Remodeling

Though we have a rather large house, there are some areas that were not planned out well for a large family. It kind of surprises me because the family who originally built this house had 8 children. One of the areas that has been lacking is our dinning room. When we first moved in we did some remodeling on the kitchen. We took out the island and made it shorter so we could fit our table. The table we have is pretty narrow as it is so we have no idea what kind of table the previous family had. We knew then that this arrangement would not last forever. We only had 12 kids then with plans of only adding 2 more, HA. We have talked about knocking out a wall between the dinning room and  a room the previous owners used as their school room. We just couldn't decide how to use it so it went through a transformation 3 times in 8 years.

Last Saturday we knocked out the wall. At first I wasn't sure what I thought of it. The house looks even bigger than it did before. We now have a great expanse to fill and no money to fill it with. :) Our plans for this area are to build a larger table top to go over the table we have. That will save us about $3,500. We are going to try putting the TV in that area and adding more seating to the family room. We don't watch a lot of TV and when the kids do they sit so close together that the smaller space will be all they need. Hopefully this will take care of two problems at once. Seating for eating and seating for visiting and being together as a family.

We are still a work in progress. Daily thinking of new ways to organize and where to put things that are now displaced. I don't think I have all the room I need but somehow I will make it work. Hopefully we will get the wood floor installed and some cabinet built before all the kids are grown and gone. (At this rate there will always be kids :))

The best picture I could find of the dinning room. That's it in the background.

All the kids wanted their turn. Trust me using the Sawzall is a much cleaner option.

In process. I don't know how it happens but the kitchen was really clean that morning. It wasn't even lunch time yet.

The boxes on the table are part of the reorganizing. Those boxes are now in  my hallway until I reorganize the  garage.
 It just doesn't end.

This is it.
We will be taking the cabinets out and adding the entertainment center there.  For now we will put a couch and chair from the basement to see what we think and get a feel for what we may want when it's time to furnish this area. It's going to look goofy with the table on the wood and carpet but at least we have more room. Painting will come soon.