My husband and I bought the second house we looked at on the first day of home shopping. I started crying in the driveway and we both just knew it was absolutely perfect for us, with one exception – it only had three bedrooms and an open loft.

We have a family of five so we were looking for a four bedroom house, but standing in the driveway that day we made a plan: our son could temporarily have the loft as his bedroom while we renovated the garage into the master bedroom.

“Six months”, my husband said, when I asked when he thought we’d have it completed. Three years later, we finally moved in (and our son got a bedroom with a door)! The actual work took us about eight months, since my husband and I both work full time and only had weekends to work on it. Factor in busy weekends, vacations, and the holiday season, and it really seemed to drag on forever!

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