We spent some time with our nephews that live in Virginia when we were at the wedding last weekend.  They’ve never been to our house as we live almost two hours from the rest of Rich’s family.  They really loved the video of Rich’s man room and especially liked the story of how we used sweet n’ low packets for measurements for the booth we wanted to replicate.  Our contractor loved that system as well (not really).  If you’ve never watched that video, we were at a restaurant that had a booth that we really liked the look of.  We went back there for lunch one day and asked if we could photograph it and they said sure.  We forgot to bring anything to measure the booth or table with, so we used the paper placemats and sweet n’ low packets lined across the surface to determine its size.  All we had to do is hand the contractor the photos, placemat and sweet n’ low packet and we were good to go.  He thought it was pretty funny,  and we thought it was a good solution to our problem.  Since then, it’s never occurred to me that we could have taken the photo and determined the measurements from the placemat and sweet n’ low packets ourselves and given him that instead.  Isn’t it funny that it never occurred to us?

I’ve been meaning to do a video of our kitchen and sun room.  The same contractor tackled the sun room that had been a very dark paneled room that was (I believe) originally the back porch for the home.  It was one step down and I never liked it because the floor was cement with carpet on it and was always cold.  There was a huge bricked base for a free standing wood burning stove and a sliding glass door onto our deck.  When they changed it from a porch to a room, they used inexpensive paneling on the outside of the house and painted it a color to match the rest of the house that was brick.  That always kind of bugged me too, because it just looked odd.

I wanted a room that was light and airy and one that we could look at our backyard (that borders on a wooded area), and watch the birds and wildlife.  In the winter we feed a herd of deer and sometimes have over twenty, so it can be pretty entertaining.  There isn’t a television in the room, so we spend our time on our laptops and reading when we are there.

As for the kitchen, I wanted a contemporary look and we live in an area that most homes have a traditional look.  It was difficult to get the kitchen contractor to stray from his traditional roots, but after five months and a lot of heartache, the kitchen is exactly what I wanted.  We had so many setbacks and issues when we did the project, that I said I’d never remodel a kitchen again, I’d just sell the house and buy one with a kitchen I wanted.  I’m hoping to make the videos of those rooms in the next couple of weeks.  I really love the idea of remodeling and have redone most of our home to fit our needs.  Although I love the idea of it, it’s very stressful while in the process and I’m really glad it’s done.

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