working on the house. er, the addition

We had a phone conference with the architects this afternoon. They had sent two more sets of drawings that accounted for putting a bedroom on the north side of the house, in what is the garage right now. A nice, big, free room. This morning we had another development. Val's grandparents called to suggest something I had considered but been too shy to suggest. They wondered what if we didn't divide the house into separate apartments, just gave them a bedroom? I had figured they'd want more privacy, but the garage will be plenty big enough for them to retreat into from the hooligans when they need a little peace and quiet and they would rather watch something a bit more mature than spongebob. (Which isn't saying a whole lot. SB is pretty stupid, IMO) But the idea is good for other reasons, too--it'll improve the air flow through the house and increase storage a bit, not to mention be cheaper to construct. Adding two more people to the commotion won't make much difference. In fact, in their case, it'll probably help. So it looks like we're going to have a nice big art studio for Val and her grandmother—both do serious china painting—and lots of living space on the west and south, an improved kitchen, another full bath, laundry both up and down. Val is looking forward to not having to carry dirty laundry downstairs to wash, then carry back up to put away. (Of course the real plan is to have the kids do their own laundry, but there's still hers and mine...) And separate bedrooms for all three kids. I'll post some CAD drawings when we get closer to the final layout. The architects thought of some clever things to do that will make the west side look really interesting, inside and out, and not cost a whole lot. They are also planning on Serious Insulation in the new north walls, with lots of natural light. Cost to operate the house (heat and light) should be about as close to zero as it is now, maybe better. In the poetry corner tonight: No winners on what was special about that last paragraph a couple nights ago, so I'll tell you. Skip down to Feb 26 if you want to give it a look... So okay—the next-to-last paragraph that day was about trochaic tetrameter. The last paragraph happens to be four lines of trochaic tetrameter!