Unexpected Surprises

So everyone warns you when you remodel that you should plan for unexpected surprises...stuff that will come up that you didn't plan on that will have to be fixed or changed or just dealt with. So far, (knock on wood), our unexpected surprises have been good ones.

First, we found out that we can put in a pocket door between the breakfast room and the laundry room. I feel like everytime I see somewhere that I want a pocket door or suggest that to someone it is usually in a wall that can't handle one. But the framer guy (that's his technical title) said that this wall was the perfect spot! So now when we are doing laundry we can shut that room off and not have to deal with the noise of the washer and dryer!

Pre-Installation

Installed! (Sorry for the bad quality, iPhone and looking through the window is a bad combination)

The second good surprise so far was even better. As you can see in this picture, originally above the refrigerator and surrounding cabinets there was a furdown...by the way, it makes me laugh as we go through this process to hear Clint and I using terms that we have no idea what they mean but we heard someone else use them first so we just follow along. I especially love when he says one and I look at him like "What does that mean?" and he shrugs his shoulders, shakes his head and just laughs. But back down to furdown...I keep wanting to say furlough, but all I know is that it is the space that was all sheetrocked in.

This space contained an air register that sent air to three vents - the one you see above, one in the dining room (to the right) and one in the living room (behind the refrigerator). Every time my dad would come into the kitchen he would comment about how this vent in the kitchen was closed and he couldn't imagine why you would close that. Same comment, time after time. Well one day he actually opened it up and stuck his hand up there and said "Well there's not any air coming out of here!" We checked the other vents that were connected, same story.

So, that leads to the good news. Heidi (my friend who just happens to be an architect and designed everything for us...love her) was with us going over the plans and we started talking about how nice it would be if the furdown was gone. So Clint goes up into the attic and realizes that the sole purpose of that entire area was to close in the air register...and since it didn't even work properly we decided to take it out! This led to new plans which involve cabinets all the way up to the ceiling and let this area be more of what Heidi said she originally wanted anyway...we aim to please :)

The only bad news that resulted from this...holes being punched into the wall on the other side, which we hadn't planned to paint. Oh well, now we just get to pick out new paint colors!