To Pack or Not to Pack???

That has been the question for the past month or so. We have had many ups and downs through the process of trying to buy this cute little green house. The first mortgage officer we worked with made mistakes and was ultimately...less than competent, so weeks after beginning the whole thing we ended up switching loan officers. The person we are working with now is very on top of things and is getting the job done, which we are thankful for. Right now the loan has been approved, but we are still waiting to hear when we will close. The home was a foreclosure and there are some repairs that have to be done to get it to meet FHA standards before we can close. This means that it could possibly be another couple of weeks before we can close. But, if all goes as we hope it will, we'll be closing before the end of next week. Then the fun really begins! Here are the pics I promised a long time ago, for those of you who are curious. It may not look like much right now, but just wait a while for when we post the "after" pictures!



Here is a view from the street of the front of the house, complete with Olivia playing with a stick and David checking out the lawn--feels like home already! :) FYI There is a great big driveway on the other side of the house that goes back to the fence. Beyond that in the back is where David will eventually build his shop--probably next year.

This is the living room. This view is from the dining area looking toward the front door. You can't see the door very well, but if you could you would see that it has stencils of moose, bears, wolves, pine trees, etc. on it--soooooo cute!!! (I hope you know me well enough to know I'm j/k)
The curtains also have a very nice woodsy print on them--I might try to use them in our camper, which would actually be really cute.

Right when you walk into the house there is a door on your left into the master bedroom. This is the window in the master bedroom that looks out to the street. Note the lovely wood paneling on the wall to your right. We are planning to resheetrock in here and hopefully refinish what we think are hardwood floors under the carpeting.

This is a view of the other end of the master bedroom. Half of this will be turned into a master bath, and the other half will be a walk-in closet. Can't wait for that remodeling project to get done! Two bathrooms will be heavenly!

Here is a view of the dining area looking in from the living room. (It is actually all one big room, with the living area being carpeted and the dining area has a laminate flooring that is made to look like hardwood floors.) The gas stove in the corner is the main heat source for the house. And yes, those are more stencils on the walls--these are leaves and acorns to match the print on the curtains in this part of the room. (Just you wait--it gets better with the paint jobs...)

Left of the dining room is the kitchen, which basically has about the same amount of cabinet space and a little more counter space than the house we're in now. It does have a dishwasher, which I am excited about. We will paint the cabinets and replace the countertops (but probably not right away--we'll see). To the right in the photo you can see the laundry room door complete with three framed holes that apparently were used for family pictures...? Another unique decorating inspiration from the previous owner!

Here is where the washer and dryer go in the laundry room. Exciting.

As you stand in the laundry room, on your left you see this cubby, which we'll use for food storage, and also the door to the basement, which is just a small utility/storage room.

This is the back door of the house in the laundry room. I'm excited to have a place where we can come in if we're dirty/muddy/etc. and take our shoes off without tracking it through the house.

This is a remodel that seems to have gone pretty well. The bathroom is pretty cute, it just needs a little paint. It has a pretty stained glass window and nice tile.

This is the little vanity in the bathroom--we think we'll use this one in the master bath and put a bigger vanity in this bathroom.

Here is the staircase with the funny different colored footprints going up the wall. To each their own, I guess. :) Also, to the left you can see a strange display on the wall that the other people built in--there is wood trim and a large half-circle mirror with an indention into the wall that we think they must have used to put their t.v. in--who knows. That will all come down and the space will go back into the master bedroom where we will put the walk-in closet.

This is what you see as you come up the stairs--straight ahead is the little room at the front of the house--we plan to use it as a playroom for the girls. David wants to build bookshelves across the wall on either side of the window and a window seat that opens up like a toy box under the window. There are also little cubbies in the side walls that we plan to use for toy storage.

When you get to the top of the stairs, on your right is this "pink" room, which will be Olivia's room. Right now it is more of a salmon color with orange trim around the window and dark green carpet--what a combo, eh? Our plan is to paint the bottom half light green and the top half pastel pink with a white chair rail around the middle and white trim/ceiling.

This room is on the left. It has some wallpaper on the upper half of the walls that we'll have to get off before we can paint in there. I plan to do Aubrey's room with green on the bottom and purple on top. Olivia always used to tell us before Aubrey was even born that purple was her favorite color, so we'll go with it for now. :)

This view is of the little hall leading to the back bedroom upstairs. In case you are wondering, the trim around the doorway features moons, stars, and planets.

This is the storage closet in the upstairs hallway. Since the two side bedrooms don't have closets and are really small as it is, David plans to use some of the space from this closet and from the closet in the back bedroom for little closets in the side rooms. He has some fun ideas--can't wait to see how they turn out!

This is a shot of one wall in the back bedroom which we will use as an office/guest room for now. You can see that the walls are made of lathe and plaster and could use some TLC. The holes you see here are the worst in the whole house, however. Most of the rest of the rooms just have a little chip or crack here or there.

This is the funny closet in the back room upstairs. The column you see on the left that goes through the middle of the room used to be a vent for the boiler heating system which is no longer in use, and is now only used to vent the water heater. David plans to revent the water heater and tear out this column thing so the room will be more open and have more usable space.

And here we have the back view of the house...

This is looking at the backyard through the gate on the left side of the house. Around the edges are apple trees and one crabapple tree. On the left is where David plans to build his shop, and the sheds we are bringing from our house now will go in the very back on the left. The garden will be in the back on the right, and we plan to put a fire-pit in back there as well.

Well, do ya think we have our work cut out for us? I'm sure glad David's a handy guy! This will be quite the challenge, but also hopefully a great opportunity. We are very excited and lie awake at night thinking and talking about all the things we want to do once we close on the house. I hope you enjoyed our little tour! Some of this may have been boring--sorry, but I wanted to be detailed so we can compare later on with how it all turns out. Stay tuned!