So, I clearly did not do well with my goal a few months ago of weekly posts. I blame it 100% on school. Somehow in this last year, even though I had the least amount of classes ever, I had the most work of any year yet. Probably because I so wisely thought that I should write a thesis. A thesis that required so much work and ended up being so long that it was probably more of an honours thesis. But alas, it was not, 3 credits only. An important 3 credits though, since I am now DONE my degree. Yes, actually, really all done school. Feels kinda awesome.
This is a post I’ve been planning for months now, 8 months to be exact. It’s taken me this long, mostly because I’m technologically impaired and it took me this long to figure out how to get the pictures from my camera to my computer. Ya, pretty sad. But, I finally got it figured out!! So, I’m going to share pictures of our new house.. well I mean it was new 8 months ago.
I’ve had some people request this, so it may be delayed. But, I operate well on a better late then never theory in my life.
So, here’s a little background on our current home, and trust me it’s not complete because it is quite the story, that we keep adding to. The house, is actually two houses. Fun right? Wrong. There is an old part and a new part. The old part was built in the 1920’s, and moved and renovated in the 1970’s. Which means: orange shag carpet, terrible puke green wallpaper, green bathroom fixtures and terrible cheap doors where there should be 5 panel doors. Add to all those lovely things, someone at some point, painted the original hardwood floor on the second floor, or in some places put on stick on tile. It’s terrible. The good thing is that for now its closed off from the new part of the house.
The new part of the house, well, its ridiculously big. Way bigger than what we need at the moment, but we were buying our (hopefully) forever home, and were actually buying based on land/location etc more than the house itself. It was built around 2008, so is quite new. So new in fact, that parts of it were never even finished… It’s super great. Structurally it was built really well… however the finishings leave more than a little to be desired. They built what has the potential to be super nice and then literally finished it with the cheapest materials they could. Think $1 tile, terrible cheap cabinets etc. And then,, my favorite part… they painted the entire house (3000+ sq ft) 2 colours, bright yellow in all the main areas and a gross yellow/beige in all the other rooms. Fun fact: I hate yellow.
Needless to say, we truly bought the shell, and at some point almost all of the cosmetic stuff. Luckily there are few structural changes to make in the new part, with the biggest change being a future full kitchen reno.
So, without further ado, a picture tour.
The kitchen, which does not fit the space at all.. number one big project on the list. Complete reno so that it works better and fits the space is in the plans.
The living room. The kitchen, dining area and living room are all open to each other and create a nice great room. Once everything is updated it will be a great place to entertain and spend time as a family.
The basement, which is completely unfinished (thankfully since it flooded this spring thanks to no landscaping and the run off going straight towards the house). It’s the last project on the list and given the rate we’re going, it’ll be a good 10 years before we get to this project.
My office, which will probably be one of my favourite rooms once we change out the doors and I can actually see the backyard and appreciate the nature.
Our current master bedroom. The current plan is to renovate the old house to be a large master suite and have this as one of the kids rooms (way down the road).
The sunroom, which I will surely enjoy… if we can figure out why the temperature doesn’t regulate at all in this room.. current working theory is there isn’t any insulation. Fun stuff.
The left side is the old house, with the driveway and garage to the left behind the house.
The front entrance of the new house. Thankfully the weeds aren’t as bad now. The yard was never finished in any capacity after the house was built, and it was abandoned and overgrown when we looked at it and took possession. There is a lot of landscaping to be done.
What will be the backyard.. no work at all…
Things that I didn’t include in the picture tour include 2 guest bedrooms, another bedroom at the front of the house which shares a bathroom with our current master, a full bath and half bath, a large laundry room, and 3 hall closets which don’t have a single shelf or hanging rod between them.
The house itself is set back from the road nicely, surrounded by trees. We have 80 acres, which has to be completely re-fenced, because the people we bought it from were nut jobs and absolutely terrible at fencing.
As we update things in and out of the house I will share our progress. There is certainly a lot of work to be done, but we were buying our forever home so we’re ok with it. Unless of course we end up with 20-40 neighbors on the 1/4 next to ours, at which point we will be selling in 4 years and 4 months and actually buying our forever home.
If you actually read all of this, kudos to you, and see you next time.
xoxo,
Aly
A life of laughter 