Renovation and construction can be trying, especially if your wife is six months pregnant and you live in the house while it's going on. I should have known better, but in the end it all worked out.

When my wife, Aimee, and I found out that we were having a baby, our two-bedroom, one-bath house suddenly felt a whole lot smaller. Since purchasing our home in the spring of 1997, we had talked about adding on many times, but we never followed through because of financial concerns or a general lack of need. During the three years we had been in the house, however, I had never stopped coming up with new schemes to enlarge our living space, so much so that I feared Aimee had grown tired of hearing about all my different ideas.

Like many families, the imminent arrival of a baby changed our needs. Suddenly, what to do with the house became a top priority. We had two options: Add on or move. After looking at other houses, we found that our price range really didn't buy a larger house, or if it did, we didn't like the location. So we stepped back, thought about it, and decided to stay put and enlarge what we had.