House Tour

Now that we have the house, how about we do a quick (that’s a lie, this is not quick) walk through of our space to give you guys a good idea of what we’re working with.  The good, the bad, and the whaaaat?! There’s plenty of all to feast your eyes on. Keep in mind these photos were taken before a single box was moved in, so it's much more chaotic now! 

When you walk in the front door you are greeted by a very small, closed in foyer.  This house was actually originally build as a duplex (upstairs and downstairs) so this foyer could be used by both tenants and there is a door to enter the bottom half of the house on the right, and a large wide staircase that leads upstairs to the left.  Let’s start downstairs. 

   

Opening the door, you walk into a good sized living room.  Nothing to write home about as far as size, but the natural light and architecture put it as one of my absolute favorite spaces in the house.  It’s at the very front of the house so the huge windows on the front porch pour in tons of light.  There are also two good sized windows flanking the brick fireplace.  And that fireplace is pretty great.  Lets not forget the built-ins around it.  Nothing too snazzy, but it gives the space a great look and it’s easy to see the huge potential of the space. Keep in mind we have additional living space which makes this size doable. Oh yeah, and every room has these floors, pretty stoked.

  

The living room connects directly to the dining room.  This room is much smaller than we would like, but we have plans to making it much more livable, and honestly how often do we really need a ton of seats?  Maybe a few times a year, tops?  Just like the living room, there is serious potential elsewhere for seating during holidays so I'm not worried. We’ve got vision people, don’t worry.Those big great windows will actually turn into french doors in the next couple months.  

      

Off the dining room is the most lovely (sarcasm….) room in the house.  The kitchen.  So, I’m not sure what to say about this room.  I mean, other than it’s horrible.  However, it IS horribly BRIGHT! One entire wall is windows so that is a plus, we just need to gut the entire thing, oh yeah, and knock down some walls (that might enclose a staircase, and the 2 year old HVAC…), and build completely new (you’ll learn how difficult this task is in a later post, but for now, just use your imagination).  This room is going to be, by far, the most expensive and biggest project of the home.  But isn’t that the case with any kitchen in any house?  We do a huge amount of cooking so our kitchen is very important to us and we’ve had this reno in mind from the moment we saw the house, so no worries (at least not yet). This space will be absolutely unrecognizable when we're done.  And don't worry, we're hiring someone, noooot doing this one ourselves!!  We’ve got a plan. 

 

So, back out into the dining room, and through this door that brings you to a little bitty hallway (would we call it that?) that has three doors leading to the guest bedroom, bathroom, and master.  You can't see it in the picture but there is a lovely little telephone table on the right, and the super convenient air intake at our feet.  Careful with the stilettos ladies.  Lets do guest bedroom  on the left first…

 

So big and airy!  Four big bright windows!  Beautiful hardwood floors, this room is going to be great, but don’t forget we have to get room for our new kitchen from somewhere…

 

Next we’ll explore the main downstairs bath.  Thankfully the previous owners redid the flooring and installed tile all around (which is very nice), but we see a new vanity in the making.  Oh yeah, and there is a kinda scary window in the shower that is slowly rotting away with every shower taken, so we’ll be tending to that shortly as well. 

 

Now, here comes the moment you’ve all been waiting for, the MASTER BEDROOM! Oh….not what you were hoping for?  A little small?  A little gloomy and dark? Yeah, so what.  All I do in my master bedroom in sleep, I mean, we do some other stuff too, but this is a family blog, nothing inappropriate here.  I do have three kids, that had to happen somehow you know!  Ok, back to the bedroom.  Thankfully, right off the bedroom is another little room.  

 

When the house was advertised as 5 bedrooms, this was actually the room they were referring to, so honestly the house is 4 bedrooms, with a sitting room off of one of them. This sitting room was actually an addition put on the house…and it’s a little wonky.  There is an obvious slope in the middle of the floor and the temperature of this room is about 20 degrees cooler than the center of the house in the winter.  I try to stay out of this room as I prefer to stay warm and feel like I'm actually inside in the winter.. 

 

Included in this addition is also the third bathroom of this house.  A little sad looking, not gonna lie, but I see some serious potential.  There is a shower behind the door you can't see in this picture as well. We can work with this. Now lets travel back to the foyer and head up those stairs.

 

I. LOVE. THESE. STAIRS. No really, I do.  The natural wood is awesome.  It’s super wide so furniture was a breeze to move up.  It has a huge window that allows a ton of light in the stairwell as well.  Also quite lovely is that in front of that window hangs a cool little pendant light  with an Edison bulb that you can see from outside the house.  It’s adorable. It’s the little things. 

 

At the top of the stairs is a door that opens to the second floor….

 

Dejavu anyone?  Oh yeah, remember when I said earlier this was built as a duplex?  That means the footprint of downstairs and upstairs is exactly the same.  So we’ll speed through this part pretty quick. 

Same great fireplace in living room (This is the new kids living room).

 

Same cute little dining room (this will serve as homework room, art room, music room). 

 

There is a bit of a change in the kitchen, as this room isn’t the kitchen, it’s actually the laundry room!  Though this room seemed small for a kitchen, it’s pretty awesome for a laundry room.  I see tons of potential in this room as well.  

Oh yeah, and you want to see the scariest part of the house…it lives behind that white door in the laundry room…Ever wonder what was living downstairs between the kitchen and guest room?  It was this…

 

The scariest, darkest, most dangerous little staircase you will ever feast your eyes on.  I mean, come on, this is what horror movies were made of.  Can you imagine the lights going off in the house and having to crawl down those steps to flip them back on? HA!  That's what my husband is for, I would die. Oh yeah, and if you aren’t sufficiently creeped out yet, just look up.  

 

Yeah, that’s the attic entrance.  If satan had a doorway to hell in a stairwell, I’m pretty sure it would look like this.  This picture was actually taken with a flash so I've never seen this entrance look so bright.  In real life, pitch black... It’s actually quite amusing to me as I show friends one by one and see the looks on their faces. "See the scary staircase?" (frightened faces) "now look, UP!" (faces of sheer horror). Again, it's the little things.

Ok, close that door, pretend it doesn't exist. Back to bright and happy rooms. 

Next is the boy’s room.  Though we have the ability to give them their own rooms, we’re not that nice of parents.  This room is a great size and they’ll be sharing it. The whole upstairs is basically white, which is a great starting point, but we’ll be infusing a good bit of color up here because really, it is totally for the kids.  That doesn’t mean we’re letting them make all the decisions (remember, we’re not that nice), but we will let them in on the design process.  Ex: Of these three colors, which do you prefer.  Thankfully they are still small enough that I can convince them to pick what I want.  It’s working so far. 

 

Same little bathroom as below, that needs another new vanity and top. 

 

The back bedroom is the twin to the master downstairs but doesn’t have the addition on the back.  This room will eventually be for our 3^rd little bundle of joy.  Until then, it will serve as our makeshift guest bedroom until we get our lives in order. 

Whew!  So that didn't take a long time at all, right?? We have so many big plans for our new home and can't wait to have you guys follow us on this mission.  I hope this little tour gave you a good run down of what we have to work with and you can see the potential like we did!