Some More Photos...and Plans

We revisited the house and land yesterday to take some measurements and reassess some of the to-do tasks we have on our list. Now that all of the junk has been cleared out, we were able to get some better photos. So, here's our try at a virtual tour.

Here's a photo of the land. We like that there are some large trees on the premises and 2 acres of woods in the back.

The kitchen and breakfast area is shown and not shown (forgot to take a photo) are a back hall and powder room, which are adjacent to this area. This is all the newest part of the house so apart from housekeeping and painting, it needs the least amount of work. Andrew will probably put a tile floor down, however.

From the kitchen, you enter the dining room, which is quite big. It is divided by these two architectural columns and moulding, so it seems as if it was originally two rooms that has been converted to one as a result of additions, etc. The following two photos are the dining room, one of each side of the columns.

The dining room leads to the foyer, which leads to the living room.

Off of the living room is a patio, which is accessible via double french doors on either side of the fireplace.

Also off the living room is the den, which we will use as our family room. This section starts the original part of the house (c. 1850) so while there are some really nice architectural features, there is also some cosmetic work that we will do to spiff it up. This room is the only one on the main floor which needs the hardwood to be refinished.

Off of the den is a sunroom, where we will also do some fixups. The following two photos show the sunroom, from each end. It currently has no flooring (linoleum that has been ripped up) and the paint/wallpaper are godawful. So, we will paint and Andrew is going to tile the floor. Luckily, the windows in the entire house are new so there are no worries about having to replace windows.

The final room we will need to "flip" on the ground floor is the original kitchen in the house. Since the new kitchen was added a few years ago and this one is outdated, we are going to transform this area into a large laundry/mud/utility room. The washer and dryer connections are already here so we will just paint the cabinets and get new hardware and a new counter, remove the range and add a utility sink instead. Andrew will also tile the floor here and of course we will paint. In the back of this photo, you can see that a second set of stairs exists, which leads upstairs.

As you head upstairs via the main stairwell in the front foyer, here are two of the nicest bedrooms, both with newly refinished hardwood (as the hallway and stairs also are newly refinished wood). Sort of inconvenient that they are separated by french doors but since they look so nice, we will probably keep them and just have some sort of curtain that you can draw across to darken them when needed. We will use one of these as Ben's room.

Across the hallway from these rooms is the master "suite" area, which consists of a bedroom, dressing room and bathroom. We are considering widening the entrance between the dressing and bedroom and making the closet bigger. They also have painted hardwood that we will probably carpet. Try to ignore the wallpapers as you look at these; they will be removed and repainted.

The bedroom leading to the dressing area...

The dressing area leading to the bathroom...

The master bathroom. Down the hall are the two last rooms on this level, both from the original 1850 part of the house. They are again separated from the hallway by french doors (the previous owner had an obsession...), so we will most likely make this section of the house the playroom and then attached to that (but not accessible through the hallway, only via the playroom or downstairs as the back stairwell leads here), the study. These rooms again both have painted hardwood that we will likely carpet.

Standing in the playroom looking down the hallway. The hall bathroom is also viewable to your right.

The future playroom (minus the butterfly wallpaper). Note the step down and the doorway leading to the study. It's one of those charming older home doorways that is about a head too short by today's standards!

As you step down, you enter the future study. The back staircase leads to the original kitchen (which will become a utility/mud/laundry room). Obviously we will be replacing the railing on these stairs and also carpeting them.

Finally, there is a 3rd floor attic, which is completely finished (and air conditioned). There are two nearly identical rooms up there.

We have already formulated our to-do list for the house and have plans to get a lot of the cosmetic work done before we move in. Check back for more photos of our progress, once we start working on it.

We're Moving!

We are very excited to announce that we will be moving about 10 miles north of our current house to Telford, PA, where we will be inhabiting a 157 year old farmhouse on 5.75 acres of land. We will be subdividing the land into two 1 acre lots that we will be selling off and a fourth 3.25 acre lot on which Andrew will start the proceedings to build us our very own home, which he has designed himself. We will be living in the farmhouse for a few years while Andrew builds and will then plan to sell the farmhouse and move into the house that he is building for us.

We feel very blessed to have found such a great piece of property with minimal effort - it is in a nice area and school district, near many of our friends, 4 minutes from Andrew's job, 10 minutes from our church, about the same distance from my parents as our current house and the farmhouse is in excellent condition. Some non-essential rooms will need some updating and minor work, but for the most part it truly is in move-in condition. There was a brand new kitchen put in a few years ago, central AC, a fenced in yard and even a swingset for Ben! The house was in the process of being foreclosed on so we were able to obtain it at a short sale, which is another wonderful blessing.

Here is a blueprint of the property. Hard to read, but the dark "blob" near Church Rd. is the farm house and the rest of the delineated pentagon is the property. You can see that the Indian Creek runs through the back of the property, with about 2 acres of undevelopable land behind it. So we will always have woods behind our house.

Some pictures of the outside of the house from all angles. Here is the side of the house.

The sideview again. The wing in the foreground is the newest part of the house - the kitchen, powder room, breakfast area and back hallway that were added a few years ago. The rest of the house is original...from before the Civil War (circa 1850).

The backyard. Ben enjoyed our walk-through with the realtor since there is a swingset and a huge sandbox filled with Tonka trucks in the yard that he played in as Andrew and the realtor went back inside to take some detailed photos.

This is the back patio that has double french doors leading from the living room. There is a fountain between the two doors - we will see if it is in working order when we have our inspection!
The front of the house. There is a nice covered porch that leads to the patio. We just need to repair a few of the floorboards and repaint the porch and then it will be ready for use next spring.I tried to show some of the best shots of the inside of the house and will take more pictures when we visit again. Because this is an older home, some of the upstairs rooms are difficult to visualize via photo so it's hard to tell what you are looking at. So I didn't include these rooms and just gave a sampling.

Here is the living room/foyer. The hardwood floors on much of the house are newly refinished.

The dining room.

The kitchen - new maple cabinets and granite countertops! There is a peninsula that comes out next to the oven that separates the kitchen from the breakfast nook. Excuse the junk in the photos; since this was a foreclosure there was so much junk in the house when we walked through but it has since been removed.

Here is one (two) of the prettiest bedrooms upstairs. As you can tell from just seeing the kitchen photos, the previous owner was very into toile! There are basically three 2-bedroom suites in the house and an attic bedroom.

We will keep everyone posted on the progress of this exciting purchase. The bank has requested a 75 day closing, which puts us somewhere in October. So, until then we will be busy getting all of our ducks in a row for the new house/land, sprucing up our house to put it on the market by 9/1 (hopefully) and then packing. I have never had to go through a full move myself since I never moved growing up and had minimal belongings when I got married (ie college stuff and a bedroom set!). So, we'll see how deep we have dug ourselves when we start to pack all of our belongings!