House Pictures!

SO, the inspection was REALLY good! Our inspector was awesome – as he pointed everything out, he told us exactly how to fix them. Everything was simple enough to do ourselves (with one or two exceptions, and even those we COULD chose to do them if we wanted to) so he clued us in on the cheap ways to everything. It was great. I took LOTS of pictures (seriously, like 80!) so I’m going to do my best to show you how this house is set up. And I’d LOVE your input on decor!!

So, here’s the front of the house from the listing (obviously it’s from last year, we don’t have leaves, yet!). What this picture doesn’t show you is the addition on the house (including the garage). See the windows to the right, how the bricks change their pattern and you can see a bit of a door? That’s where the addition starts.

There’s the rest of it. I really didn’t do a good job of taking a picture of the driveway (it’s 3 cars wide!) or the front yard view FROM the house, but I’ll do that eventually. 

I didn’t realize previously that the driveway extended along the side of the garage where it meets the patio in the backyard. 

I just took another shot of it so I could see how it all lines up with the backyard.

So now, looking back into the garage. It looks like this was a 2 car garage that they used some of to expand the indoors. Matt was a little disappointed about that, but it’s actually kind of cool in the garage. It’s hard to see from here, but along the left wall (after the window) is a nice workbench, cabinets, AND a sink – which we thought was pretty cool. The sliding glass doors lead out to the patio in the back yard.

If you go out those doors, and turn towards the left, this is what you see. The patio extends the whole length of the house (it looks a little dirty right along the house – there were bags and bags of leaves stacked up so I think they’d just removed them. We’re told that little panel-looking box under the first windows is plumbing for a hot tub. The previous owners had one on the patio right there. Next to that are the doors & stairs to the kitchen, then the bedroom & bathroom windows.

Here’s a close-up of the firepit. There will be a lot more yard pictures in a bit….but let’s go in  🙂

SO, if you go in the door next to the garage (the addition door) this is what you see. Actually, this is a few steps in. To my left is a shelf (where they have all their shoes). To the right is a door into the garage, and straight ahead are stairs, obviously. This is what they call the mud room.

So at the top of the stairs looking back, that’s where I just walked in. Look at the picture above this one again….see that open door? That’s one of the full bathrooms – the one that I’ve deemed to be the "public one". It’s the most simply accessed by the kitchen’s sliding glass doors, the mud room entrance, and the garage entrance. It was really hard to get good pictures in here…but here are the ones I got. This bathroom has vaulted ceilings and feels really big in there because of that.

Not sure what’s up with their curtains. Note their countertops – they are grey. I loved that, since it will go well with a bright color plus black and white (which is what I always end up doing!). I will most likely want to paint the cupboards & change out the hardware.

Just to show you the ceilings in there. The toilet is to the left of the wall.

Okay, I’m bringing this picture back to give you some perspective. There’s the bathroom we were just in. See the half-wall to the left? That is the half wall you’ve probably seen in previous pictures of the kitchen/dining room (which I’ll show you again). That guy is our inspector. So, walking the way he is right now….this is how you see the kitchen:

The door on the right, is the door to the basement. OMG, the kitchen. lol. Seriously. I DO love this house (even more now after seeing it again today) but this kitchen makes me want to throw up. I mean really. Who’s brilliant idea was it to smush every single appliance and cupboard on one wall!! And, okay…from a distance the country wallpaper doesn’t look too horrid (GOOD NEWS on that front – the wall paper is ONLY in the kitchen, it’s not even in the hall so it should be the only room that needs removal!). The pattern in the majority of the wallpaper isn’t bad – it’s the border along the top that makes me cringe. And you’ll never believe what they freaking did….

SERIOUSLY. They couldn’t fit the border along the wall, so they wallpapered their freaking cabinets. WHY! This is going to be a TOTAL PAIN IN THE BOOTY! Our inspector said to seriously soak the crap out of it and then only use plastic to scrape rather than anything metal and it should be fine. I guess the good thing is, if it’s ruined we’re planning to replace them anyway.

There’s the other side of the kitchen (and you can see going to the basement). That wall is going to get some cabinets eventually. I haven’t decided yet if it will just be a small section (sort of picture a kitchen island against the wall?), or if I want them to come out towards the dining room a little and

bend towards the fridge in an L. It would definitely make the kitchen feel small if we did that, but we’ll have to see how much room we really need before we make those decisions. 

So looking to the right a little more….there’s the basement stairs, and the bathroom, and that closet to the right of the bathroom acts as the pantry for the kitchen. You can also see the half wall.

So while we’re here, let’s check out the basement. The stairs & railing could use some paint, obviously.

