House Tour - The Main Floor

Before we get into the nitty-gritty of home renovations, let's start off with some "before" pictures.

Coming in the front door this is the view of the living room. The doorway on the right leads you into the kitchen. The hallway on the left leads to the bathrom, bedrooms and dining room. And the black blob in the bottom center of the picture? That's Johnny's behind, he tends to get in the way a lot...get used to it.

This is the view from the hallway looking towards the front door. The large front window is actually a bay window and there's one more window to the right, just out of the picture. And let's take a moment to admire

the wood panneling on wall to the right...so chic, so 70's, so about to be torn down.

Close up of the living room closet. Like most older houses, this house as a few structural quirks...this closet is one of them. We figured out that it's not original to the house, it was added sometime in the 70's (about the same time the panneling when up I think). The strange thing about it is that's its really a closet within a closet....confused? So were we. There the big "normal" closet and then behind that is a deep (and dark) cubby hole with shelves. It's great for extra storage, but pretty inaccessable, hopefully we can find a way to make it a little more functional.

 Another view of the living room, this time from the corner where the other window is.

 View from the kitchen out into the living room. I think Lola was trying to escape...

 Moving on from the woody goodness of the living room we go into the kitchen. This picture is looking into the kitchen from the living room door way. It's hard to tell in this picture but there's a second door in the kitchen that leads to the basement stairs and the dining room. The kitchen as a whole is a good size, but a little light on cabinet space and counter tops.

 And there's avacado green appliances....

 Looking into the kitchen from the other door.

 Structural quirk #2....another deep, dark cabinet that is just kindof "floating" in the wall opposite the sink and cabinets. Not really sure what do do with it yet...

As you walk out of the kitchen door you're met with the back door to the house, a door to the dining room and the basement stairs. Forgive me for not getting pictures of the dining room entrance, but here are the basement stairs...exciting, right?

The picture below is of the dining room while standing in the hall/doorway off the kitchen, right by the stairs. The dining room used to be a 3rd bedroom, but during the house remodel a second doorway was added (the one I'm standing in to take the picture) and the room was converted into a dining room. The other door you see in the picture leads out into the hall and the two bedrooms ( you can see a sliver of the guest bedroom). Behind that open door is a closet (a remnant from when the room was a bedroom)

The dining room from the other doorway. The china cabinet in the wall was another additon during the rennovations...I have big plans for it!

 I call this the "dining nook" and it's where our dining room table will eventually live...assuming we get one. For reference, I'm standing over by the built in cabinet.

 Here's the master bedroom. The door for this room is directly across the hall from the door into the dining room. There are only those two small windows in the room, so not much in the way of natural light.

 Master bedroom again.

 And again.

Moving down the hall from the master bed room you come to the spare room, which for us will be an office/guest bedroom (sorry for the entierly too dark picture).

 The spare room again, looking out into the hall. If you were to walk out of this room you could either go straight into the living room, turn right into the bathroom or turn left and head back to the master bedroom and dining room.

One more.

 And finally we come to the bathroom...the itty bitty bathroom. Jeremy and I joke that everytime we move we end up with a smaller and smaller bathroom; we started huge and keep downsizing. Maybe someday we can expand this one.

Blue sink and toilet...someday to be replaced with white.

 So that's the main floor of the house. One thing that's hard to tell from all these pictures is that the house is laid out in a circle, with a "column" in the center; the column being the basement stairs and the various closets and built-ins. Yeah, I was confused at first too...don't worry, I'll post a floor plan. Next up...a little field trip outside!