Gary and I have thought about moving to a newer house that has a three car garage on and off for the last two years. Heck I have been trying to convince Gary that downtown condo living is the way to go. However, with our passions of motorcycle riding and the need to store two cars and two motorcycles - there was no way that we could move to a condo... yet!

Additionally, we love our house and cannot justify spending $600k plus for a condo at this point in our lives. So after many conversations we decided to take some of the equity that we have in the house and remodel it to what we want. I guess a sort of dream house.

We decided on three major projects with some smaller projects thrown in for good measure. We are starting with adding a third bay to our existing two car garage. This will allow us to store the motorcycles and both cars together in the garage and provide us with a lot more space for a usable workbench.

The second project is a brand new kitchen. Gary has always wanted a great chef's kitchen, so we are completely gutting the kitchen and putting in state-of-the-art cabinets which also includes a new pantry. We are also adding a new window in the kitchen that will look East and up the driveway. The new kitchen will have all stainless steel appliances and the stove top will move to the eating bar. The eating bar itself will moved about a foot west of where it is now and part of it will be raised to allow barstools versus counterstools. Finally, since we are installing new cabinets in the kitchen we are also going to replace the cabinet in our dry bar area of the dining room to match.

The third project is to remodel our master bathroom. We already did some remodeling work on the bathroom ourselves a few years ago, so this is to finish what we started. We are re-tiling the shower, installing a new dual basin vanity and new fixtures. The existing floor tile will remain along with the log house accents in the room.

Additionally, we are going to have all the floorboards and trim in the downstairs area redone to match what Gary and I did upstairs about two years ago and we are having air conditioning (Finally) put into the house.

Ideal Building General Contractors starting digging out the yard where the new garage will go a few days ago. This was done in a day while Gary and I were still in Washington DC for business. Here is a picture of the new HOLE the day after we got home.