The Devil is in the Details

Details, details, details......

So yesterday I told you all about how we bought the house, but I forgot to tell you about the house we bought.  And apparently people are interested in that kind of stuff.  Who knew?

Anyway, onto the details.  As you might have guessed from my last post, it's a ranch with four bedrooms, two bathrooms, a living room and a family room, and a wood burning fireplace.  It totals 2,088 sqft with a full, unfinished basement.   If you're keeping score at home, that means there is a total of 4,176 sqft of space in this house.  It's huge!  It's also old.  And unkempt.  It needs work.  Let's begin with the exterior.

The exterior of the house is stone and cedar, which, while not my taste, is nice.  Although the cedar needs some work do to years of neglect.  We're unsure right now if we can save it or if we'll have to replace it going forward.  The house sits on about a 1/2 acre of land with a good sized front yard and an interesting backyard.  The backyard slopes up, away from the house.  Next to the house is a nice deck and a not so nice above ground pool.  The pool sits literally 3 feet away from the side of the house.  You can step out of the bedroom window into the pool.  It's not a feature we like.  The pool will be coming down.  We're also going to have to take down and rebuild the deck since it is rotting off the house.  But it will be replaced.  Oh yes, and there is a hot tub.  It works and is staying.

Just past the pool and deck, the yard turns into a bit of a forrest.  It's grown up with trees and weeds and honeysuckle.  There is, however, a path that leads up the hill.  If you follow the path far enough it leads you to.....A Secret Garden!  Or really, just a flat grassy patch at the crest of the hill.  I have no idea why they did the yard that way, but at least we have a flat sunny place for a garden.

When you come into the house, there is a foyer with a coat closet (yay!), a door to the garage, and entrances to the formal living room and the hallway.  I love that you don't walk right into a room.  It feel nice to have an actual entryway.

The formal living room.  The photo only shows about half the room.
Also, no overhead lighting is a theme for this house.

The dining room.  I have no idea why there is a ceiling fan in the dining room.
It's one of only two fans in the house.

There's a huge formal living room on the front of the house which connects to a huge formal dining room.  We aren't sure yet if we are going to try and open up this space or not.  I like the idea of having a formal dining room.  And, while we won't use the formal living room as a living room, I would make a great library or, eventually, a study or playroom.

The Family Room.  Love the vaulted ceilings.  Hate the blue color.

On the back of the house is a large family room with a vaulted ceiling.  It has doors leading out to the deck and a fireplace on the outside wall.  It's a good sized room, but it's sort of long and narrow so we're a bit at a loss as to how to arrange the furniture.  I'm hoping our designer friend Ann can help with that.  The doors in here will have to be replaced.  They are in bad shape and the set up is odd and takes up a good amount of floor space.  We're hoping to put in a giant (92") sliding glass door to let in light and not use floor space.

The doors that are going to be replaced.  And the hot tub which is not.

The kitchen sits between the family room and the dining room.  You can only access it by going through either the family room or the living room and dining room.  And, it's tiny.  For a house this big, the kitchen seems so small.

This is our entire kitchen.  There is only about 3' of counter space.
Obviously we are redoing this.  I can't cook in here.

The appliances are old.  Like original to the house old.  We know we are going to replace them with nice stainless steel ones.  And we are gong to try and open the kitchen to the rest of the house some.  And add some cabinets/counters.  And add a pantry.  Really, we are going to redo the entire kitchen.  Except for the plant shelf/window.  We are keeping that.  It's fun and I like it.

The only part of the kitchen we're keeping.

Towards the other end of the house is a long hallway with doorways to the three extra bedrooms along the back of the house, the guest bathroom, the basement stairway, and the master bedroom.  There is also a linen closet at the end of the hallway.  The three extra bedrooms are all a good size with good sized closets, although the smallest one's closet is currently housing the washer/dryer in an illegal and unsightly setup.  That room will eventually be my craft room/ office/study area.  I'm excited about that.  A wall full of yarn!

The guest bathroom, complete with stripper lights.

The guest bath is small but functional with a good amount of vanity space.  We're not going to be doing much in here.  Some paint and a new light fixture.  Maybe the easiest room in the house after the two back bedrooms.

The master bedroom is very large but with only one window which is totally off center in the room.  That's going to drive me nuts, but we'll deal with it.  It has a on-suite bathroom which has one of the more odd setups of anyone we looked at.  There is an alcove off the bedroom which houses a vanity and sink, and then you enter into the bathroom proper with a shower, toilet, and another vanity.  The closet also comes off the weird alcove.  We're pretty sure at this point we are going to enclose it all, expand the bathroom into the closet, and put in a tub as well as a new shower and double vanities.  I can't show you any pictures of the master bathroom since I'm not allowed to look at photos of the master bathroom.  Mainly because the one sink is so nasty that my husband is afraid that if I see it again I might not ever set foot in the house.  Yes, it's that bad.  But we're ripping it all out, so it's okay.

The basement, as I said before, is totally unfinished.  And let me tell you, 2,088 sqft of space looks huge when it's only broken up by a few posts.  We plan to finish it out one day, but that will have to wait.  For now we have enough to do on the main floor to keep us busy.

So, that's the house.  We plan to have more photos soon (as these were taken when we saw the house for the second time--all that junk is not ours!).  And stay tuned for more information that you've probably ever wanted to know about what we decided to do with each room and how we do it.  I have a feeling things could get very interesting.  Adios!