel has begun. (It actually began several weeks ago, but I didn't have the pictures uploaded until now.)

Ready? Here we go.Here is the "screened-in" porch that was already on the back of the house when we bought it. The quotation marks are there because none of the screens were actually still there by this time. They got torn and flapped in the breeze, so we cut them out. It wasn't a bad porch, but it faces the west, so...not so enjoyable to sit there in the blazing-hot Texas evening sun.


Now behold my shame. Look at that mess! I don't even know what kind of junk was in those piles. In my defense, I got it ready to throw away months ago and Justin promised to haul it off but never did. I agreed to the remodel partly because I knew this junk would get thrown away.

Ah--much better in this picture. The porch and the junk are almost gone, making the site much easier on the eyes. (The cute boy in the diaper helps, too.)

Ewwww--that was under the brick?

This took Justin six hours to do. I brought him ice water. To his credit, he didn't complain (maybe because he knew I'd be thinking, "I told you so").

And this is how it looks today. There are some intermediate steps--namely, three or four days' worth--not pictured. It has been raining some here but Justin really wants to finish this part while he can take off work. So when it ended up being way more work than he could handle in the amount of time he had, he did something really smart--he hired guys to help. (Two of them work for him and couldn't deliver cabinets today--so even better, we're not paying them out of our pockets but out of the company.)

Sometimes it's really awesome to have a husband in the building business.