The Jack Noodle Journal

Here we have an architectural 3D rendering of the Noodle Compound remodel / 2nd floor addition as envisioned by my friend Mathew, superimposed over the top of a preexisting photo of the house, with some cutting and pasting by me and some quick dabs of paint to see what our house would look like red.

Gosh that’s nice. I could stare at that for hours. There’s something oddly soothing about it.

When we first learned of baby’s arrival I had a bit of a nesting freak out. Boy, I guess I did. I just went back and looked at this post. It has all of the nesting freak out explained for you in great detail.

I was really worried the house was going to be too small for the baby.

Our dear friend and architect Mathew, jumped in with his expertise and did a mountain of design work for us. He performed some great mental gymnastics and bullet sweating when conceptualizing an awesome layout that took Mama Noodle, Papa Noodle and Baby Noodle’s needs and desires into account. I really enjoyed getting a view of how Mat (no really, one T) works. It has been fun emailing photos of every square inch of the house, measurements, and my uneducated philosophical ravings on architecture to Mat in New York.

Mat has done a great job and I think we have a good plan started.

As I was quick to find out though, 9 months zooms by amazingly fast! We ran out of time. Looking back now, there was no way we would have had a remodel complete before baby came. I would be so absolutely out of my head right now if there was construction going on here!

Also, I don’t think K and I have a realistic view yet of how much a remodel of this size is going to cost. With all of the lame housing market fallouts and increasingly weak economy, we might very well have been in over our heads financially if we went through with the remodel funding. Now is the time when we really should be taking it easy and playing it safe.

That said though, we are definitely going to remodel in the future and we will be moving ahead with the plans we have started. I’m excited to one day start the building.
Yeah, and we will probably be painting the house red.

I’m not as freaked out now about the nest at week 36 of the pregnancy. It will be fine. The Little Noodle will be small and not take up that much room. People have raised kids in much smaller spaces. We have everything cleaned up, the rooms are arranged better now, and all our junk is stuffed in the basement. It’s going to be great.

Several months ago one night while sleeping, I had a wonderful dream that I was walking around in the upstairs remodel. It was a very detailed and crystal clear dream. They probably had about a month left on the construction and I was checking it out while the workers were working on it. I remember walking up the new stairs and checking out the windows in the front. It was great.

Parents to be have some pretty amazing dreams and a few crazy ones. You should hear some of the things K’s dreamworld has been creating at night!