In Need of TLC

Poor garage! What an eyesore. When we first read about our house on the web, it stated "charming little guest house out back" How exciting!- I thought. Until I saw it ...Yuck! Mold growing up the walls, a resident racoon, and plumbing, yes...but no toilet to sit on! I would not have let my worst enemy spend the night there.

And really, if we are going to do the garage, we might as well add a much needed laundry room/mudroom to the back of the house....and if we are going to do that, we might as well update the kitchen, and what about that space on top of the laundry room...playroom? And since its cheaper to go up, why not build out the attic (after all, more square footage = better appraisal!) And since they are tearing up the backyard anyways, it would be great to have a pergola and patio...and to top it all off, we definitely need a front porch to watch the kids playing with the neighbors!
Wheeew! Now comes time for appraisal...and luckily our neighborhood has not been hit by the mortgage crisis as hard as other areas. We made it..it all fits into the budget.

So, who is going to do all this fabulous work? Well, God allowed us to meet a wonderful builder who has been patiently guiding us through this process from the beginnning. His name is Clint Wright and his company is IEC (Interior Exterior Construction) His company name says it all...and he does it all!
Most people, from what we have heard, don't have anything nice to say about their contractor. Alot of the guys out there are dishonest, harsh, they never complete a job...you name it and we have heard it! But God protected us in this area - the hardest thing about getting our project started has been from the detail side (city inpections, variances, construction loans needing surveys, etc.)
While the architect was drawing and Clint was measuring and the city was inspecting, we got to painting! The house was a beautiful shade of mauve with baby blue trim when we bought it. The roof (which we thought was real slate...its not!) is a mix of colors. We tried all kinds of color combinations, but the one we got locked into was charcoal and white...not too exciting, but it will do. It is definitely better than what it was. There was also an overgrown "english garden" with rosemary roots down to China! We took most of that out and replaced it with grass.
We are excited to get things going!