Hi fellow mustachians,
We're a family of 5 (two adults, and three kids under age 6) living in a 3 bedroom bungalow that's around 1275 square feet. We love our little house, but there are a few issues that are driving us just a bit crazy. We're now exploring renovation possibilities with a design-build firm, but I feel like it's easy to lose perspective quickly. We need advice (and maybe a facepunch) from the mustache community.
Our current problems with the house:
1. The door to the backyard is located in the third bedroom, in such a way that the bedroom is basically a hallway in the warmer months (7-8 months a year around here,) making it difficult to also use it as a bedroom (because of the narrowness of the room and the placement of the back door.) As a result, we have all three of our kids sharing the second bedroom. They love it, but as they get bigger there won't be enough room for their beds and clothes. Also, it's annoying for me to walk through the bedrooms six or seven times to keep an eye on the kids while making dinner (which happens pretty much every night in the spring and summer.)
2. I'd like to have an ensuite bathroom. It's a want, not a need, but it would be so nice to be able to wake up to shower in the morning without all three of them waking up at the sound of me waking through the hall. Because, you know, as soon as they wake up they start needing things, and I'd love to shower in peace.
3. The front hall is tiny, and it often seems that there's not enough room for everyone to get ready to go outside in the morning, especially in winter when everyone has a snowsuit, boots, rainboots, and rainsuit, all of which might be needed on any given winter day. (Welcome to Canada. If you don't like the weather, wait five minutes.)
So... the un-mustachian answer is to rip off the roof and put a full second storey on top of our bungalow, getting us a four bedroom, three bathroom house of about 2500 square feet (huge!) The extremely mustachian answer is to give ourselves a free attitude adjustment, be ecstatic about our luxurious home, and train ourselves not to yell at each other when we trip over yet another pair of snowpants every morning. But what would you do? Something in between? Please help!