The house we're moving into is almost 100 years old. However, it's in incredible shape! 2004 must've been a good year for the current owners. In that year they replaced the entire roof, got all new windows, new first floor carpets, a new heater and had all the lead paint removed from the house. Currently, the only pictures I have of the house are the ones my brother took during the inspection. Let's take the tour!
Here's the front of the house. It's the one in the middle with all the people on the porch.
And, yes, that's our car there. The one without the hubcaps. It actually has two, they're just on the other side. If I had thought about it, I'd've parked facing the other way.
So, take notice that Jenn's dad (in the blue shirt) is sitting on a bench that's attached to the porch railing. Plenty of seating for front porch gatherings. Also, notice the walkway to the back yard. No driveway or off street parking to speak of, but that's a small price to pay for all the positives to this house!
Now, let's go in the front door...
The door you see leads to the dining room. The door you can't see (just off the right edge of the picture) leads to the living room.
The stairs that lead to the second floor are carpeted with a dark brown carpet that also covers the floor of the upper hallway. It's not too bad, but it'll probably get replaced with something lighter someday...the usual neutral beige carpet color, most likely. The ceiling of the stairway slopes up at an angle for a few feet before going straight up. This means that a large portion of the 2nd floor hallway ceiling is high above the steps. That'll be
real fun to paint. Roller on a pole, anyone? The really tough part will be doing the edging. We may have to get creative with scaffolding or something. Yay.
Anyway, more about the entranceway. The floor of this first hallway is done in a rather nice laminated hardwood (so is the kitchen, but I'm getting ahead of myself). The hallway seems plenty large enough to get all of the large furniture in...couch, piano, etc. Good stuff.
Let's take the first right and see the living room...
There's me trying to get out of my brother's shot. Yet my lack of exercise betrays me and I'm too slow to get away. Anyway, here you can see the doorway to the dining room. The living room is a good size. Maybe not as big as the one in our apartment now, but it'll serve its purpose (at least until the basement gets finished! Ooo...again, getting way ahead of myself).
The dark brown carpet makes another appearance here. Combined with the
unbelievably blue color on the walls, it ends up making the room pretty dark.
Although, if you take a look at this next picture, maybe that's a good thing...
Yeah, given a lot of light, that blue really jumps out atcha. More on the existing colors in a minute. From this angle, the door we just walked through is now on the right. The windows there look out of the front of the house. Notice the white mantle on the left wall. The wallspace below it was once one of
several fireplaces that existed in this house at one time or another. Still, it makes a nice little shelf to put pictures on, so it stays.
Next to that recliner, you'll notice a covered radiator. That's right, folks, we got oil heat. It's supposedly pretty efficient, but oil costs an arm and a leg these days. The radiator heat also means that there's no existing ducts to be used for central AC. That'll probably cost a pretty penny as well if we ever want to put that in. That's probably a long-term goal, so we'll get by with window units in the meantime.
Now lets do a 180 and get a good look through that door to the dining room...
Wowee! That's some color scheme, isn't it? Taken separately, they're not so bad, but look at them all at once and
yikes. Don't worry, that's the first thing to go. We're going to paint the whole place before we move anything in. The walls you can see here and the opposing walls will be done in the main color, while the left and right walls will be done in a color closer to white. I'll give you specifics about colors in the next post.
Since you're looking at the dining room, take notice of that door with the glass window on the left. It's a pantry, and evidently a pretty deep one at that. It goes back further than you'd expect. The large piece of furniture closer to us is in the spot where we plan on putting the piano. Then, closer to this blue wall is the the hallway entrance.
Let's get a closer look at the dining room...
Seems pretty spacious to me, though I'm used to a dining room doubling as my office here in the apartment.
On the wall you can't see, to the left, there's another white mantle and another radiator. Again, it seems like there used to be a fireplace in this room. The story goes that originally, this house only had the two rooms on the first floor. The living room and a kitchen. In the 20's, what is
now the kitchen was added as an addition and this room became the dining room. I don't know if there was actually a fireplace here, or if there was some sort of wood burning stove, but there's
three chimneys on the roof. Maybe the stove chimney was converted to a fireplace in the 20's and a new chimney was added to the new kitchen. That's what the inspector seemed to think...something along those lines. Anyway, now there's another shelf where we can hang stuff, so it's ok.
