A New Way To See The World... Or At Least Our Backyard

When we were in the process of buying our house, we loved a lot of things about it. It was an awesome location, a cool loft for the kids to play in, a huge unfinished basement, a garage, and a real master bedroom among others.  But there were a few things that we didn't like, but we figured we could fix later.  One of them was a lack of a window in the kitchen.  In our old house, the kitchen and living room were in the front of the house, with bedrooms in the back area.  This meant if the kids were playing in the backyard, there was no way to see them without going into one of the bedroom.  Being able to easily see the kids in the backyard was an absolute requirement for our new house.  A we found a house that met that requirement.  Sort of.  Our dining room and kitchen are at the back of the house, and the dining room has a big bay window that looks into the backyard, and then there is a door with a window between the kitchen and dining room, but in the actual kitchen there was no window.  So it was not possible to see half of yard while in the kitchen.  This bugged Connie, but not enough to stop us from buying the house.

But, after months and months of patient waiting, Connie finally go her kitchen window!
Yeah! 

Not only that, but those of you who have been to our house before will notice that we also got rid of the pointless drop ceiling that used to be there (except for a small part where there was plumbing that couldn't be moved).  It is awesome.  Now we can easily see the whole backyard while we are cooking, on the computer, eating, or watching TV.

As an extra bonus, we also decided to replace all the windows in the house.  The old windows were 25 years old, aluminum windows with these grandma looking cross-sections in them.  You could hold your hand up to them and feel a draft coming through.  The new windows are awesome.  They don't let any cold in and they seem to let more light it in.   They were kind of expensive so we weren't sure if it was a good idea at first, but now we are very happy we did it.