The Addition

Lisa
Nov 3, 2025
7 min read

Updated: Nov 11, 2025

Ahhh The Addition…..Talk about a labor of LOVE. We planned everything. We had a budget, literally down to how many nails we would use. We drew the floor plan over and over and over...until, it was perfection! We got a beautiful new Primary Bedroom, Bathroom and an Amazing Closet!!! We also got a super cool Mudroom! All tied up in a 25' by 25' square.

We originally set out to do everything ourselves. Well that became a little overwhelming and we ended up hiring someone to finish it - totally not in the budget, but it’s finished…and it’s lovely!

Big shout out to Jason and his crew at Leister Construction!!

We still did a ton at first ourselves and also did what we could along the way to make it cheaper. First things first…the drainfield. This was the worst part of it all. Yes, the drainfield that is attached to the septic tank. Yes, the septic tank that has poo in it. Apparently, because we were adding and extra bedroom with an extra bathroom and more square footage, we had to add on to our drainfield. This was not in the budget that we planned out so well. For some reason, neither of us thought about this and holy poo, was it expensive – however, we probably would have paid someone else double. Oh, and this is the yucky part. This was worse than being on Fear Factor. You know that show where people have to lay in a glass box and have snakes or spiders crawl all over them? Yes, this was my equivilent to that. I am not only terrified of stepping into poo, but I am also terrified of bees. Apparently an open septic tank poo poo pipe attracts bees, lots of bees. I had to step into the bee swarming sludge, in my wellies, to help Mick connect the new pipe and I cannot believe I was able to do it. There will be no pictures of this part. Of course, Mick did most of the work, I was just the helper. I did shovel some rocks though to fill in the hole when it was done and let me tell you, that was hard. He started by hiring a machine to dig up half of our back yard. We had mountains of dirt in yard for ages. We bought all the supplies and dealt with the Department of Health to make sure that it was all properly. He designed our maze of pipes and worked late most nights to get it finished. We were ecstatic when this part was done and we could cover it back up again!

So the other thing we did that saved us a ton of money was painting! Literally everything - inside and out. My thumbs are still ruined, even after cortisone injections, from holding a paintbrush and painting, for what seemed like a year! Before this, painting used to be fun (ha ha, if you’re just doing one room) and I didn’t realize how hard it was to paint 600 square feet. From scratch! From drywall people!! I never even thought about this! This also includes baseboards, window trim and crown molding, and oh, the ceilings. I never want to paint another ceiling ever again! But I have to say, it was worth it in the end! And I’m proud of what we’ve accomplished. And it saved us a ton of money! When it came to the paint color, I got vetoed on a deep, dark luscious teal for the accent wall, LOL, but that’s OK. I like the way it turned out and one day I will paint something else that luscious teal! We chose Valspar's Filtered Shade for the main walls and Cathedral Stone for the accent walls in the bedroom and in the bathroom.

When we started planning, I started buying stuff right away! This is what I love! Light fixtures, fans, faucets, sheets, pillows, etc., etc. That was the super fun part!! Our spare closet and bedrooms started filling up with stuff! Lots of stuff! There was a tub in our back bedroom for months! The house was a hot mess for sure! Probably one of the best deals I got was on our bed. I could not believe it when I found my dream bed at Home Depot!! Who knew?! AND, I think I got it for like 65% off! Being a good bargain hunter is one of my passions and if I wanted this to be what I’d dreamed of, I had to put those skills to work. Now, not everything turned out how I imagined. The giant rug for the bedroom sat in wait for ages and when I unrolled it, I was like oh, hmmm, this is, ok. Ok? Just ok?! That's not OK! This cannot be my rug! And of course, because I had bought this rug SO early on in the process, I had already found a different rug, that I liked so much better. Actually, this wasn't just like...I was in love with it! But, I had already bought the first rug. Hmmmm….what should I do?! Well it went on super sale and so I said screw it. And I bought it! In the end, it was serendipity, because I sold the first rug to a neighbor, who happened to come by, see it, and loved it...and I got my (new) dream rug!I’m still so happy with the rug, every day! Sometimes you’ve got to work through the kinks, but it will all work out! You got this!

I think the thing I was most excited about (besides having two bathrooms) was the closet!!! Oh my, my - have you read about my closet yet? Now I have to say that for an old house, this house has decent size closets and lots of them! I’ve lived in houses this old before where the closet was a third of the size so I was actually OK with the littler, decent size closets that we had to begin with, but knowing that I could have a closet as big as I wanted…that was amazing! And my brain started churning.

The bedroom turned out to be a good size too! We had the same weird door placement issue with this bedroom as we had with our last one, but we made it work. I had originally dreamed of having electronic blinds so that in the morning you could open the blinds and look out the window into the yard, but that was not in the budget. Maybe one day! We were also originally going to buy unfinished wood floors and stain them to match the rest of the house, but that was going to be too time consuming and a lot of effort, so I started looking. I looked and looked, and looked for ages until I found ones that were the closest possible thing that I could find, and that were solid wood. This way, if we ever did redo all of the floors, we could sand them all down and do them exactly the same. I have to say, though, they are a good enough match. So, I opened up a Home Depot card and put the floors on that and I got $100 discount for opening a new card and I got 12 months to pay them off with zero interest! Win, win! I love a discount!

So like I started to say before, we started all of this with finishing it ourselves in mind. We dug the trenches and did the rebar and the concrete blocks. Mick did all of the framing. And then… we put up the roof trusses! My mom and dad and brother and his girlfriend all came over and pitched in! It was stressful and exhilarating all at the same time. I, sadly, was unable to help with that part as I had just had a minor kind of surgery on my foot and was not really able to walk like a normal human. I was rolling around on a rolly chair in the house. So I made sandwiches and did what I could to help while I hobbled around. Mick did such an amazing job with all of the planning of that and getting everyone to do what needed to be done. It was a huge accomplishment for sure!

Another thing he did great with was also with making the floors completely even from the old house to the addition. They are literally perfect. When you go over the floor's transition in that spot with the vacuum cleaner, you don’t even know that you are entering an addition. There is literally no bump from the old to the new. Amazing!

Once we got about this far, it sat for a while and eventually we hired the roofers and gave in to letting someone else finish it off for us. They really did do an amazing job! And we definitely did an amazing job as well, giving them a fabulous foundation to start with. It truly was a labor of love.