Our House

Here it is – my current house layout.

It’s not terrible, but it is weird. This home was turned into a duplex, and it seems like not a whole lot was taken into consideration about the layout.

It works fine, but late at night I wonder, why are there two closets in my bedroom?

That was a joke, but seriously, why two closets? Any why is the bedroom so big (it’s bigger than any bedroom I’ve ever seen)? And why is there almost no counter space in the kitchen?

For those who’re new, my husband and I have been looking for a new property. Originally, we wanted to get off this street and onto a secluded spot of land. However, financially, that was a long and arduous process. An opportunity has presented itself for us to buy the apartment we live in and no longer rent. I like the idea of not renting, but this wasn’t what I had in mind.

Nevertheless, this seems to be what’s happening, and with some renovation, I think this place will be adorable.

The house is in a great location. Unfortunately, a different owner owns the connecting apartment, and I have no idea how to contact them. But perhaps in the future.

For now, I want to focus on the half that’s mine and fix it up to be adorable.

One thing you may have noticed is that my house seems pretty closed off. I really want a more open space.

Mostly, I want to be able to talk to my husband in the bedroom from the kitchen, and I want to be able to move the fridge.

Here’s one weird thing I learned a few months ago: the fridge cannot be moved out of the kitchen.

Right now, the fridge is in the back of the kitchen. That’s a problem when I’m cooking and my husband wants a drink, because we bump into each other or I end up stopping what I’m doing, getting the drink, and then passing it to him. To fix this, we tried moving the fridge to the dining room. It’s right past the end of the kitchen, and that would open up space to put our microwave where the fridge is. Good idea – yes? It may have been, but we learned that the fridge is wider than the doorway.

We need to do some work on the backyard so we have a place to put the dogs while we work, but after that, the wall between the kitchen and hallway has to go. Then, we can put in an island where the hallway is now, and the kitchen will double in size.

Then, we can put in a half-wall between the kitchen and dining room.

Isn’t that so much more open?

I’d really love to get crazy and push the laundry and water heater into the huge closet and have my kitchen space be that much bigger, but I don’t want to get ahead of myself with planning.

One other big thing we’ll need to be doing is painting. We painted a little years ago, but we didn’t do a lot since it was a rental. Now that we’re buying it, this rental apartment off-white has to go. The walls are just off-white enough to look dirty.

We did paint the dining room previously, and I love it. It’s a bright turquoise, and it looks fantastic with our dark furniture. I’m thinking we should do a light brown on most of the walls with accent walls.

A whole room of toasted pumpkin might be too much, but one wall of it could be perfect.

Of course, we’ll also see what the stores have in the paint mistake section. I haven’t ever had reason to look for it, but I’ve heard from multiple sources about how stores have a section of discounted paints where they place paint that someone else ordered the wrong color of. I think that’s a grand idea!

Talking about all these plans makes me want to start them right now, but my husband’s at work, and I shouldn’t go knocking down walls without talking to someone first.

We also need to get a mortgage loan. We’re going to be as creative as we can, but we’re going to end up spending a fair amount renovating this place. One thing that should help in that area is that we don’t mind doing the work. A lot of building costs are just labor. We’re young and healthy, so I don’t see a reason we can’t do most of this ourselves (hence, we’re going to try and work around the current water and electric lines since we don’t fully know how to fix them).

As always, I’ll be posting updates as they happen, but much more will get done over the weekends since the husband will be home to do any heavy lifting.