I haven’t been posting to my blog a lot lately because I’ve been very busy. Between becoming Mrs. Hot Stuff and then getting ready to move it didn’t leave a lot of time for playing on the internet at night. Finally, though, we signed the closing papers on our house and we are all moved in! For the most part… lol
The house was built in 1950 and does not look very big on the outside. Once you get inside, though, it seems to just open up and keep going. There is some work that has to be done, but this house has such character that we fell in love with it. Also, it was within our price range. Oh, and it is also three doors down from my mother-in-law so I already know one of my neighbors! Would you like to take a tour of my house? I am going to post pictures of the rooms when they were empty, and now what they look like with stuff in them. Please keep in mind that we have only lived here for a little over a week so we are still trying to unpack and settle in.
You enter from the front porch into the formal/front living room. This room has the fire place and a giant picture window with a million panes of glass that I had to wash off 4″ of dust. Eventually I would like to tear up the carpet because I’m quite sure that there’s a beautiful hardwood floor underneath.
This is how it looked tonight when I decided to get my camera out. The room shrunk quickly, didn’t it?! The Christmas tree is in front of the picture window. Once that comes down I am going to swing the couch over in front of the window, so it faces the piano, and then Jay’s mom is giving us a rocking chair that will go in the place where the couch currently sits.
This is the other side of the front living room. You can see the tile in front of the door, and the doorway into the hall that is in between the two bedrooms that are on the first floor. Also, straight ahead through that doorway is the bathroom.
And this is what it looks like with stuff in it. Again, we are still unpacking and trying to make it feel like home. You can see that Chester is not having any problem with that, since she has found a comfy spot on the couch.
This is our one, and only, bathroom. Many people would probably be horrified that we would consider living in a house with only one bathroom, but most of the time there’s only one person in the house. I work first shift and Jay work’s third, so there are few hours where we are both in the house at the same time. It works for us. At some later point we might put a half bath in the basement when we finish it off. The color scheme is not one that we will be keeping, either.
Turning left, we have the master bedroom. That is a hardwood floor, which is in some major need of refinishing, but it’s gorgeous. It looks like oak, which I love. The bedroom is huge so we were sure that it would continue to echo even with our furniture in it.
Please excuse the pile of dirty clothes. We only have a full bed, so you can somewhat imagine how big the room really is. You can’t see the fact that I have a dresser and lingerie chest to the right of the doorway. I believe that the rug under the end of the bed is 4’x8’… I think. The gap between the rug and the wall on the far side of the bed is around 12″. As you can see, Bob approves. Oh, and how do you like the quilt that my mom made for Jay?
Next we enter the Pink Room, or the spare bedroom. The previous owners had a seven year old daughter who occupied this space. Neither Jay nor I are fond of pink and Tinkerbell, but we are leaving it like this until after April. Jay’s friend, Dave-the-Marine, is going to visit with us for a week and this is where we are going to have him stay when he’s with us. lol He’s going to love it!
It’s not like we’re making him sleep on the floor. He has a bed, with a heated mattress pad and flannel sheets. He should be quite comfy. The only thing about this whole house is the amount of hardware found in the walls and floor. This room has no less than 60 staples sticking out of the floor. At some point there was carpeting where you now see hardwood floors. When the carpeting was removed the staples and nails were left in place. Can you imagine?? After I took a huge chunk out of my toe last week on a staple Jay and went around and removed the ones that were in sight. There are still a ton more to remove, but at least I’m no longer hacking away pieces of myself on them.
Moving back through the formal living room, towards the rear of the house, we find ourselves in the library. This is officially known as the “Dark St Ends Library” in honor of my best friend, Pauline. This room was originally the dining room before the back part was added. We don’t need two dining rooms, but we do need a library.
We have placed Jay’s espresso table in here and it’s so nice and cozy! On weekend mornings we can sit here and have our cup of coffee, or we eat dinner by low lamp light. Jay put the two wall sconces on a dimmer switch so that we can pick what mood lighting we want. Again, please excuse the boxes. They are currently waiting for the bookshelves that Jay is building me as a Christmas gift.
This is the wall on which my bookshelves will be going. I can’t wait! Jay is in the process of building my shelves right now. We did some measuring and there will only be an inch or so on either side once we are done. It’s going to be so awesome!!! Even Jay is excited. 🙂
Leaving the library we walk into the kitchen. It needs to be repainted and have the horrid wallpaper removed, but for now it’s heavenly. Look at all of my counter space! Amazingly the cupboards filled up quickly. We will have to redo the counters at some point, but for now they are useable.