When you first get down the stairs, you see the laundry room (where all of the other "things" are – furnace, hot water tank, etc. I hope to come up with a door for this eventually so you don’t notice all of that as much when you come down the stairs. Because if instead of looking straight ahead, you look to your left…this is what you see:

The entrance to the rec room. Which you’ll see more of shortly…back to the laundry room:

This is along the back wall, on the other side of the furnace.

On the other side of the room are the washer & dryer (and we’re told there are hook ups for both electric and gas so we can chose?). Our inspector did a radon test while we were down there….good results are anything under 4 and it was a 1.8 which he said is excellent. I’m not even really sure what radon is lol.

Sink & sump pump next to the machines, nothing special but they’re there!

At the back of the laundry room is a storage room, which they seem to use like a big walk-in closet. 

There’s another doorway out of this (which you can obviously close), and this leads to the Rec room. Which looks like this as you walk into it…

And then when you turn to the left it looks like….

This! You’ll have to excuse my crooked picture taking. And ya know, looking at this doesn’t even do the room justice…it’s enormous. For the sake of not posting too many pictures I’ll save this for another entry some other time, but look at their random assortment of hanging lights lol. I took a picture of each kind because it seriously made me laugh. Also, the ceiling has a terrible paint job, obviously!

Here’s the little "office" part of the basement – though Matt doesn’t think he’ll be working from that. We may turn that into a bar area…or it will become my scrapping area after I have to move out of our 3rd bedroom when #2 comes along.

So now walking out the other entrance, you can see the stairs where we came down. Back up….

This isn’t the angle you see it at when you come up the basement stairs, but this is what you see. I couldn’t photograph the entire dining room because the owner was sitting at the table and said he didn’t care if I took pictures as long as he wasn’t in them. Oh also – you can see the window that looks into the garage to the left there.

So this is the most of the dining room I could get without getting the owner. 

Looking a little further to the right is the living room. I’m not sure if I have a better picture of the main entrance, but you can get the idea I’m sure! Oh! Wait….

There it is 🙂

There’s the living room. To the far right is the entrance to the hall where the bedrooms & bathrooms are.

Standing by that hall doorway, you can see the front entrance & the dining room. 

I love how big those windows are!

So this is looking into the hall…the best shot I could get.

Bedroom #2

Bedroom #1. Sweet lil wayne poster lol.

Here’s the other full bathroom. I didn’t remember the tiles being so tan before – which isn’t bad, but I can’t do my grey/purple in this bathroom – it wouldn’t look right with the tan.

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Will be the master bedroom – we actually think we CAN fit our bed set in here after seeing it again today…..but there won’t be room for much else lol.

That’s the linen closet…and Matt is in what will be our bedroom. BTW – all the bedrooms have hardwood. There’s natural hardwood under the carpet in the living room & hallway too – we are trying to decide between replacing the carpet or just getting rid of the carpet and refinishing the floors under them. I know the majority would say hardwood – but I think I like having that little bit of carpet. It adds a little warmth and comfort.

Looking back outside….we decided to take a walk to the pool & the back of the yard.

I like that gate infront of the stairs…it blocks them off really well. Also – the surface of the deck is carpeted – which I thought was awesome. I know it’s kind of stupid to think so, but I remember many foot slivers from walking on wood decks while swimming!

There’s the horseshoe pits. I thought I got a picture of the pole with the lights on it, but I guess it made it out of this picture.

Colleen & Matt walking to the edge of the lot. OH, there’s the light pole for the horseshoe pits to the right.

Checking out one of our sheds.

Here’s the other….Matt found a 4 wheeler inside and got all excited 🙂

There was a little fort in the trees that I assume belonged to their kids. Kind of dangerous looking lol.

At the end of our property is this pond. It doesn’t belong to us (rather it’s not on our property) – it belongs to the richy-rich development behind us. The owners told us that their kids always fished in it without a problem, though.

Matt uncovered the "green" to the golf hole while we were back there (I could have sworn I took one of the "tee box" at the start of the outdoor pictures but I can’t find it now). He vowed to bring this back to life. (eye roooooll)

Just to show you how far from the house we were – we were actually already walking back & out of the trees so this isn’t even as far back as it goes….this lot is awesome!!!

SO, that’s the house! Of course I didn’t get every tiny nook and cranny, but that’s the gist of it! Do you have any decorating ideas for me?? Pllleeeeease? 🙂 

OH! I forgot to add – we had a pleasant surprise while we were there! The house has central air!! The listing didn’t say that it had it, but it said it did on zillow. We weren’t sure, but when we got there we saw the system. Our inspector says the unit is old and probably at the end of it’s life, so we are wondering if the reason they didn’t point that out is that it doesn’t work. However, it’s about half the cost to replace an existing unit than to put it in all together (which we probably would have done eventually – it would have been hard to live without it after having it for so long!!). So yes, nice surprise!!