Overhauling

What would you change about your house if you had, say, $150,000. You can't move, you have to remodel your current home. And you have to spend it all on remodeling, you can't use it for anything else.

Greg and I have been in our house for eight years now and we've talked maybe a little more than occasionally about what we'd do to our house if we won the lottery (this fantasy might become a little closer to reality, by the way, if we actually played the lottery more than twice per year). Greg always says that we'd move to a brick house; he has this serious obsession about brick houses, but moving is not in the rules.

First, I'd bump out the entire back of the bottom story. Our living room is kind of small, to the point that we have only ever had it arranged one way, because the couch will only fit on the wall by the big windows.

Next to the living room, I'd bump out the dinette. We have to have a tiny little table (from Ikea, naturally) because that's the only size that will fit. You can get six people around it, as long as they don't mind being cozy and you don't mind that you don't actually have room for any food, just the plates, glasses, and silverware.

Then next to that, I'd bump out the kitchen, not so much because I think we need a bigger kitchen (though Greg has ideas on that front if he cares to contribute), but because on the other side of the kitchen is the doorway to the mud room. If we bumped out the kitchen but kept it the same size, we could make the mud room bigger and I'd actually have room to fold my clean laundry and maybe leave out an ironing board and have a bigger closet for all of the stuff that first comes into the house through the back door that's also in that room.

Then I'd probably go upstairs and bump out our master bathroom. I'm not the whirlpool tub kind of person, which is good because we don't have one, but it would be nice to have a double vanity, at least.

Then I'd bump out our master bedroom a little. We actually have a really nice sized master bedroom, but if it was even larger, we might be able to split off a small study full of bookshelves. Then me or Greg could be on the computer in the corner of our room without having to try to be quiet for the one trying to get to sleep.

And that's it. All of these bumpouts are on the back of the house, so we could just take off the back of the house and do the expansion everywhere at once. As a bonus, even though Allie doesn't need a bigger bedroom, she'd get a little more space too.

OK, that's my $150,000. How about you?