An Outside Tour

Welcome family and friends!  I thought this would be an interesting way to show everyone our new project and keep our circle posted as we work our way through renovations.  

I think most people already know the story of how we got to here, so maybe I'll save those details for another blog post at another time.  The short story is that we are, after many trials and tribulations, finally buying a house in a small town in southern Minnesota, just a few minutes from the college where I teach.

It took a lot of looking and a few false steps to find something that we both felt really good about. The surprising thing (I think to both of us) is that this house is nowhere near perfect!  However, it has a lot of the good things we wanted: traditional charm and character, good layout/size, and good location .  We even got a couple of bonuses (like a two car garage--woohoo!) and a partially finished basement, though there are a few sacrifices we'll have to make (the back yard isn't ideal, but we can work with it, and our second bathroom is in the basement, which seems to be a pretty common thing here--but at least we have a second bathroom).

The biggest problem with the house is that it desperately needs an update from its tired, 1980s decor (it was built in 1935 but clearly underwent some sort of bad redecoration a few decades back).  This is exactly what I've been looking for--a cosmetic fixer upper!  The bones of the house are great, but it needs wallpaper removal, paint, and some new fixtures to turn it into a totally new house. The best part is that its been on the market for a while and the price had been dropped significantly, so we got it for a steal and we'll be able to put some money into fixing it up in our style.

I've got too many pictures to post all at once, so I'll just work my way through the house one post at a time.  Today: the outside:

The front of the house.  I find this somewhat amusing because this house is similar in look to the house I grew up in.  Not intentional!

Looking west down our street--I love all the green!  Lots of mature trees in the neighborhood, which was a must-have for us.

This is the view across the street--our neighbors have a huge yard!  More green!

One of the things we love about this house is that it's in a great neighborhood, and most of the other houses around it are larger, nicer, and more expensive.  So, we're looking forward to bringing our house up to their level!

You can't see it in that last photo, but if you continued down that street a little ways, there's a lovely park with a pond (lots of baby geese), bandshell, biking trails, and even a dog park!  It's a really beautiful area of town.

The front entryway

This is a peek at the front of the house, and a preview of what's to come (hideous wallpaper inside the entryway--more on that later).  Here's our plan to spruce up the entryway:

• Fresh paint on pillars/overhang
• New lighting fixture and mailbox
• New house numbers
• Potted plants on front stoop
• Repaint the front door?  Still deciding on that one. 

This is the view looking down the east side of the house.  The car you see parked is in our driveway, in front of our garage.

Here you can see the garage entrance and the little enclosed patio between the house and the garage.

The layout is sort of funky (why did they build the garage so close to the house and not at the back of the lot?), but I see it as a great opportunity to create an outdoor room in this adorable little patio we have right off the back of the house.  The pictures don't show much, and it's pretty much a blank slate right now, but believe me--I have a vision in my head!

Here's the view once you've stepped inside the patio.

That's our living room to the left, and the entrance to the garage is to the right.  The garage isn't attached, but it's a quick easy walk to our back door--that'll be nice in winter!  You can see there's already a great big vine growing on the trellis--I gotta figure out what that is...

If you turn around 180 degrees, this is the rest of the patio.

Again, total blank slate right now--but so much potential.

If you look up from where you're standing in that last photo, here's the "Romeo & Juliet" balcony!

Our home inspector told us that this balcony isn't very structurally sound (he was basically like, "You can stand on it, but I wouldn't jump up and down") but that's ok.  It's the perfect size for a few potted plants, and to step outside and test the weather when getting ready in the morning (the door is off of the landing near the bathroom/upstairs hallway).

Plans for this patio area include:

• Power wash balcony & fresh coat of paint
• Clean out patio floor (it needs a good sweep)
• Add lots of potted plants
• Add vine to east trellis, so that will be covered in green
• Fresh coat of paint on gate
• Add love seat, small dining table & chairs, and hopefully soon a grill!
• Decorate with lanterns & string lights (I found these but OUCH on the price!  Then I found these for a fraction of the price--thank you, Target!)

We do also have a small yard area behind the garage, which is nice since it's off the street and it's quiet.

Looking from the driveway towards the yard

Opposite view, yard towards garage

This is actually in pretty decent shape, but we'll do some landscaping improvements next summer, potentially to include:

• Finish fencing yard fully so that Brody can hang out unattended--the one strip by the driveway that you can see in the above picture is the only part that isn't already fenced, so it would be easy to do
• Remove dead plants, perhaps add some taller bushes along back fence for privacy
• Fix up patio and add seating--there's a nice mature tree there, so it would be a great shady place to read a book.

So there's the outside tour.  Next stop: the inside and some awesome wallpaper.  Did I say awesome?  I meant completely hideous.