Let's turn around again and head into the kitchen...
Yep. Pretty much Creamsicle orange. No problem, it'll be painted over to serve Jenn's vision of a Tuscan kitchen.
Man, is it roomy, though. Like I said earlier, the floor is done in a very nice laminated hardwood. There's not a whole lot of cabinets, but you can see there's plenty of room to add more (over the fridge, for example).
Speaking of which, the fridge is not staying. That's a pretty big priority, so we're getting that ASAP. The stove seems pretty new...you can kinda see the green digital readout there. There's no dishwasher, so some of the lower cabinet/drawer space will have to be sacrificed to install one.
The door behind Maureen leads to the
mud room, one of the major selling points for us. Before we check that out, though, let's see what's behind us...
Jenn just got a voicemail message. It was just some little girl with an upper respiratory problem saying "
seven days". Musta been a wrong number.
Behind her you see our realtor Lee standing in the doorway to the dining room. The door behind me leads to the basement.
This picture really illustrates how sunny and bright the kitchen can be. Look at all the light that comes in the window to shine on the kitchen table. This is gonna be a really nice, friendly and welcoming Tuscan kitchen.
Another thing you may or may not've noticed is that all three of these first floor rooms have ceiling fans. They seem to provide pretty good lighting and will come in pretty handy in hot weather since we'll probably only be able to afford one big AC unit in the living room. Thank goodness there's a nice flow through all three rooms. Anyways, let's pull another 180 and step down into the mud room...
I guess the owners were in the first stages of packing...there wasn't this much stuff in here when we saw it the week before.
Anyway, you can see a little bit of the back deck from here. Also, as high as the ceilings are in the other rooms, this is even higher since you have to step down into the room.
The floor seems to be one big sheet of linoleum, but that's not the most important feature of the floor. Not only does it slope considerable towards the back of the house, it's pretty lumpy all over the place. The
inspector seemed pretty worried about a specific spot, right in front of that back door, that seemed extremely soft. It definitely gives underfoot when you step on it. He said it could either be water damage or termites. Neither is good, but the latter is somewhat distressing. Yes, we did get a termite inspection. The place passed and the certificate said "No
visible termite infestation or damage"...visible being the operative word. No one seems to know
what's under that linoleum...whether it's wood or air or dirt. The only way to find out is to rip it all up...one of the first big projects we'll have to tackle after we get all settled.
They're taking the washer but leaving the dryer. Thankfully, my Aunt Betsy and Uncle John have a washer they can pass on to us. We also have another dryer offered by my sister-in-law's sister, just in case this 13 year old one decides to give up the ghost.
We'll check out the basement in a second, but first let's step outside and see the back yard...
The current owners built this deck instead of paying a professional, but it's really put together well. You can see the railings curl up a little at the ends, but that's really the only problem we could find. It's sturdy and level...and a nice place to put that patio furniture Jenn's dad gave us.
The yard itself is a pretty good size and seems relatively private. Behind that storage shed is just a bunch of trees and other vegetation. I really don't know what's up with that dog house on the ladder in the neighbor's yard. They do have a dog (a very nice and well behaved cocker spaniel) but it didn't seem like the type of dog to want to jump up there and walk along a ladder to it's house or carrier or whatever it is. The whole back yard is fenced in and there's a wooden gate that leads to that walkway to the front of the house. Looks pretty much dog-ready...too bad
we won't be for a good while. *Sigh*...someday. Enough of that. Let's go back inside, and through the kitchen to the basement...
Not much to say about it. It's a regular old basement. The stairs are sturdy but extremely worn. The owners have had this place since the mid 90's and have
never gotten any water down here. The inspector was stunned at how dry it was, actually.
The eventual plan is to finish the basement, of course. Tile floor, drywall, drop tile ceiling (I guess), etc. The only issue (aside from money) in my mind is how to work around the oil tank (behind the tan cabinet in the first picture) and the heater (blue box on the left of the second picture). I'd really like to put in a powder room
down here someday, so maybe I can put it back there between the stairs and the oil tank. Who knows?
