Our New House

The view of our house from the driveway.  The door you see is used as the main entry of the house but is actually a breezeway that links the original back door to the garage door.  We plan to paint the door a color, possibly blue or green.  Thoughts?

When the house was built in the 60’s, the front door faced the main road.  Later the address was changed to the small dead end road the garage faces.  As you can see, the front door hasn’t been used in a long time.  We plan to add walkway, probably brick, and some bushes and flowers.  The two big bushes to the left and right of the chimney are rhododendrons which definitely need to be pruned.   You can also see the windows in the bedrooms, located on the far end of the house from this angle, are situated on the corners.  We want to add exterior shutters, but would it look weird with the corner windows?  Both this and the door color will be the subject of a later post when we are hosting a contest to see who can come up with the best way to dress up the house’s exterior.

The living room is the entire width of the house with plenty of windows.  The red wall above the fireplace is already in the process of being painted a neutral grey.  The real hardwood flooring you see is found throughout the house although carpet has been laid down in the hallway and bedrooms.

This picture shows the length of the house from the fireplace as seen in the previous picture.  The house splits off the living room with a hall on the left leading to the bedrooms and  to the right  with the dining room and kitchen.  I will have to take a better picture of the kitchen for you soon.  It’s about twice as big as my last kitchen, definitely a selling point for me!

Half bath located off the hall right next to the front door.  The brick and paint is the same in the full bath, but shows up much better in this picture.

The master bedroom is between the half bath and the boys room along the front of the house.  Our bed is in the same place as the air mattress in this picture.  Note the corner windows from the inside.

The boys bedroom is next to the master bedroom in the far corner of the house.  It is slightly smaller than the master bedroom.  We plan to get twin bunk beds for the boys in a few months.

The full bath is at the end of the hall between the two smaller bedrooms.  There is substantial storage space under the sink, and a large linen closet is found behind the opened door.  This house has quite a bit of storage with more closets than our past two houses combined.

The smallest bedroom is in the far corner on the back side of the house.  This room will have the full bed for guests and a crib for Doodad.

The stairs to the basement are directly inside the back door of the house and lead to my second favorite room in the house. (The kitchen is my favorite!)  We plan to completely finish off this room with carpet and use it as a school and play room.  And yes, that is a bar in the corner, complete with working beer tap, mood lighting, sink, shelving for all the bottles, and overhead storage for wine glasses.  It will be getting demolished soon and replaced with linoleum and a large utility sink to function as an art and craft area.

The other large open area in the basement has the laundry hookups.  It will most likely also be my sewing and craft area.  This room was also painted white.  We learned that painting cold cinderblock walls on a hot, humid day leads to a mess of runny paint in the morning.  The door in the middle of the picture connects to the stairs and play room.  The hall to the right leads back to the furnace and a small area we plan to use for storage.  Through the door in the left you enter the workshop.

The workbench was left by the previous owners and the walls are covered in pegboard.  A perfect “man cave” for Jared and his projects, although he prefers to call it the “Honey Do Reception Center” or the HDRC.

The previous owners also left some tools in the garage.  Everything looks good, but the 1960’s motor doesn’t run.  Any ideas to fix it or where to get a new one…Grandpa?

The fenced portion of the backyard complete with kids toys.  We have already spent a large amount of quality time out here!  In the long term we want to put in a patio leading off the back door.  Large enough for a table and chairs but not too large to consume the entire backyard.

That’s our house!  I will post updates on our projects and solicit ideas occasionally.  We hope you are able to come visit (able bodies will be put to work).