I have a gas range, which I love (I don’t like to cook with electric) and it’s big enough for both Jay and I to move around in there at the same time. I have a dishwasher, but I don’t really care for how dishwashers clean. Maybe I’m not loading it correctly, I don’t know. Jay laughs at me because I use it as a giant drying rack. Why clutter up my counter with dishes that are drying? I just toss them on the racks and let them air dry.
This is the current dining area. I haven’t taken an updated picture with our stuff in it because it’s a horrible mess! This is where we enter the house most of the time, so this is where everything gets dropped. It’s a nice sized room, though, and it will work for our purposes.
Finally we come to the Family Room. This, along with the dining area, was the addition that was added onto the house a handful of years ago. It has a sunken floor and it feels huge in there. The wallpaper is coming off the left wall, so we’ll eventually have to take that down and repaint, but for now it works.
I didn’t take a picture of the entire room because we still have a lot of boxes in there, but you can get a good idea of how big it is. This is where we watch TV, play the Wii, or just hang out to read.
Now it’s time to go upstairs. This is what you see when you get to the top of the stairs. These two rooms are technically bedrooms, but for now Jay and I are using them for our own selfish reasons. This first room is mine. It will be where I keep my sewing machines, cross stitch supplies, and other craft items.
It is also where we are keeping Jay’s old futon. lol At least you know that if you want to visit us we have plenty of room!
The second upstairs room is Jay’s. It’s his thinking room. It’s quiet and overlooks the street. It also has a really nice feel to it. I don’t mind sitting up there when he’s playing on his computer.
It’s really quite cozy. Also, you can see the end of his mom’s driveway from this window, so you can get advanced notice if she’s coming over.
Then we have the basement. It’s a full basement that Jay would like to eventually finish off. When we looked at the house we thought, “This place is huge! We’ll never fill it with our stuff!” The day that we closed on the house Jay started to move all of his airplanes. I should have taken a picture when they were all spread out on the floor. They stretched across the entire end of the basement. Jay looked at me and said, “I think I have a problem…”
He worked hard to get them organized and hung up. They are mostly confined to one corner, now. This isn’t all of them, though. There are still a few missing. The space that they take up in the basement is about equal to the master bedroom upstairs.
Besides the rest of the basement, there’s the portion that resides underneath the addition. You can kind of see the floor joist for the sunken family room in this picture. This is Jay’s workshop. It’s where he can keep his tools that make the most dust and attempt to contain it.
This is the other side of Jay’s workshop. It has an outside entrance so that when he has to take planes out of the basement he can take them this way. It will be much easier than trying to get them up the somewhat narrow basement stairs.
There is Jay in his workshop! Already making good use of it!
To end the tour I will take you into the back yard. There’s not a whole lot to it, but it’s a decent one. We have a great patio that we can’t wait to grill on in the summer. Plus there’s room where we can tear down the weird shed (an engineer built it… go figure) and put up a two car garage.
The other corner of the yard has a play set in it. That will have to come down if we build a garage, but for now our friends down the street have a little girl who spotted it and wants to play on it constantly. At least it will be put to good use!
So, that’s our new house! Hopefully you enjoyed the tour and weren’t too bored. I’ll keep you posted as we make improvements. 🙂
wouldn’t change a thing! Considering we got engaged on Labor Day and only had a little over two months to get it put together, I would say that everything came together perfectly. It was just meant to be.
mother-in-law during their dance. Karen is such a sweetheart! We joke that when Jay and I move into our new house, which is only three doors down from Karen’s, that we are going to paint glow-in-the-dark arrows on the sidewalk. That way no matter which house we are at we can find our way home after spending the evening drinking wine. lol. I really do love Karen and I’m lucky to have her as my new mother-in-law and neighbor.
and her parents last year when I started dating Jay. They live just a couple blocks away and she is such a cutie! According to her mom, Hannah was so excited about the wedding that her and her friend practiced dancing all week! As soon as Jay walked into the reception Hannah ran up to him and told him that she had to have the first dance. He worked it out so that she did. Later, she caught the bouquet. She spent as much time out on the dance floor with us as possible. I think that she will be talking about our reception for years!
Kerry'd Away 