It’s been quiet over here for a while. We’ve been busy traveling, schooling, enjoying the outdoors, and selling & buying houses. We knew when we bought our last house that we’d only live there for two years. Right at the two-year mark, we called our realtor and got ready to list it. Within days, we accepted an offer from a sweet woman who was excited to find it, and even more excited to see how we’d added a few features to make it better than it was when we moved in.
As soon as the paperwork was filed on that house, we turned around and purchased a new house for us. We love fixing and enhancing houses and felt we were ready for the challenge of flipping a whole house. We moved one town over (really, just three miles away) and are loving almost every bit of this house.
Here’s the house as we saw it on the day we purchased it.
Overgrowth everywhere.
No curb appeal.
So much potential!
We’ll take you through all the rooms as we work, but here’s a quick overview of some of what we found in the house and decisions we’ve made for the next few weeks.
The kitchen needs immediate work. It’s too small for a family who loves to cook and bake. The dishwasher was an afterthought and its placement took away valuable cabinet space and there is almost no counter space.
The only things I really liked about the kitchen were that it was at the back of the house and the big windows that let in so much natural light. In our previous house, the kitchen window faced the street. We saw our cars in the driveway and everyone who drove past. Because of the amount of time we spend in the kitchen, I felt that we were always on display or that we always had to have the shades pulled. While it was a large window, it was covered by the front porch, and the garage stuck out a bit in front of the house wall, so the kitchen was always dark. It wasn’t conducive to food photography or a bright and cheery kitchen.
Our plan for this room is to tear out all the cabinets and appliances, and even a wall. We will connect the kitchen and the dining room, making one large space for all the baking I could want and all the large gatherings we dream of. We will reconfigure the kitchen to put the oven on the same wall as the sink and dishwasher, move the refrigerator to a less obtrusive location, and add a long island, some more counter space on the far wall, and a breakfast table in the corner by the window.
Another project we plan to tackle relatively soon is making this hallway shorter. It runs from the front door to the back room and is loud and echo-y. Our three children love it! We plan to block it off at the back to create a pantry next to the kitchen, and again just after the first bedroom, to create a shorter front hallway along with a master suite that also leaves the master bathroom accessible to the rest of the house without having people run through the actual bedroom. Sound crazy? It might be, but the layout on our graph paper works well for all the needs we have in each area, so we are going for it.
Right now we spend our days at Menards and Home Depot, talking about the next big brainstorm, and prioritizing so many things. We are glad you are along for this adventure. Stay tuned to see what we uncover (or cover up) next!
