One year ago, we bought our "non-lottery winning" dream home. We knew we wanted to move from the starter home we'd purchased 6 years before, but weren't actively in the buying market. We do however enjoy looking at houses online and touring houses on the market - or as I affectionately call it, house porn (a phrase coined from a friend). And that's when it happened, we walked in to this house and fell in love.
Layout = perfect
Details = divine
Enough Said
I don't think I'll ever find a house with a better layout and most importantly better closet space. :) Our house is 3600 square feet, but there aren't tons of rooms you don't know what to do with. Instead, they made each room/area better. The downstairs has an office (hubby works from home) and "small" dining/living room that we use as piano/sitting room in the front. The back 2/3 of the house is an open family, dining, kitchen with playroom right off the kitchen/dining with pocket doors that easily close off the clutter. The perfect space for two growing children and their friends. We also have a large 1/2 bath and a HUGE laundry room that will one day also be my office, but more about that later. Oh and a massive closet under the stairs
Upstairs, we have a Master Suite with large bathroom, linen closet and our master closet that could be a bedroom by itself. There are three other bedrooms, all with large walk-in closets, a full bathroom with door to toilet/shower and linen closet. We also have a small room off the hallway that is for storage or crafting or something.
The details - large crown moulding in every room, all doors (even closet doors) have extra moulding, and each window is cased in moulding. There is a beautiful window bench on the stair landing with large windows above it encased in plantation shutters. Downstairs has beautiful 2-1/4"plank hardwood floors and stainless steel appliances. Oh and did I mention all the closet space?
That said, the previous owners did not update or improve the house at all in the 10 years they lived here. We had a black plastic kitchen faucet, even though the appliances are stainless. Toilets need to be replaced, "boob" lights in the bathrooms and laundry, chipped tiles, all brown kitchen and broken cabinets. But the worst is the yard. The front yard was landscaped when the house was built, but the owners let weeds and bermuda grass take over the flower beds and shrubs to grow up over the windows. And in 10 YEARS they didn't plant one thing in the backyard. Nothing. Nada. Zip, Zilch. There was just weeds and a rotting 6' fence. The backyard faces the greenbelt which is amazing, but it's hard to enjoy it when there is nothing back there except a small slab of concrete surrounded by a small brown picket fence (still not sure what this tiny fence was for).
So here is where we begin....
