When we sat down as a family and talked about what we would want in a future house, the boys requested a pool.  They befriended a neighbor one court over in Minnesota who had a pool and often invited the boys and other neighborhood kids over for impromptu swims and planned pool parties.  It was a highlight for them during the summer and the idea of having our own pool to do the same was very appealing to them.  So, we put that on the wishlist, but let them know we might not end up with a pool.  It wasn’t a top priority.  I really did keep that request at the forefront of my mind when I was looking at houses and most of the homes we seriously considered had pools.  The house we ended up purchasing does have a pool, but technically, it’s just a big concrete hole in

This post is sponsored by James Hardie®.  All words and opinions are, as always, honest and my own. I’ve already shared that our new house in Minnesota has amazing bones.  It has a functional and intelligent floor plan, it has many brilliant features (like outlets in the soffits for Christmas lights and in-wall night lights that go up the staircase.)  The changes that we’ve made to it, with the exception of replacing some of the appliances and “guts” of the house that were at the end of their life, have been largely cosmetic.  They were changes to customize the house to suit our tastes. And, almost all of these changes, are ones we talked about before we moved in.  One of the changes we talked about was replacing the siding.  Even when I first looked at the listing, before we knew we would move to Minnesota or buy this house,