My son is 10 and we incorporated a loft above the bathroom that is accessed from his room. The rest of the upstairs has catherdral ceilings so he has a little balcony looking over his bedroom. He decided to actually sleep up there with a mattress on the floor and get rid of his bed and box spring completely. We let him paint up there himself and then painted the main bedroom in the coordinating colours he chose. Our other " kid bedroom" is an open loft area leading into our bedroom. That will be for a second child if we're ever lucky enough. We'll put a built in bookcase and bed against the far wall incorporating the window and then probably a built in against the other end leaving the middle area open. Our son will be grown up and moved out or a teenager and willing to live in a basement bedroom by the time a second child would want the privacy of his/her own room. Then the room with the loft would be perfect for them. During construction you can see the loft hanging out into his bedroom The baby's room under construction. There are two sky lights under the insulation. The phot is taken from our bedroom door.

Wow, just headed out to the lake for a couple of weeks and missed all the excitement. Apologies, for not addressing each of the comments above, but I really appreciated the suggestions on how to work with her to find a style she likes and the links and pictures. They were really helpful. We looked at many, many, many pics of rooms together and found that: 1). she likes bright colours (esp. pink) 2). she loves stripes and big florals 3). she is absolutely nuts about curtains surrounding the bed I found 3 coordinating fuschia and white fabrics from a seller on ebay from which I can make curtains, duvet cover, and headboard cover (possibly bedskirt too). And, best of all, the fuschia and turquoise pillows from Walmart will fit right in. YES!!! The only thing I don't think I can do is the curtains around the bed, but I might be able to rig up some sort of princess canopy or just one of those white mosquito screen things (but we've had them before and they always end up getting pulled down). I'm going to try to add pics of the fabrics, but I've never done this before so I'm going to do it in the next post just in case I end up deleting this. Thanks again, everyone, for the suggestions. I can hardly wait for the fabric to arrive. It is great to do a project when we are both on board rather than one of us being dragged into it.

normel, your observations and understanding of the present set up seems accurate. The remote distribution panel between the meter and house used to be a 60a cartridge fused motor safety switch. After identifying the wires from the safety switch to the house as being rated for only 30a each, I replaced it with a SquareD 100a load distribution center (HOM612L100RB), in which I installed the two 30a double pole breakers, one for each feeder (the safety switch was ruined as explained earlier). At the time, it seemed to be the safest quick-fix solution to get the power back on inside the house. (These two breakers are the disconnects for the individual feeders to the house that I wrote of earlier, manchild.) I figured that if the load on either one these two feeders were to exceed their 30a capacity, the respective breaker would be tripped at the remote panel, thereby preventing a potential fire/shock hazard due overload. Since the single service feeder from the meter box to the remote panel between the meter and the house is not rated for 100 amps, could I temporarily improve this situation by replacing the 100a breaker at the meter with a 60a breaker? I think that the #4 AL is supposed to be able to safely carry 65 amps. I have no idea how to go about relocating the replacement for the Zinsco panel outside of the laundry room. (I may have caused some confusion by previously calling the laundry room a washroom. Sorry about that.) Is there any approved method of extending the branch circuit wires so that the panel could be relocated, or is it okay to have a panel box in a laundry room? Thanks again guys, for trying to help me out with this challenging problem.

I see a fan chain in one pic.....for a moderate price you could go for a really edgy stainless steel fan to up the oomph value in the kitchen? And the curtains are pretty but look dated....roman shades would look more on trend and could be fabric or woven wood; You tube shows a non sew roman shade that looks pretty good if you are crafty. I personally think custom matched paint from the cabinet color for the walls would look pretty nice too, but just my opinion. And bar/rod style ss pulls would go a long way to lifting the kitchen to a more current vibe.