Julie's musings

Hello everyone.  Starting this blog was my idea but Pat embraced it so fully that I just abdicated my position as blogster.  So today I decided to just share my rambling thoughts.

We are fully committed to making this move and as you know we are veteran remodelers so we are into this process.  We really enjoy the creative process of taking a so-so house and making it into something new.  This project, however, is the largest in scope that we have tackled.  I am wanting to be past the planning phase and on to the doing phase.  All in due time.....

New Smyrna Beach seems like the perfect fit for us.  The coffee shop in the morning, the beach, the opportunities for Pat to show his art and to get involved in teaching.  I hope to find a church and other volunteer opportunities once we are here full time.

Just glad to be here for short intervals for now.

One of the up sides for me is that we will be downsizing.  I look forward to a smaller house with less "stuff".  So far the only one getting rid of stuff is Pat.  What a great job he has done so far!  One boat, one motorcycle, one bow flex, three guitars and one mandolin, gone.  Whew!  My contribution sadly will be to part with my baby grand piano.  We realized that it just will not fit in our plan.  Hopefully it will go to someone that will play it much more than I did.

Thanks for letting me share.  I'll post again soon.

Plans for new addition

We are at the NSB cottage again this week and will leave  in a few days to visit family in West Palm Beach for Thanksgiving. While here, hope to finish off the new opening from the living room onto the sunroom, plant some tropical plants we brought with us, and possibly add some new entry steps to the front porch.

This is a sneak preview of the house plan we have arrived at. Back in May, shortly after purchasing the house, we bought a computer program that allows one to design a house and actually be able to walk through that design and see how it feels and looks. We must have come up with 25 different designs , some one story and some two story. We then began making little changes to each plan to make it better. Then we had to choose which one had the most advantages.   

The opening in the upper left is to avoid an old oak tree we want to save.

The area shaded light blue is the original house footprint, about 600 square feet. We plan on adding about 1000 square feet for a total of 1600 sq. ft.

One of the big pluses of this design is that the front view of the house from the street will be virtually unchanged. We did not want to loose the charm and character of the original cottage that initially attracted us.

Creating a larger living room

This door coming off of the living room opened into a smaller 7'x11'  bright sun room. The problem was the light did not come into the living room and the sun room felt a bit claustrophobic. We decided to open this area, which will create more light and more space in the living room. This above photo is the before and below is the after. The door, hardware, and framework were saved to be used elsewhere in the renovation

Here is another view of the before

After

In addition to getting some work done on the house, there was a local art show known as Flamingo Follies  one block from our cottage. I set up some of my paintings for display and met a number of new art friends.

This painting is heading for the Berry Islands  :0)

It is always nice to find a new home for a painting.