The Plans - The House

Sometime in college, I went to visit family in the mid-west and was bored to death by programs they were watching on TLC about fixing up homes and gardens and redecorating. But while I remember disliking the programs during that whole trip, they did somehow grow on me and there began my interest in buying a fixer-upper. Also, I already knew that I have very strong opinions on style and quickly realized that a fixer would always be my only real chance of having the right design throughout my home. Besides, I love the idea of getting what I love at a better price by doing it myself.

My interest in gardening didn't begin until I came back home after university. I had nothing to do for nearly three months before I went to my teaching job in Japan so I explored the bookstores and found out that you actually have to know a lot to garden well. I already knew my dad's garden was just hanging in there and decided to use the time to help it out. I was able to prune trees that had turned into bushes in the front yard and encourage a bit of redesign before I left. Now, almost four years later, it's quite a different sight (still could use a bit of work though).

So, luckily, Patrick doesn't think these two strong interests of mine are too crazy and agrees that this house we're buying now should end up quite a good investment. Right now, it's just about the worst house on a pretty nice block and in the end, when we grow out of the two bedroom house, we figure we can sell it for quite a profit.

So, onto the plans. First, we're buying this house using a FHA 203k loan which provides us with extra money up front for repairs - in our case, just under 60k. And, believe me, it needs every penny and a bit more actually. The pest report alone came back at 30k hehe. That interesting front porch is completely unsound... YAY! I can't stand that porch - with it's ugly columns, concrete flooring and side entrance. We're going to have our contractor, Abel, and his crew knock that down to the ground and rebuild it as a more classic front-entrance one. The front of our house will look something like this drawing I made up (except I just threw in plants - I don't have a final design for the front garden yet)

But as for the color, I'm quite sure that we've decided on this or something slightly more teal. Other changes to the front that we'll have to handle ourselves (no money for Abel to do this much) include: opening up the street planting bed in front of the house and far in the future redoing the driveway, probably with pavers but definitely with a green strip down the middle. They're not in this picture but we'd like to have a tall tree on each side of the street planter or front garden. I want to be able to look out the window and see through the leaves.

Next, to the inside of the house, here is a scale diagram of the floorplan as we eventually want it.

In the front room, you can see the sofa set and coffee table that we already have, I just wanted to see if they would fit or not. We'll probably put them this way at first and then replace the small sofa with two chairs eventually - one near the fireplace and one in the back corner. The colors are all undecided except perhaps the front room, we both like the idea of green. One of the first things we'll be doing ourselves inside are the built-ins and baseboards - we'll be refinishing it all and painting most of it white except possibly for the china-cabinet and the fireplace. We'll have to see if it's all in good quality under the current finish.

The kitchen is shown more like it will be when we're finished - it's much smaller currently with two small rooms at the back. We'll have Abel tear down the T-shaped wall at the back and open the room up to what will be 15' x 15 1/2'. Once open, I'd like to have large diamond patterned dark gray and nearly white tiles with white kitchen cabinets. I don't have a picture before but there are also built-in cabinets on the right side of the kitchen that we'll refinish and paint white.

The bathroom will have white wainscoting and the classic white and black hexagonal tile. We were going to do this ourselves but as Abel will be gutting the room (termite/dry rot damage) and we would have to do the tile before having the clawfoot tub we're buying installed, we probably wouldn't be able to arrange it in a timely manner. And of course, we won't be able to move in until the bathroom is done and we want to move in as soon as possible. Here are some good illustrations of the style we're planning on. The numerous differences, I'll go over later as it's happening.