Our Back Story

After reading the first post we realize that you might still be a little curious as to why we are converting our attic into our "home within a home".

You may have noticed from the last photo that our home in fact is quite large (ten points to you if you noticed this).

Here's that photo again if you didn't catch it the first time.

Now here's a photo of the front side of the house, taken during the roofing process last week.

So the house was built in 1973; we're sure it was very "modern" at the time. It was originally used as a butcher shop with space for all "butcher duties", and attached living spaces.

It had been many years since the property was actually used for it's original purpose so we knew we had to snatch it up - after all it had exactly what we needed loads of unused space, 5 existing bedrooms, and a great attic space.

And why did we need all that you ask?

Well one of our passions in life is cycling (think bicycles and spandex), a sport which happens to be huge in Belgium. Gregg coming from the US, had pursued racing here - and long story short found living conditions for the average poor foreign cyclist to be quite difficult to say the least.

So after retiring from racing professionally in Belgium, Gregg decided that his next step would be to create a comfortable and adaptable environment in Belgium for other foreign cyclists.

So all that unused space has allowed for 2 extra bedrooms, making a whopping total of 7 bedrooms - enough space to house 10 cyclists! And there's even loads of space for the riders to do all their bike mechanic work inside (and in a room that was designed to get dirty too).

So bringing us back to the original question. Why are we converting our attic into a "home within a home"?

We love the cyclists we really do, we just need our own space now and again so we don't feel like we're living the life of university students in shared accommodation. Once everything is said and done we'll enjoy our own space with a full kitchen, bathroom, bedroom and living spaces... but of course we'll still spend plenty of time sharing stories and learning all about the riders sharing our home with us.

- Holly