Exactly 694.41 Miles - Approximately 1600 sq. ft. - Maybe 8-12 months from now.

For those of you who have always dreamed of living at a mortuary in Southern California, you better stop reading cuz you're gonna be super jealous if you continue.

You know that HGTV show about turning weird places into cool spaces?? I can't think what its called. But I've seen one where this old scary abandon chicken barn was turned into an awesome duplex, and one where an old fire station was converted into a huge amazing house. Oh and one of my brothers went out with a girl once who's family lives in a house that was once an old church. You get the idea, right? So picture this, a huge mortuary in a cute little quiet town. The main floor is a fully functioning mortuary. I was gonna try and discribe it, but just look here if you're interested. Ok, welcome back. The upstairs of the mortuary is split in half. about a fourth of it is rented by one of my father-in-laws best friends and he owns a life insurance company. And on that same side of the upstairs is my father-in-laws office, a couple other offices, storage, a kitchen, bathroom...oh and Don (insurance) and Phil (father-in-law) have a "golf room." It has a net thing with a target on it and they can hit balls all day if they want and as hard as they want and they love it. On the other half of the upstairs my sister-in-law lives in a big studio apartment. Theres also an empty office, 2 bathrooms, a laundry room, and a gym. That half is 25oo sq. ft. Phil owns the gym and just lets people use it.

A couple weeks ago when Phil came to see us for the weekend there was some conversation about us moving to California sometime next year. He also casually mentioned that he was thinking of getting rid of the gym. Then he offered to turn the rest of that side into a big apartment. I couldn't quite get the vision, but was listening and kind of entertaining the idea. A few days later, (last week) my mom and I went out to SoCal for a visit. Phil had us come to the building and check things out. It was so fun and my creativity kicked in. I measured everything and drew up a floor plan to scale. Nothing is decided yet, but I love measuring and figuring. I've measured all the furniture in our apartment here and made little pieces to arrange on the floor plan and see what will work. I love it!

I guess Phil has wanted to renovate that area for a while now and turn it into 2 functional living spaces, and we're giving him a good reason to do it. And the best part is he's letting us be involved in the design. Decorating and design are like my favorite thing in the world so I'm loving this. Even if we never even live in it, I'd love to be involved in the transformation.

So, nothings decided yet as far as how we'll do it, if we'll do it, when we'll do it, but as of right now we're kind of thinking we'll be headed that way in the next year or so. Oh and the 694.41 miles? That's how far it is from my parents house to the mortuary. :(

I hope to go to California before any changes are made so I can take before and after pictures. I totally forgot to this last time!