Our house is a very, very, very fine house

Well, no it's not, but it will be. This year we're doing small improvements, all leading up to next summer's commencement of the major renovations we're planning.

But first, the little details. A few months ago we finally replaced the two hideous exterior doors that'd been crapping up our house's facade. Now we have doors that actually (gasp) match.

This weekend Ken took down our colonial blue shutters that screamed, "I'm from 1983! Love me!" and repainted them a dark blue. For about $5 worth of exterior paint, our house just leapt decades into the future to land in the present. Whew.

Who knows what little project we'll do next that will make me feel a little more like this house is a place we want to be proud of? It's not that we don't, all appearances to the contrary; it's that we bought it in 2002, spent 2003-2004 building the detached 2.5-car garage, and had babies in 2005 and 2007. So we've been a little busy.

But now we're getting closer to the point where we'll finally turn our house into our dream home. Next summer we're going to start the process of turning our 1400sq-ft, 3bdrm, 1ba split-level into a 2400sq-ft, 5bdrm, 2.5ba split-level. There will be many steps to this process, all of which I wish we could bypass with a snap of the fingers or a Bewitched-style twitch of the nose:

(1) Frame out a new kitchen where our current deck is and raise the roof on the lower level of the house by a full story.

(2) Finish the interior of the new kitchen. (Yippee!)

(3) Gut the existing kitchen (double yippee!) and combine that space with the current dining room to make a dining room that people can dine in without climbing over each other.

(4) Turn the new second story into 3 bedrooms and a full bath.

Down the road from all this renovating hell we will turn the current bedroom level that has three bedrooms and our only bathroom into a master suite (by combining the two larger bedrooms) and a laundry room (the smallest bedroom). I dare say our 1950s vintage home will be barely recognizable when all is said and done, but it should be an incredible change for the better. Now we just have to figure out how to do it while raising two boys and having two dogs who will temporarily lose their access to the backyard. I dare say my sanity will suffer a few blows, but I hold out hope that it will all be worth it in the end. And anyone who knows my family knows that we think sanity is a bit overrated anyway.