Mare loves old houses. He can take one look at an old house and immediately look past peeling paint, a bad remuddle, vinyl windows, and the like to see the potential in it. Back in the day, before and during our relationship, he bought up old houses (and one commercial building) in my hometown and began ambitious restorations on them...Problem is, he'd get bored with the project and never finish, a trait that unfortunately continued into his foray as a contractor and cut short that career. His strength lies in his ideas. And boy, has he had some good ones. His latest idea, involving my own house, is one of those good ideas. Or at least half of it is.
Here's the half I'm already sold on. I'll refer you again to my colored-up pic of the floor plan. (High-tech, isn't it?) See that wall behind the bathtub, the wall that divides the two bathrooms? Mare wants to knock out that wall and extend my bathroom all the way to the back wall of the house. That would eliminate the half-bath that probably would never be used anyway. It would also create a suite-like layout between the master bedroom and the spare bedroom, which opens up the possibility of turning the spare bedroom into a big walk-in closet and dressing area eventually. (And realistically, "eventually" is a long, long time from now.) We'd still be demolishing that shower stall and the structure around it and moving the back door over so it's in line with the kitchen door—and the back walkway, of course. Instead of the existing doorway from the back porch into the bathroom, we'd extend the original exterior wall of the house (that green line) all the way across to the back wall of the house. Now that I've mulled it over for a couple of days, I like that idea. It would add some cost to the project. I'd have to buy about 18 sq. ft. more of flooring and additional beadboard, moulding, and baseboard, and I don't know if extending that wall will cost more than a door and framing would. But the additional cost wouldn't put the project out of reach for me. I think it makes the area "flow" better because it gets rid of that awkward little hallway-like bathroom at the rear of the house. The more I think about it, the more I like it.
It's the other half of his idea I'm not so sure about. Mare proposes to get rid of the dreaded basement trap door, build a railing on the two long sides of the stairwell, and move the washer and dryer into the basement. Yowza. I don't know about all that. Y'all know how I hate that trap door. Two of my greatest fears involve that stupid thing: one, that the hook which holds the trap door to the kitchen/laundry room wall will pull out of the wall while I'm in the basement and the trap door will slam shut, imprisoning me down there; and two, that if I don't corral the animals beforehand one of them will try to run down the basement steps just as I let go of the trap door to let it fall shut and thus be crushed. No trap door would mean none of those worries. There'd be plenty of room in the basement for the washer and dryer because the front half of the basement has a concrete floor and brick walls and an almost 7-foot-high ceiling. It runs underneath the whole kitchen, to give you an idea of the size. The plumbing and drains and what-not are situated so that moving the washer and dryer downstairs wouldn't be a big problem, or so Mare says. (I'm taking him at his word on that, because I know nothing about plumbing.) I'm just not sure I want a big gaping hole in the middle of the back porch floor, even a hole with a railing around it. My future grandkids might fall into it. My future little-old-lady self might not like to walk up and down those steps all the time just to get her unmentionables clean. It's an interesting idea, and one that I'd never have thought of myself. I'll have to mull it over for a while longer.
So what do you all think?
