First Impressions
By Joe at 10 November, 2008, 4:32 pm
We visited my step-grandmother in May of 2008, after a fleeting offer to us to check it out because she was thinking about moving in with my parents. At this point we weren’t sure she even wanted to sell it, or that we even wanted to buy a house. We were in the middle of planning our wedding for late August, and mixed in with all of the commotion that goes with that were a lot of family tragedies, dramatic episodes, and health problems. Despite all of this, we were able to see some promise in the house. We took some pictures.
The front of the house. With a little bit of pruning and some paint, this could turn out alright! Cape cods are our style.
Nice back porch. The house is on 3/4th of an acre. Gretchen’s already talking about having a fire pit in the spring, and I’m already thinking about where to put a hammock.
The cabinets were hand made of knotty pine. It’s pretty livable, but we probably need to update it in the near future. Removing the wallpaper is a good short-term goal.
This room has a lot of potential. Once the wallpaper is down a nice color could make this an entirely different room. The wood trim, floors, and bannister are really nice and are in incredible shape.
Another shot of the living room. Same need for updated wallcoverings. New windows look out to the front porch/front yard.
The “Master Bedroom” as it was. Nice hardwood floors continue upstairs. It’s a little dark, but nothing a few new lights wouldn’t fix.
Another shot of the Master Bedroom. The ceiling slopes a bit, as is usual with cape cods. The walls definitely need some updating. Nice new windows look out over the front yard, porch, and street. You can see the golf course from the bedroom window.
One of the smaller size bedrooms upstairs. This would make a nice office. It has the same view as the Master Bedroom. It’s a lot smaller, but taking out the carpet and revealing the hardwood floor would do a lot to open it up. The colors also help keep it a little dark.
This is the 3rd bedroom in the house. It's the smallest of them all, but has the most headroom. This could be a good place to relocate the (or add another) bathroom to. If not, the hardwood floors and new windows would make it a nice guest bedroom (once the wallpaper is down).
This is the detatched 1 car (and lots of other stuff) garage. It also has a 1-Bedroom fully livable apartment above it, which was previously rented out. I’ve always wanted a garage, and the apartment would be a good place to set up the dark room Gretchen has been meaning to find a place for, and the music room I’ve been collecting random instruments for years for. The driveway can easily fit 6 cars, which would definitely be nice for BBQs and parties.
As you can see, the house is smaller, but has a lot of potential. The wallpaper poses the most immediate problem, but luckily is little more than a few weekends worth of work (and little money) to update. The bigger updates would have to follow that. We find it slightly awkward that the only bathroom in the house is downstairs, but that could be remedied by turning one of the upstairs bedrooms into a bathroom. But I wonder, and this is probably a question to pose to a real estate agent, what is more likely to hurt the value of a home? Having only one bathroom and it being downstairs, or only having 2 bedrooms? The apartment more than makes up for square footage of “living space,” but I’d like to figure out what the best move for the future is, and not just make decisions based on current needs (like having some storage downstairs which we could use if the bathroom wasn’t there). No need to get into this kind of thing now, but I’ve always been one to think to far into things before even getting started.
When all was said and done, we loved the cape cod style, the rural (but beautiful) setting, the real wooden accents, the nice big yard, and the proximity to family without being too far from our friends or the city; and it was enough to make us decide on buying the house. This is where this story starts.
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