We finally closed on our house! I am so excited to get to live here while I go to school. We will be doing some renovations and updating and I would love for you to come along and see what we have to do with the place to get inspiration for your own homes.
Scroll to the bottoms to see my hopes and dreams for the house!
The search for the perfect house
The search began in April 2020 looking at houses just to get the feel of the market. There were many hours spent scrolling and “hearting” potential houses on Realtor.com. We didn’t do too much looking until the end of May when it was getting closer to the time that I needed a house. We then looked and looked and looked for houses, but as it is in any college town the housing market was CRAZY. We had looked at probably close to 30 houses all over the town that would either sell before we could buy them or that needed too much work. Like a lot of work.
We finally found a house (not this one) at the end of June 2020 and were under contract on it. The inspection came back and…it had major foundation issues, so we decided that it wasn’t probably the wisest choice.
We looked at many more and finally found this cute gem in a quiet neighborhood. We went under contract on this house mid July 2020. It is a small ranch style house built in 1951. It is just over 1400 square feet featuring 3 bedrooms and 1 and 3/4 baths. This house was a well-loved house by a family who had lived here for the past 50 years. They had taken really good care of it, but it has seen better days.
Sooo…before we start any remodeling I thought I would show you what it looked like.
The front with not much curb appeal
To start with the yard, there were many old farm equipment pieces throughout the yard, as decoration, that were surrounded by piles of rocks. When the previous owners moved out they took the farm equipment, THANKFULLY, and we were left with odd piles of rock around the yard. The yard is also overgrown and in need of some help to trim back the out of control bushes and weeds.
The front has a built on carport enclosed on three sides which is nice to protect cars from the weather. The house colors don’t scream “WOW” and are just a boring brown. The front door is under the carport which is unfortunate and is also painted a not so beautiful shade of white.
The inside
When you walk in the front door, you are greeted with the living room, with a hallway off to the left leading to the bedrooms/bathroom and a door at the end of the room leading to the dining area. It is a dining/kitchen combo. The kitchen right now is not very functional with the #1 reason being that the washer and dryer is in the middle of the kitchen, yes you read that right the WASHER AND DRYER in the kitchen. Since this is an old house it most likely did not originally have a laundry area when it was built so the kitchen was the easiest place seen fit to put it. It sure does easy make it easy to multitask, though. You could be cooking dinner and doing a load of laundry.
Down the hallway
The hallway features 4 doors. 3 leading to bedrooms and one to the main bathroom. One thing to look at in these pictures is the curtains, as all of the rooms have them. The lady who lived here previously had a curtain and drape sewing business so it only fit that her own home was outfitted as well. The first room was actually her sewing room, hence the weird hanging light. In the master bathroom you might notice the odd shaped tub as the bathroom is only 4 foot wide so this was the mix between a bathtub and a shower.
My favorite picture
This picture just shows the character of the house as in one spot there are 4 different flooring types. In such a small space, there is the linoleum of the entry way, the original hardwood floors, the tile of the kitchen and the carpet of the bedroom. All of this is able to be captured in the one photo.
The hopes and dreams for the house
For the outside:
- Sidewalk and border to the front door
- Paint the front door
- Fix the spalling of the foundation
For the inside:
- Tear down wallpaper (where located)
- Fresh coat of paint throughout the house
- New floors
- New light fixtures
- New doors and hardware
- Relocate the washer and dryer
- Renovate the kitchen
- Renovate main bathroom
I am so excited to dive in and make this place a home showing you each step of the way.
XOXO Maggie