The Plan

While we love the "basics" about our new house, I'm sure you can tell that it needs quite a bit of updating! We are of course doing much of the obvious work: taking down wall paper, pulling up carpet, etc. But we are also doing some larger structural changes as well.

Our plan is to to do as much as we can before we move in. We're thankful that my parents are graciously letting us live in their basement in the meantime! We will do a good bit of the work now, particularly upstairs, so that we're not trying to live in a constructions zone. Later, we may come back and finish out the basement, update the guest bathroom, clear out the back yard, etc. We are also planning on using the old appliances to start out (leaving space for new ones, of course) and updating those gradually. We have hired a contractor to do a lot of the work, but are also trying to do as much as we can ourselves to save money. Right now we are spending most nights and weekends working at the house. It is exhausting, but also fun (most of the time)!

First, we are opening up the living space upstairs. We are taking out all of the walls that separate the den, kitchen, living, and dining rooms. We are moving the stairs (which were previously right in the middle of the house) to the far right of the room, against the wall that currently separates the den from the guest bedroom. The kitchen will be along the far left wall and have a large island that separates it from the rest of the living space. We are also building in a large pantry that I am very excited about! We are adding a coat closet in part of the space that is currently the entry way.

Because we are moving the stairs, we are having to do a bit of reconfiguring in the basement. Although most of that will wait until a later date, we are going ahead and building a laundry room that connects to the half bath (which we eventually plan on making a full bath). Down the road, we will finish out a couple of rooms in the basement - probably another bedroom and an office or playroom - and have an unfinished workshop in addition to the two car garage.

We are taking a small portion of the master bathroom right off the hall and closing it in to be a powder room. This will keep the master from also being the hall bath. We will reconfigure the master so that it still has the full tub and has a decent sized vanity with two sinks. The powder room will slide out a bit into the entry way, making room for a linen closet in the hallway, between it and the master bedroom.

Currently, the master bedroom only has one closet. It is decent sized, but not a walk-in. The back bedroom, however, has another pretty good sized closet that shares a wall with the master. We are basically just moving the door on that closet so that it opens into the master instead of the guest bedroom. The current linen closet will be closed up in the hallway (since we are adding in a new linen closet next to the powder room) and opened up into that back bedroom, so that all of the bedrooms still have closets.

Next spring we will work on the outside of the house, doing some painting and landscaping in the front. At some point we will start clearing out the back as well!