Beware the Domino Effect! These days -- in the middle of building -- we like to think back to that innocent day in early May when we cheerfully decided to enlarge the size of our family room a bit. Sure, it would cost us, but it seemed like a simple, easy decision. No big deal, right? It's fun to reflect on how stupid we were. Here's what happened over the next two months: The starting point: Decided to enlarge family room by five feet on one side. To balance out the new larger room, and have a view of the backyard, decided to move fireplace from back to side of house. Discovered that the masonry for the relocated fireplace would jut into the master bedroom above the family room. No way now to use that wall for the bed, so might as well put a fireplace in there too. Bill wanted one anyway. Read that big rooms with low ceilings look strange. Alarming! Decided to ask Shep about increasing ceiling height. Decided we'd better go with nine-foot ceilings (on first floor only). Realized that front windows in family room would look funny since room was now both wider and taller than originally planned. Decided we liked triple windows all close together, but that looked even funnier. Triple windows in a bump-out with gable going all the way up to the roof looked great. For that money, why wouldn't it? Surprise! We need a bigger master bedroom window to balance with the bump-out and the triple windows below. Decided that since we had high ceilings, we might want to put transoms above that triple window in the family room. Wouldn't that look nice! Shep pointed out that we might want to balance out the transoms by adding a few others elsewhere. He suggested nine. We turned down two of the suggested transoms on the side of the house (there ARE brakes on this runaway train), but thought the others looked great. Hmmmm. If someone was standing in the family room and there were transoms above the front windows but not the back ones, would that look funny? Decided to add transoms to the back family room windows as well. Realized that raising the ceilings meant ordinary-height interior doors might look funny. Decided to go with seven-foot four-panel interior doors. Why the hell not. Discovered that raising the ceilings means more steps in the stairs going up to the second floor (duh). Discovered that the extra steps were causing a problem with one of the two closets in the foyer (too close to the closet opening). Decided to nix that closet and just go with one in the foyer. Decided to take the linen/bath closet near the guest bath and convert to a closet for coats, to get that space back. Decided the one small closet left in the foyer was too small. Ended up moving dining room doorway to accommodate a slightly larger closet. Still pretty small though. When mapping out the kitchen plan, decided to scrap kitchen table in corner (it didn't really fit next to the big island anyway) and put a normal-size coat closet and a pantry closet in the space we gained. ... and that's where we are now. All because we thought we'd make our family rooom a bit bigger. Around and around it goes, and where it will end ... nobody knows!

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