 One of my very first home posts on the blog (almost five years ago?!) was about my Charles’ office. He had always liked the idea of terracotta colored walls, and one week while he was away on a business trip, I decided to surprise him with an office makeover.
The walls were more SF Giants orange than terracotta, but Charles liked the layout and loves the Giants, and for a while, it was a good work space for him. Then he got a laptop, and he no longer really used the room. After his dad passed away, Charles inherited some stuff. I found places for the furniture, but there were old paperwork, photos, and odds and ends that ended up getting shoved into that room, waiting for the day when he’d feel more emotionally ready to deal with it. In the meantime, I closed the door so we wouldn’t see the chaos. A few years later, and the room is still like it was the day I closed the office door. Charles and I realized that not only did we not need that extra space, it had turned into storage for things we didn’t even really need to keep. It wasn’t like we needed three quarters of what was in there. We never even looked for it. That’s when we started playing with the idea of creating a second bathroom in that space. While most of the time having one bathroom was plenty, occasionally it wasn’t. Most of the homes up here are second homes, so we thought it might even be a good idea to sacrifice a bedroom for another bathroom. But we’re pretty prudent when it comes to those decisions. We brought in our realtor, and what she said kind-of dashed our plans. She let us know that not only would a second bathroom not add any value to the house, any other improvements we did around our home probably wouldn’t either. While changing the house from a three and one into a two and two most likely wouldn’t lower the value, we wouldn’t recoup the money spent on all of the things required in adding a bathroom – routing plumbing, buying fixtures, adding an exhaust fan. She told us if it would improve our lives, and we wanted to stay in the home at least five more years, go ahead. Otherwise, it probably wasn’t a good financial decision. Balls. What would we do? Move forward and dedicate ourselves to Our Little House for at least five more years even though there are some things we’ll never have here – a garden, a shorter commute, and a garage? Should we just hunker down and forget about it since we don’t use the space anyway? Should we look for something else? What would be the best course of action? Charles and I would have to weigh the pros and cons to decide on the best way to go. It didn't seem like it would be an easy decision. |