Home tour: Day 1

What a busy 2 weeks we've had. I had all intentions of getting the picture tour going earlier; but alas, here we are two weeks later.

We love our new house!! It has a ton of room compared to our old home. Our old home was a multi-level (some call it tri-level) with about 1200 sq. ft. upstairs and 500 in the basement. Our new home is a ranch with 1750 sq. ft upstairs and the same in the basement. We've doubled our living space and OH is it nice! I tell people that the new house just needs a "makeover". The space is wonderful, but some parts of the house are still stuck in the early '80's. But for the money we spent and the space we got, we couldn't beat it. The "makeover" can come as we live here.

I intend on posting different parts of the house each day this week along with telling you our plans for each room.

Hope you enjoy!

Here is the front of the house. The garage is on the side of the house. There are a lot of established trees in the yard, and the grass looks pretty good. We plan on eventually getting some mulch under the pine trees (no grass grows there) and sprucing up the landscaping. I have some fun ideas. I'm guessing the mulch will happen in the late summer/early fall and my other landscaping endeavors will have to wait till next spring.

This is the front entry. Nothing special, but also not much we plan to do with it. Probably remove the curtains on the door and eventually put a prettier door in, but that is very low on my list of things to do. The spindles to the left are, however, higher on the list of things to do. I will be removing them when I redo the formal dining,which is just to the left of the picture. I am NOT a fan of spindles. I'm not sure if we'll completely open that room up or just leave the half wall. I'm guessing just leave it as a half wall.

Here is the formal dining room. As you can see, no table yet. We are working on it. This home has an informal and a formal dining room, so we put our only table in the informal dining room and are looking for just the right table to go in this room. Until then, it makes a great place to house Matthew's stander and indoor base for his wheelchair.
The only section of wallpaper in this house in on that one wall in the dining room. When I redo this room, it will be gone. Some new curtains in this room and the new table will suit this room well.

This is the built in hutch in the formal dining room. I love it, although I don't have any fancy dishes to put in it, maybe someday :)
The door opening behind the formal dining room goes into the kitchen if you go straight, to the garage and laundry room if you go right or down the stairs to the basement if you turn an immediate left.

If you take yourself back to the entry way and look right, you will find yourself in one of the two living rooms that are upstairs. This is the room we have our only couches in right now and the one we will watch TV in. I haven't fallen in love with the diamond wooden shapes in the windows, but I haven't had time to remove them.
Other than a coat of paint and some different window coverings, there is nothing we will do to this room for a long time.

Another angle of this living room. Note the popcorn ceiling and a tray ceiling at that. Not a big fan of popcorn ceilings, but the people in the '80's loved them.

This is taken from standing at the bay window. The door leaning up against the wall (on the right) belongs to the door to the basement (haven't gotten that rehung yet) To the right in this picture is the entryway, to the left is 2 of the bedrooms and bathroom and right behind the wall that has the armoire is the other living room. We have visions of one day removing that wall and making the two living areas into one and laying wood floors throughout. This would make for a nice open floor plan and also for easier access for Matthew, but for right now, we are very happy with the layout. All of the main doorways are nice and wide and easily fit his chair through.



Tomorrow:

The kitchen, informal dining room and 2nd living area.