Daniel and I bought our first house in August of 2009. It's a 3 bedroom 1 bath (ugh) ranch style house in the most perfect location. We live on a cul-de-sac in a suburb in Rochester, minutes from all my favorite shopping locations and restaurants. It's about 5 minutes from where I work and about 15 minutes from where Daniel works. We absolutely love our neighbors! We couldn't have asked for more awesome people to live by us. They're all married couples (except one house) all around our age and we get along with them very well.
When we first started house hunting, we were sure we wanted a modular home. We were thinking that was the only way we would get everything we wanted in our first home. However, after working the numbers with a few of the companies we wanted to deal with, we kind of knew that we would have to save a little longer if that's what we wanted to do, but our living situation at the time didn't allow us that much time. We worked with a friend of the family who is a real estate agent and she started by asking about our wish list. We knew we wanted at least a 3 bedroom, some land, central air, a garage and we knew where we wanted to look first. Within a few months of searching and getting our pre-approval from the bank, we found our first home. We had only looked at a few. Seeing this house after looking at all the other ones, we knew we had found the one. We put in the offer, it was accepted and we closed on August 20th, 2009.
We've had our ups and downs with this house as most homeowners do. There were a few things that we needed to fix, but it was mostly move in ready. Since we've lived in the house we've done a few minor projects and one major project. The minor ones included staining our fireplace a dark wood to match with the rest of our furniture, taking some trees out of the back of the house and in the front, taking down the post and beam fence that was falling down in the front yard, and some painting. Last January we completely redid our bathroom and had our entire house re-wired. That was an unexpected project, but it needed to be done. We hit a few road blocks every now and then, but I guess it's normal for an older house. Here are some pictures of our house as well as some before and after shots:
Our House:
Living Room Before:
Living Room After:
Dining Room Before:
Dining Room After:
Kitchen Before:
Kitchen After:
Bathroom Before:
Bathroom After:
Hallway Before:
Hallway After:
Master Bedroom:
Backyard:
And that's our home!! Our backyard isn't huge, but it works for us. It backs up into forever wilds, so it's a no build zone. There are no neighbors back there and we have complete privacy, well besides the critters and deer that sometimes wander in our yard, but other than that, we love it. Daniel made a fire pit as you can see there, it's surrounded by mulch. When we first moved in there was a huge pool that took up that entire area, but we took it out cause it was disgusting.
I didn't take pictures of the basement or our spare bedrooms cause there's not really much to see at this point. Our one spare bedroom is just a guest room, I have a nice bed in there, a vanity and some of my clothes and the other spare bedroom is Daniel's office. It's super messy and unorganized and there is no way I'm showing that, lol. Our basement is huge, but also nothing really to see down there. We have a little sitting area set up and lots of laundry that needs to be folded taking up the real estate down there. Part of the basement is finished and some of it's not, that is where washer and dryer is along with Daniel's work benches and lots of holiday decor that's stored. Speaking of holiday, here is a picture of our Christmas tree and holiday decor in our living room from last year:
We're still not even close to done doing all the things we want to do to the house. We really want to get the kitchen redone, the cabinets the flooring, the paint (again), but funds haven't allowed us to do so just yet. We want to put a half bath in the basement, re-do the deck, refinish our hardwood floors, get carpeting in the living room (easier for babies), and a few more little projects. I'm not sure we'll ever get done with everything, but it's nice to dream.
Hope you enjoyed the tour!
