THE END OF RENO ROAD: THE OUTSIDE

Yes, I have come to the end of Reno Road.  It was a long road.  It was a stressful road.  Sometimes rounding the corner on Kody and my morning walk, I still catch myself hoping to see a truck in the driveway that isn't mine (that meant work was actually going to get done).  Then I remind myself, THEY ARE FINALLY FINISHED!

But now that it's over, I really love how everything turned out. Seeing a binder full of ideas and numerous design changes come to life has been amazing. Besides learning what a shear wall is, I learned some great life lessons.  Starting with sometimes big disappointments turn into something better.  Case in point, the original plan around where I was going to add 267 square feet.

This is the before.  The dining room was planned for where the blue trash can and air conditioner were.  The laundry room was planned for the area directly on the right.  After the plans sat with the city for four months, we were told we could not build the laundry room behind the garage. I am still not sure why or even if I had been able to go to the city in person (thank you COVID) if I could would have changed things.  The fact it had taken so long to get anyone to even look at the plans, I decided to come up with a plan B.  My contractor suggested adding the laundry room to the back of the dining room, but I wanted backyard access from the dinning room.  After doing some measuring and spending an entire weekend going over things, I came up with the alternate plan

I decided to add the laundry room on the left side of the house, leaving the deck and orange tree in between the two new rooms.  The laundry room, which was also going to be doubling as my office, would be entered through my guest bedroom and have access to the outside. Of course that meant moving the electrical panel.  The same electrical panel I had just had upgraded in preparation for the addition.  Add $7,000.00 to the budget. 

Explaining my design to people, even my contractor, I felt like no one got my vision.  The D-Man, who usually has no design sense, described it perfectly.  "It will look like your house grew two legs." That's the phrase I started using. Even though it was a  huge change from what I had always imagined, now that it is finished, I love it.

Working in the new office, I have a great view of the deck and the yard, but what really makes the new design, is the outdoor space.  The deck now feels like a little private outdoor cocktail lounge.  This summer it is going to be the go to spot, especially during those hot San Gabriel valley days.

The area I originally planned for the laundry room is now the path to the backyard and the new home of the air conditioner.  One more plus, is I still have access to the garage from the backyard.  We moved the door to the side of the garage before we knew we were not going to be able to have the room there and I hated having to go through my side gate to get to the garage. I moved it back when the plans got changed even though it added another $1,000 to the budget.  For me, it was worth it.

It took me a long time to decide on the outside color.  The D-Man really wanted me to go with a bright pink, similar to the last time I had the house painted.  The pink had faded over the years and even though everyone in the neighborhood knew it as "The Pink House", I was over it. I knew I wanted to keep the trim black to match the new black windows.  I toyed with doing the house white, since the black and white combo is really hot right now, but in the end, I couldn't see myself living in a white house. I had bought this colorful lion door mat and had it in the garage, waiting for the house to be done. One day I moved something that was on top of it and staring at it, I knew.  The blue was jumping out at me. I guess most people don't paint their house based on the color of a door mat, but what can I say? Most people don't have a house with two legs either!