"Before" Pictures

Okay, brace yourselves. This isn't going to be pretty but here is a house tour before we take possession and do any work.

Here is the front of the house. We will be pulling out all the bushes and doing new landscaping right away. We will also be replacing the garage door. Within the next few months we will be replacing the iron shutters with normal white ones. And eventually we will put a new front porch on.

Here is the living room when you walk in the front door (if that were possible and there weren't thick vines blocking the front door). To the right is the kitchen and the other doorway (which is actually directly across from the front door) leads to a hallway where the bathroom and downstairs bedroom are.

There are hardwood floors under the carpet that we hope to expose. We will repaint the ceiling, paint the walls, and eventually paint the trim and windows white.

Here is the rest of the living room. There is a nice big window in front as well as a side window and air conditioner. We plan to add central air by next summer. Obviously the curtains will be coming down right away.

Here is the downstairs bedroom which we will be our room. It's nothing special and not too big but that's fine with us. We don't spend much time there besides sleeping anyway. The same updates will take place here as in the living room - hardwoods, painting of walls and trim, and new window treatments.

Here's the other side of the room.

And here is the one room we will be gutting right away. The bathroom. We haven't decided exactly what we want to do with this yet. The wallpaper will come down as well as the window treatments. The bannister (I don't know what that's called) will be removed. the window and cabinets will be painted (if not replaced). The door and trim will be painted and probably reversed so that it opens to the right rather than to the left where it covers the vanity. Shower doors will come off and we will tile the shower and floor. The toilet will be replaced as well - it is nasty.

Here is the vanity, which will also be replaced. Not sure yet whether we will paint the cabinets or replace completely. We will probably bring some contractors in for ideas and estimates on remodeling this space and decide from there. There is actually a closet behind the bathtub that we might get rid of and move the bathtub back a bit to create more space.

Here is the lovely kitchen. It is in need of some major updating. This is the view from the living room. What we are planning on doing is making a separate dining area by cutting out a wide doorway in the wall to the left (not pictured). The cabinets will all be repainted, we will replace the washer and dryer with the ones we own, the range hood will be replaced with a new one or an over the range microwave, and the dishwasher will be replaced. The wallpaper will come down and we will paint. And the light fixture will be replaced.

We are going to try to live with the backsplash for now and see how it goes. We will probably redo the flooring as soon as we have time to tile it. Eventually we would like to remodel the kitchen but that is probably a couple of years down the road. So we are going to try to go with cheap updates for now that we can live with temporarily. I would like to take out the wall behind the refrigerator and make a two-level counter in between the kitchen and living room.

This is a room that we are going to turn into the dining room. This is a view from the hallway. I think it used to be a bedroom before the garage and upstairs bedrooms were added on. The light fixture will definitely be replaced. We will paint and expose the hardwoods in here. The window will be replaced with a patio door to the backyard where we often grill. Eventually I would like to put a pretty railing on the stairs.

Here is the spot where it will open up into the kitchen. We will remove the hallway door as well. The stairs currently have some vinyl stuff on them which we are hoping to remove and be able to have wooden stairs to match the floor.

Here are the upstairs bedrooms. Curtains will come down, paneling will be painted, and doors and trim will be painted white.

Same story on this bedroom. The door on the right is a cedar-lined closet in addition to the existing closet.

Here is a view of the inside of the garage. It is pretty nice for a one-car garage. One thing we will have to do pretty quickly is put a railing on the stoop where I am taking the picture from. It is a cement stoop that Kyler is sure to walk off of onto the concrete floor of the garage.

Here's some storage in the garage. I would like to get the furnace and water heater out here at some point so that we have more space in the kitchen for the washer and dryer, and more counter/cabinet space for the kitchen itself. Plus, the upstairs bedrooms will need ventilation added for central air/heat. Right now they have their own wall heaters.

And here is a view of our backyard. This is currently the nicest part of the house. It's got some nice big shade trees and we have a decent sized yard for being on sort of an odd lot. The one thing we will need to do is paint that old metal shed. We may eventually take it down and build something new out of wood on the existing concrete pad. But that will be after Brett builds us a deck!

I hope you enjoyed your tour. Check back for updates. There will be a lot changing in the next two months prior to us moving in. We should be closing next week or the beginning of the following week. Then we will start working inside the house and hopefully be moved in by Halloween. Does it make you tired just thinking about all this work? Not me yet, I'm still too excited!