More "room"

The title for this blog was originally chosen to not only share about the "more" aspect of our family growing through adoption, but also, with Matt and I both educated in and working in the architectural field, to share about the "room" side of things as we designed and built a large addition to our home during the time we were going through Krassimir's adoption process. (You can read a little bit more about the choosing of the blog title and that original building project in this post from early on in the blog's history.)

A few years before either of these changes were even on the real horizon, God had been increasingly impressing on us the importance of living out our trust in him through living to be debt free and trusting that he would provide the means for us to have what we needed when we needed it. In that framework, if we did not have the money for something, God did not think we needed to have it. Taking out a loan was not going to be an option, and we were taking active steps to pay off our home mortgage quickly in order to be a more freely flowing channel through whom God could direct resources as he saw fit. If we have no financial obligations on us besides the provision of our day to day needs, we can be free to give as generously as he supplies!

That was all before either the addition or the adoption were on our radar. When *both* of those suddenly jumped onto our plate at once, it was a little daunting. How in the WORLD were we going to come up with nearly 5 times our average yearly income (which, for what it's worth, is not that sizable! So it's not as daunting of a task as it might seem at face value! But still...) over the course of a year?


If you were reading the blog at that time, you'll remember that there were countless ways that we saw God supply what we needed when we needed it. Sometimes that was through unexpected money, sometimes through good sales, or discounts, or donations of the time of others, sometimes it was through delays that gave us time to save up more of our regular income. Once it was through a major surgery being canceled completely a few short weeks before it happened, freeing Matt up to be fully capable with his body for putting in the sweat equity on the addition! Regardless, we trusted him for both the provision and the timing, and we were not disappointed.

We are, hopefully soon, going to be embarking on yet another house project. (Yes, I know. Seriously. When are those two going to just be done with it?!) Well, we've gone around and around with this one, even contemplating attempting it last summer, but for a variety of reasons, it hasn't happened yet.

We would like to have a bathroom that is handicap accessible.

As much as I've appreciated the bonding that's come of me needing to help Bogomila with her bath every night (lifting her into the tub, helping her scrub her back and wash her hair, lifting her out of the tub, and helping her wrangle into her clothes in the tiny little 1939 bathroom that we have - it could be worse! At least we have indoor plumbing!!), it will ALSO be good when she can do those things independently. We've also, just for the little boys looking forward, been thinking about a larger private space for diaper changes and dressing (there will come a time when the dining room floor is just not the appropriate place for those activities), and for grooming for Krassimir as he gets older. Right now all of his grooming happens in his eating chair. Shaving someday isn't going to work as well there. ;)

We would love to have a wheelchair ramp into the house!

It works right now to carry our three physically impaired children in and out of the house every time they need to get in or out, but it's a lot of back and forth...and especially once Bogomila gets her new wheelchair, we'd like her to have more easy access and freedom, and we'd love to see Krassimir using his more as he grows up as well. Right now it's just a whole lot easier to leave it outside than to take him out, carry him in, set him down, go back out, carry the chair in, pick him up and put him back into it...it just doesn't happen often. With Mira, too, set to get *her* chair this week, we would love the accessibility of a ramp to take her out with us when we're spending time in the yard.

We've seen some interesting progressions just lately that have catapulted this from "good luck" to "very possible" that I'm hoping to share, but not tonight. What I DID want to do tonight was get this out on the table so everyone and not just us here in this house, can enjoy the unfolding story of how we will be supplied with what we need...when we need it. (Which is not always when we think we'll need it. I remember telling Matt we needed to have this figured out and in place before the girls came home. Well, turns out we didn't! Because here we are, here they are, and there is no new bathroom! One hundred and thirty-three times and counting I have lifted 100+ pound Bogomila into and out of the tub. It's working now, but it's not a good long-term solution!)

Not the best images, because I just clipped them from AutoCAD, but this is a shot of the existing bathroom. It is small. The toilet is so close to the bathtub that we can get by without grab bars, but there's really not enough space in there for Bogomila to do much safely, and definitely not enough to get Krassimir in there!

The proposed bathroom addition/remodel involves turning the existing bathroom into a sink hallway. (The scale is different, sorry! But you can see the funny pink "T" shape with the sink in it where the bathtub used to be.) New square footage will have a bathroom with a tub, a flush entry shower, a toilet (with grab bars), a sink, and room for a fold-down changing table (the blue rectangle) sometime in the future. There is also a little entry from the outside that will go across a covered deck into the garage where we will take over one of our vehicle stalls for a ramp. (This version shows an electric lift in the bright blue, but our current plan is to just do a ramp.)

On the outside, Matt's more modern aesthetic comes through. 😏 The bathroom addition is on the back of the house, so won't change the view from the front, but structurally, he doesn't want to have to mess with the 2x4 roof framing that we currently have, so is proposing a cubic shape for the addition.

The intention is that from the back, it will tie in with the cubic shape that is Matt's office on the 2013 addition to our house. Below is the whole house as viewed from the back. On the far left is the existing garage. In the center is the original 1939 house, with the proposed bathroom, and on the right is the 2013 addition, with the little cedar cube being Matt's office. It's not yet a cedar cube, for cost and time reasons, but in our minds, that's what's there! It's just everyone else who looks at it and sees a white cube. The house looks a little busy from the back, but it should serve the needs of our family for a good long time.

So now begins the work of watching how and when it will happen.