Well we officially are a one house owner family. Thank goodness. We closed this afternoon and I couldn't be happier. It has been more than two years, minus a 6 month renter, of worrying about the house being damaged, broken into, copper plumbing stolen, flooding, weather damage, frozen pipes, and animals taking over our house. None of this happened but I lost many nights of sleep because of my worrying. It has been a long road and for awhile I was very patient knowing that our house was hard to sell but after awhile I kept asking myself why this was happening to us. I really do believe that things happen for a reason and I was patient but I was beginning to question my beliefs but now my beliefs have been reaffirmed because this is our time. I was willing to wait awhile to sell the house since we could technically afford having two houses and others in our similar situation could not so I was willing, in my mind, to justify my patience. Anyway, that is over. The house is sold.
I really did love our house even though it was not the most attractive updated house on the block. I do love rehabbing houses and I do believe that suburban sprawl would not be as big of a problem as it is if more people would be willing to redo older outdated houses. We don't all have to live in prefect, brand new, customized houses. If we are willing to live in a little outdatedness in order to redo it at a later time then perfect houses would not exist. Plus, resources and materials were already put into older houses so updating them saves resources and materials that help preserve our environment.
The previous homeowners lived in it for 47 years. So of course everything was outdated. We updated the bathrooms (we hired a contractor to update the upstairs bathrooms), tore down wallpaper (it was on every wall and ceiling), took down outdated bookshelves, installed a new fireplace mantel, opened up a gallery kitchen, sanded floors and added storage. When we first saw the house I was not thrilled with it and thought that it needed a lot of work but it had loads of potential. There was a lot of space. It had a great room/dining room/TV room with lots of space for the kids to run and play. There was a deck off of that that was great for eating out or enjoying our back yard. Our back yard had issues with a pond at the bottom of the yard and lots and lots of landscaping. I always thought that we would take out most of the landscaping and the pond and put in grass for the kids. The basement would have been great as a playroom and for the kids to play games when they were teenagers. There was a great library/computer room with a fireplace and an outdated sun room. Sure the floors were all different but we were planning on updating the main floor and redoing the kitchen and putting in new floors. There was plenty of entertaining space for my book club and D's poker nights.
Here is the front of the house. I loved the planters on the brick wall. They were like concrete bowls but more natural looking. I also had a great big lavender plant in the bed by the house that was huge when we left. We had a hummingbird feeder outside of the kitchen window that was visited by two regular hummingbirds. I always tired to get pictures of them but failed every time. We spent many hours sitting out here in the chairs by the doors watching the kids ride their bikes in the walkway and driveway. I actually liked that the driveway sloped downward so that kids would not spill out into the street.
These were the pictures of the great room after our show "Material Girls" redid the room. I loved the room after they redid it. It was a large space and they divided it up into the TV area, the kids area and the dining room area. We love everything that they did. I loved the color of the wall and the curtains. The light in the room was amazing and the windows were great. It was like you were outside. This room was a pain to paint. Before the show we took down all the wallpaper and primed the walls so that it would look like we started with white walls. The show painted the walls one coat and we painted the second coat that first night of the show. It was really hard to get in the corners of the tall ceiling. I remember when D was putting the primer in the corners of the wall at the windows. He was on his tiptoes of our tallest extension ladder and his mom and I were watching and I was nervous and she was definately more nervous. The only wallpaper that we kept in the house was this grassy paper behind the kids toys. I actually liked this wallpaper and thought it added some warmth to the room.
This was our computer room. We took off the outdate bookselves to reviel this lovely firplace with green marble surround. We put in the new mantal tore down the wallpaper and painted it this color. This room was nice becasue where was not a TV in it and it was really quiet and away from the TV room. There was a sun room in this room and it was alright. It made the house pretty warm and I would have love to do something with that. I was thinking we would have keep the windows and maybe take out the ceiling windows and install a roof.
This was our lovely half basement. I say that because it was not totally underground. In fact we had full length windows that looked out onto the backyard. Plus there was a slider door that led out to the backyard from this room. I really loved when we moved this carpet down here from the Great Room. It made the room warmer, since it had dark panelling and cork floors. It was fun for the kids to wreslte and have fun on this carpet. It was a great space that was pretty much left open due to the fact that we did not have a lot of funiture. I also liked that it had a fireplace and this cute stove that you could cook on. We did not cook on it but it added character to the basement.
This is the kitchen that connects the Great Room to the computer room. The cabniets were the worst cabniets ever. They were formica and you had to push them in order for them to open. It was like those old glass stereo doors that you push in oder for them to open. They were loud and ugly. The island used to go all the way up to the ceiling and thus there was a gallery to the great room and a small enclosed kitchen. We wanted to compuletly up date the kitchen and blend it into the great room but we spent our money on the bathrooms so we cut down the wall and added title to the top to make it a bar/island. it opened up the room and let in a lot more light to the walkaway. It was the best we could do to that room with the least amount of money. The kitchen had great appliances, Decor and Bosch, so that was nice. I loved the stove it worked really well.
This was our master bedroom. I was not too fond of the floors but it grew on me. They were light and hardwood so that was enough for me. This was the second room that we painted and we learned from doing Julianne's room, D discovered this, that we could just pull the wall paper off and sand the glue off. With Julianne's room we scored the wallpaper and sprayed that stuff on it but D got tired of all that mess and just started pulling the wallpaper off. Sure enough it all came off by just pulling it and then we took a electric sander and sanded off the glue. It was so much faster and less messier. So we wanted to flaux paint this room and it took us awhile to find the look that we wnated. We really loved it and it was a fun room. I made the duve cover. drapes and the pillows so it was a room that were were pround of. We ended up painting the room a neutral color before we moved out since it was not everyone's taste.
This was our master bathroom. This bathroom and the girls next to it were a disaster when we moved in. There was a door between the two bathrooms and only one large tub. So there we really only 1.5 bathrooms upstairs and we made it into 2 full baths. So this bathroom does not have a lot of space but I think we made the best of the space. We had the contractors put in a corner sink so that we would have the most room for tolietires and we made the shower the focal point by adding clear shower doors. I really loved the blue tile that we picked out. It was very soothing and I also like the color of paint that D picked out.
This is the girls bathroom which was D's favorite room in the house. We picked these terra cotta tiles out and painted the walls the same color. We put in a cast iron tub and the vanity was handmade so that it would be bigger that the smallest standard size for the space. We put in the pocket door so that the door would not take up any space.
This was the downstiars bathroom. We redid everything in the room except for the toliet and the floor. When we moved into this house this was the only shower. So we had to go downstairs to take a shower everyday. This shower was a wreak. We had Bathfitters come in and redo this shower. They did an excellant job and it was a nice guest bath. I put in this vanity and hooked up all the plumbing for this sink. The wallpaper in this room was had to get off since it was different wall paper from all the other rooms. It was a pain.
Anyway the house was great and we saw the potential that it had. I think the new homeowners can also see that (the husband is an architect) and are willing to put in the work. I am glad that is is sold and I had such great memories in that house. I am glad that it is out of our hands and in the hands of another family.
Things I am grateful/thankful for:
-not having to ever pay two mortages again at the same time.
-my husband for dealing with the day to day hassles/emotions with our realtor (it stressed me out knowing how many showings we were having and what people were saying about our house). He filtered all that information for me so that I would not worry too much about it and wonder. If I asked he would tell me. He did a great job and I am thankful mostly for all his work and decisions he made on behalf of our old house.
- someone loving the house as much as we did.
-being able to really save money for the future.
