Needs and wants...

I want more room in my house.  I would love to have a family room, a dining room, and an extra bedroom.

I have a house that's already paid for.  It's weather tight, in good repair, and has three bedrooms, no family room, and no dining room.  It's all we really need, and I'm thankful to have it.

There's nothing saying I can't make it more livable--for instance, the back room is really unusable as it is: clogged with clutter; a wide, short shelving unit that won't be useful back there for anything I want to do with the back room; and an indoor/outdoor carpet with a lot of nasty water stains.  With a bit of elbow grease, we can sort all of the clutter and store it somewhere out of the way, move the 9'x3' shelving unit out, rip the carpet, and move in some more useful shelves.  Voila, we have a pantry on one end of the room (the other end is the laundry room).

With a bit of rearranging, I can fit two or three big bookcases in our bedroom for our books, which would make the use I had in mind for the family room...not redundant, but less of an issue.

As for the dining room...well, I have a kitchen that's not small.  It's actually supposed to be an eat-in kitchen...I think.  Unfortunately, we have a wonderful table that really needs its own room.  It's about six or seven feet long by five feet wide with both leaves up (yep--the leaves run the long way).  With the leaves down, it's about two feet wide.

I think a better use of the space in the kitchen would be to carefully wrap the table (it was Odysseus's grandmother's), store it just as carefully, and replace it with one of these and maybe a few more three-foot three-shelf bookcases for usable kitchen storage (you can never have too much, in my opinion.

We'll still need to rearrange the cabinets next to the sink to plumb in the dishwasher, and maybe replace the counter-top, but just that much would be so much help.

And, on second thought...a fourth bedroom is not currently needed.  Nor is it desired.  A wise man once said "Fish and visitors smell after three days."  Lacking a guest room means we also don't have to deal with small children and overnight guests...though it might be helpful, sometimes, to have my sister willing to come spend a night here and there.

So, no.  We have what we need.  With a little time, effort, creative thinking, and far less money than buying a new home, I can have what I want.