The heater itself is only 2 years old. The reason you don't see a hot water heater is because it's a small blue tank set into the ceiling above the regular heater. It's "Summer/Winter Heat," meaning it stays on all year long. The hot water is run through the heater itself...it only takes a second to get hot and you
never run out of hot water! However, that means the heater gets turned on every time someone takes a shower. I assume that it doesn't do anything with the radiators in the summer, but it does spell more oil consumption throughout the year. Still, it supposedly uses a minimal amount of fuel and shouldn't impact the overall cost by much. We'll see, though.
Basement, schmasement. This post is already long enough, let's go to the second floor!
As we ascend the steps from the front door hallway, the first door you see is what will become the guest bedroom.
Pretty good size, nice closet, etc. I think we have an offer of a twin bed, which we'll put in here until we get a full one. We'll most likely have couples staying in this room more than anything else, so a twin bed really won't do. Still, a free bed is a free bed, and it'll definitely get put to use in the small bedroom (which we'll get to soon).
Not much else to be said here. There's some good neutral carpet in this room, so that'll stay where it is for a good long while. Let's get out of here and go to the next door: the bathroom...
Pretty nice bathroom. The blue color is fine with us, especially after all the bright pick and blues we saw in all the other houses in the area. The fixtures are relatively recent. The toilet is from the 80's, so it could be worse.
There's a window on that left wall that looks out onto the back yard. I'm never sure what to think about bathroom windows, having grown up in a row home with a windowless bathroom (only a skylight). Still, the bathroom in this apartment has absolutely
no circulation whatsoever, so a window will probably be a welcome change. Also, it'll always remind me of one of my favorite Beatles songs, so that'll be nice. As long as some rich girl doesn't come in through it to steal a copy of my book or to stalk me or something, that is.
The wraparound shower is neat. Let's hope I still think so after showering in it everyday.
The next room after the bathroom is the small bedroom...
This is the only room in the house with wallpaper. It'll go, of course. On the wall to the right (outside the edge of the picture) is a door leading to the master bedroom. This will serve as an office for now...my computer will go here, etc. When the time is right, this room will become the nursery. It's small, but it should be able to accommodate my desk and a twin bed.
We'll get rid of the wallpaper but keep that white chair rail, or whatever you want to call the lower half of the wall.
Interesting side note: there's small pipe that runs up the side of the wall just inside the hallway door. The inspector said that it's connected to the gas system. Gas lamp maybe? Did they still use those in the early 1900's? I dunno.
Now for the last room on our tour, the master bedroom...
The leftmost door behind me is one of the closets. The middle door leads to the hallway and the wide-open door leads to that small bedroom. The door on the far right is one of two closets on that wall. They were built out from the wall, which leaves an alcove in between. The right closet (not pictured) actually overlaps a window a little bit, so it's moved out from the front wall by a foot or two.
Again, the carpet is a nice neutral color. Hopefully we can find the same exact carpet when we do the hallway and stairs.
The first thing that struck me about this room was it's size. It seems large, but I guess it isn't any bigger than the bedroom in our apartment here. I suppose the high ceilings add to that effect.
We plan on being in this house for about 10-15 years. We also plan on having about 3 kids. So, once they're a bit older, we'll probably wall up that adjoining doorway for everyone's privacy.
So, that's pretty much it. That certainly was a lot of typin'. Hope you enjoyed the tour, and check out the next post for our color choices.
Maybe you can see the difference in color between the ceiling and left wall here, but maybe not. Still, it shows off the nice shiny woodwork my Dad painted yesterday. This living room is now totally complete (though I may go through with a Q-tip and make every edge between colors perfectly straight).
You can definitely see the difference between the light wall and the white ceiling here. The brick red also turned out very nice.
Here’s my Dad washing out some brushes. The kitchen only has one coat of yellow on it here, but it still looks good. The plan is to lightly rag-on a caramel color to give the walls an aged look. We’ll test it behind the fridge or oven first, though.
This is the cold water line my brother helped put in for the ice maker in the fridge. It went really well and the ice maker works like a charm. These pipes leave a little to be desired…they’re not really mounted to anything as they travel down through the infamous crawlspace and into the basement. They may get replaced at some point, but that’s pretty far down the road.
I attempted to give you an idea of how the three colors on the first floor look next to each other here in these three pictures. However, the flash kind of ruins the effect. The last picture is done without a flash…and obviously without focus as well. 
