Wednesday, August 27, 2008

Feature creep.

A term from my high tech days, when the product managers are working SO HARD to get the software buttoned down and out the door, and the engineers are all "but this little extra whatzit is the COOLEST THING EVER and won't take that long to finish and we HAVE TO INCLUDE IT!" and the schedule slips and the cost increases (but sometimes it does turn out to be a really cool thing to have).

So initially we weren't touching the wall of the house that contains the kitchen window. The small, sad, off-center kitchen window. It was always dark and unsymmetrical, and I'm sort of (sort of??) a symmetry freak, but it wasn't in the budget to change it.

Then we found The Rot. I don't think I've shown you The Rot. Take a look:

See the bottoms of the boards? And the huge gaping holes several feet off the ground? This is what was holding up our roof. Well that and the termite poop.

Fixing all the wood/foundation/stucco wasn't in the budget either, but it was clearly the right choice for the house. And hey, while we've got the whole wall opened up, how about a new, larger, centered window?

So we went from this:

to this:

It feels HUGE. The extra light in the kitchen will be wonderful, it will (finally) match the other two pairs of windows on this exterior wall, AND we're even getting the wrinkly glass, in keeping with the historic preservation. Things are looking up.