From the Beginning

Welcome to our home! Let me give you the tour of what we saw on our very first trip to our now-home. Please forgive the blurry pictures, there was no electricity in the house.

Here’s what we saw when we looked at our house the very first time in October 2009

Notice the broken window on the second floor all the way to the left? That was in the master bedroom, but that was the least of our problems. Let me show you the inside of the house, but before we head indoors, here’s where we’ll be going on the first floor:

Where to start inside other than the entry room and kitchen since both can be seen right when you walk in the front door?

Here’s the kitchen

I can’t forget the door that goes from the kitchen to the three seasons porch since that is my favorite door in the house and it gets used the most too (mostly by the “kids”).

The entry room from the view of the kitchen

Check out that falling ceiling! The beautiful French doors go to what is now our living room but was originally our dining room. The stairs to go to the second floor are just beyond the door in the middle and the white door on the left goes to the laundry room/mud room and on down into the basement.

Don’t worry, we’ll come back to the basement. Here’s the living room (former dining room)

Here’s the dining room (former living room) as seen from the living room

Love the fake ficus? Can’t neglect to show you this picture that was hanging on the wall in there

We thought it was just a creepy wolf picture. After we moved in and we started chatting with neighbors we found out that the people who had the house before us raised wolves in our backyard. But let’s face it, it’s still a creepy wolf picture. The last room on the tour of the first floor is the half bathroom

Shall we head upstairs?

Did you see the turning stairs? I love turning stairs…not so much for moving furniture up them, which is why there was this note taped to the wall

By the way, that was not true. Getting our queen size mattress involved removing that board…and part of the ceiling…with a sawsall…I don’t think my brother Brandon can come to our house without playing with power tools. Wanna see the floor plan for the second floor?

Here’s the view of the top of the stairs taken from the bathroom

Once up the stairs you see directly into the guest bedroom (that’s the room right by the window). The room is kinda small so it’s not really possible to capture the whole room in one picture.

This is the viewpoint from the top of the stairs.

See that space on the left that looks like it would be a hallway? It kinda is. It goes to my fabulous creative space

The main bathroom is right next to my creative space

If you look at the picture from the top of the stairs you can see what looks like it leads to another hallway? It goes to the master suite. Yep, I’m calling it a suite. The giant closet has it’s own closet!

I maintain that the closet inside the closet if for my shoes. Through the closet goes into the master bedroom

The other door to the master bedroom goes to a hallway. The fact that there is a hallway that goes nowhere other than to our bedroom is why I reserve the right to call it a master suite

First floor – check. Second floor – check. I promised we would come back to the basement. Remember the mudroom/laundry room all the way at the beginning of the page? Here’s a refresher

Walk to the window and there are a couple stairs to the right that take you to the back door.

Another turn and a few more stairs and you are in the basement. Check out those walls that wave like bacon in a pan. The reason that happened is because of what you see in the top right. It’s a dryer vent. The walls are just pressed “board” and the washer and dryer are on the other side of that wall, so every time the previous owners would run the dryer, the hot wet air would vent into this little hallway. Not. Smart. As a side note, we also had to run the electrical to where the washer and dryer were supposed to go, so we’re pretty certain they were running the washer and dryer off an extension cord. Also. Not. Smart.

Then when you go to the basement and turn to the left you see the future game room with a table I love.

To the right of that room is the room where our wood furnace, water heater and gas furnace are. It also stores some stuff that we just need to get rid of. I don’t have any pictures of that room. Not sure why. But that’s just boring boy stuff anyway so we’ll go back to the bottom of the stairs and look to the right. There’s a “bathroom” there.

Can it really be a bathroom if it’s just a “shower”, a toilet and a dirty nasty vanity stuck in a room where the only door is the door to the outside? I think my favorite part is the ocean scene shower curtains.

Are you wondering what was on the other side of this wall?

It’s the bench where Michael works on electronics. In the beginning, it looked like this

Yes, that’s mold on the wall. No, it doesn’t still look like that. We took down that pegboard, scrubbed the studs with bleach and put up new pegboard.

Also in the basement is our water softener which makes me super happy. That mirror on the vanity is just gross though

So that’s the inside of our house before we did anything. Now that you’ve had the whole tour, do you see the potential? It’s okay if you don’t, most people didn’t (including Michael). I look forward to keeping you updated on all the changes that are happening at our house.