Introduction

Buying a home is one of the American dreams. The place you can call yours, the place where your family will grow up, memories are made, and money is spent.  Wait...what?  I said it...money is spent.  Don't get me wrong. I love my home and am happy to call it mine (well, technically the banks, but lets be a little positive here.) The thing about owning a home is now you have the chance to make it yours, to customize it, to change anything you want.  And boy does that cost some serious dough.

Take for example my newest projects, a shed and a chicken coop.  The shed was a necessity fueled by the American need to cultivate a yard, grow a garden and own stuff...lots of stuff. My house is a nice size at 2200 SF of finished space, but lacks a garage or place to call home to all of the tools necessary for yard work and home renovation projects. Right now my lower level living space is my shed.  The tools are piled in the room and overflowing onto the couch down there. I think the tools can officially call the couch their domain. (Who buys their tools a couch?  Oh yeah...I do.)

Add to that my children and their endless need to own every creature created we are also housing chickens.  Yeah, those "oh, aren't they so cute and fluffy" miniature manure making stink bombs.  I swear I thought dogs and cats smelled, but until you house baby chicks in your home you haven't smelled anything!  So like the wonderful mother I am, I agreed to chicks, which means a coop, which means more money.  (Hey, money is paper, paper comes from trees, therefore by my kids argument, money grows on trees...I wish.)

So back to the reason I started this blog.  The following posts are some of the projects I am currently working on and as I go along I plan to post some older projects I also worked on. I wanted to start this as an almost scrapbook of how my house will change over the next few years.  Either I will look back at this with fond memories or I will cringe at the thousands spent.

Here is a picture of my house when I first bought it.