Overhaulin'

Okay, let's start where I last left off. Home owners came to investigate the damage to our family room from the storm 2 weeks ago. Yeah... it's not covered. Of course. When your husband is out of work, that's when stuff like this happens. When it rains, it pours... which leads me to last night...

It was pouring {shocker}. Like sheets of rain falling from the sky. Bob walks over to the back door to find the concrete {ya know, because we removed part of the rug that was damaged from the storm} with sitting water on it. You could actually SEE the water pouring through the bottom of the door. We moved everything out of the way and sat 6 towels all in front of the door. They were soaked after 15 minutes. Like dripping with water when we picked them up soaked. Good times.

So, now what? With the help of family and savings, we decided that the best option would be to fill in the back door and get rid of it altogether. Because our family room is on the bottom level of our quad-level house, it's just going to keep happening. We also had a lengthy discussion with our neighbors {love them!} who have lived in their house for 20 years. They have a similar model to ours and the rain ruined 3 carpets in their family room before they finally decided to close their door up.

Time to break out the pictures and tell you our plan.

This is our family room now. We have one window and then the door. The door leads out to a new concrete patio with 3 steps walking up to the ground level {so 3 concrete steps up to a patio.}

The plan is to remove the door and replace it with siding on the outside and drywall on the inside. We will then put in a window {to match the other one} so that we don't lose any natural light in the room. And, sticking with the theme in the room, we will replace the ledge that goes across the wall so that it fits in seamlessly and appears as though there was never a door there.

On the outside, we will also be filling in the concrete steps so that it's one flat concrete patio.

Okay, so where will the back door be, you may ask? Why in the dinning room, of course. Currently, we have a huge window in our dinning room that faces the backyard. Anyone that has ever been to our house always says the same thing "that window is so big that it should be a sliding glass door." Well, now it will be!

We're removing the back window and replacing it with a sliding glass door. For now, we're just going to put steps leading down to the grass, but we'd eventually love to build a deck {I hate being poor!}

It's a big project to take on, however we are SO LUCKY to have family that knows how to do everything. My FIL came over to check out the damage and we told him our plan and he said "okay, that's a 2 weekend job." Um, really? It would take me 6 months to do that, and you can do it in 2 weekends? He's awesome. My dad will be over to help as well. They helped us remodel our kitchen as well and we all know how that turned out =) I'll be sure to post before and after pictures of this massive project.