Gliding & Swinging Through Life: October 2013

I've been trying to figure out the best way to do a blog tour of our 'new' house...I still haven't figured it out, but I'm going to go ahead and give it a try. At the end of my last post, I said that I was going to start with the kitchen...change in plans, I'm going to start at the front door (makes sense, right?), and go from there.

So, here is the view from the front door...

This is one of my favourite parts of the house - I have a lot of 'favourite parts', so get used to me saying that! :) I made my first purchase for the house last week, and it is something for the staircase - I bought two sets of picture frames from Winners (14 frames in total)...I can't wait to decorate that wall on the left! I brought them home and I think Curt was even a little excited about the purchase...I guess I'm not the only who felt like that wall was calling out for pictures, lots of pictures!

Another view with better lighting...

So, the wallpaper and carpet will obviously be torn down/out! And, the stairs and bannister will be refinished - not sure if we'll go with the same finishes on the stairs (white with dark brown), or if we'll change that?

OK, from here we'll take a look at the living room - in the pictures above, you can see a small part of the living room door frame on the left side of the picture.

First, you walk through these beautiful French doors! Yup, you got it, another 'favourite part'!

I think I mentioned in my last post that the current owners have been using the house as a bit of a storage unit - the cabinets and furniture you'll see in these next pictures all belong to them, but it's in our contract that they empty the house before our closing date, so just picture the room without the 'extras'.

This room is DARK right now, so a coat of paint (or three!) will be necessary, for sure!

North wall...

East wall...

South wall...

Behind that couch is a set of doors, right now they lead out to that horrible cinder block 'deck' that I talked about in my last post. But, in the future they will lead out to a screened in porch! As you can see, this room also has a fireplace - this is the first of three fireplaces you'll see on your tour!

So there you have it, the tour has officially started and you've seen the first room...there's plenty more to come, I just need to find the time to create the posts...I'll try my best to get another post a two up this week.

I have been horrible about blogging lately...I've been weeks, or months, behind all summer. It's not that I didn't have anything to blog about, it was the opposite actually - I had too much to blog about. So, although I've missed blogging about some fun weekend events, I feel like I need to move ahead on the blog or else I will never get caught up. Plus, Curt and I have some big news...we bought a new (to us) HOUSE!!!

Although it all seems to have happened fast, there is a bit of a history to the story, so I'm going to start there.

Last year, around this time, I mentioned to Curt that there was an old century house for sale, on the water, that peaked my interest (I drive by it everyday on my way to work). Eventually, Curt had the chance to drive by it as well, and he agreed that it had potential. So, in November 2012 we set up a viewing - it was for sale privately, so it was the owners father that showed us the house. What we saw was a house that needed A LOT of work! It hadn't been lived in in years, and apparently the last resident was renting, and he left a pretty big mess when he moved out. But, it wasn't all the tenant, the owners had contributed to the mess - they gutted one of the bathrooms, and then just walked away...they bought a new house and re-did the kitchen there, and rather than getting rid of the old cupboards, they stored them in their old house? It was weird, and such a shame, that they had let the house get into such poor condition. At this point, they were asking $400,000 for the house - that alone is WAY more than we can afford, never mind all the money we would have to put into it to make it livable. So, although we loved the potential of the house, we walked away from it.

Like I said, I drive by this house everyday on my way to work, so I obviously never really forgot about it. And, when I saw a real estate agents sign on the front lawn on Monday, September 23rd, I was very curious to see the price. Curt and I looked at the listing on Tuesday, September 24th and couldn't believe it was now listed for significantly less - obviously their agent sat them down and had a heart-to-heart with them about the value of the house given the condition it was in. At it's new price, we couldn't help but take another look, so we set up a viewing with our agent during our lunch hour on Wednesday, September 25th.

Not much had changed with the house, it still needed A LOT of work :) But, we still loved the potential we saw and knew that there was more good than bad. So, before I left to go back to work, I was signing an offer!

The owners were out of town when we made our first offer, so we were forced to wait almost two days before we heard anything - that was a good test of patience! Eventually, they countered and we ended up going back and forth a few times before settling on a number - we ended up getting it for only $1500.00 less than their asking price, but it's still a great price!

The deal was finalized by the end of September, but we don't get the keys until November 15th. A few weeks was required to get our finances in order, and, more importantly, one of the conditions is that the owners empty all of their JUNK, and that will take WEEKS!

During the weeks of waiting, we're busy making decisions - where to take out walls, where to add walls, what to do with the kitchen, where to place furniture, etc.

Once we get the keys, work will begin, but we won't be moving in right away - we can't move in right away. The plan is to put our house up for sale in the early spring, and hopefully once it sells, the closing date will line up nicely with a move in date for the new house :). If it doesn't quite work out that way, we have a back-up plan, but I'm not going to think about that right now.

So, prepare yourselves, the blog will probably take a slightly different focus over the next few months - it may look more like 'Gliding, Swinging and Renovating Through Life'! We are very excited about the project ahead of us, and hope you will enjoy being part of it through this blog.

My plan over the next few weeks is to do separate blog posts for each room of the house - that way there is a nice layout of 'before' pictures, and it will be easy to compare to the 'after' pictures down the road. But, if you've read this whole post, you might be interested in some pictures, so here you go...

Here it is...

Beautiful, right? Look past the decrepit front porch, the ugly light post, the overgrown 'plants'...look at the potential!

From a different angle - the round part of the porch is my favourite! It's just sad that anyone could let it get to such a state. BUT, the good news is that my father-in-law already has a plan to restore it...he told me all about it, and made it sound quite simple?!? I'm sure it won't be, but I love that he is excited about helping us work on the house!

The back of the house. The door on the left, which you can hardly see because of the deck, leads into what is currently the 'kitchen' (if you can call it that - wait until you see the pictures of it?!?). Our plan is to take this deck out and build a new smaller one at ground level.

This is the south east side of the house. The door on the main level goes into a living room...the door above it is the master bedroom. Right now, that 'deck' area is made out of cinder blocks? It's horrible! So, that will come out, and the plan is to do a two story deck there...the lower part will be screened it, and may tie right around to the front porch.

Same area, photo taken straight on...

The 'carriage house'. This building has a large loft like space - we won't be doing anything to this space for a long time, but the thought is that it would make a cool office for Three Hills Engineering. My mom has also suggested that she could live up there in the winter...and she'll live on the front porch in the summer :)

The view from the attic, looking out over the carriage house to the water.

OK, and I have to show you this...it's weird. Apparently the previous owners built this and then put one of those blow up above ground pools on it...you can see it sitting there in a heap...another thing they just left behind...who does that? The pool has since been removed, so now it's just a random deck in the middle of the back yard.