Finally...the HOUSE!!!

Okay, fair warning here...this post is going to be super-fantastically long. I just edited my photos and am looking at posting around 40+ photos on here and most of them aren't even that exciting, but they explain the house design. (you can click on any of them to see the details a bit better.)

If you don't know the backstory about us buying this house...go read these posts HERE and HERE.

When it came to buying our forever house, we had a few wants/needs:

1. the house needed to be 3 bedroom with 2 extra rooms. The 2 extra rooms serve as our office/library and my craft room so we were completely open about what these rooms could be...formal dining room (as long as there was an eat-in kitchen), extra bedroom, loft, etc. We aren't picky, we just have to have the extra rooms.

2. we wanted the house to have a large lot (we were hoping 1+ acres) because we plan on planting a decent sized garden.

3. we did not want the house to be situated so that we could see what our neighbors were watching on tv or having for dinner.

4. Ben really wanted a shop/large outdoor storage building.

This is what we are buying....

and now I don't even know where to go on the explanation of this house! *eek*

It's a beautiful *HUGE* (much bigger than we had planned) house that was built in 1979. The house is in impeccable shape, but has a few cosmetic things that need to be updated. As we go through the photos, I'll explain those.

Facts about the house:

*3200 sq. feet

*4 bedroom 

*3 bath

*craft room

*formal dining room

*outdoor workshop

*approx 1 1/2 acres

*covered porch on the back

*mature trees throughout the property which include red oak, live oak, and several pecans (used to be a pecan orchard so there are pecan trees throughout the entire neighborhood)

*on a private road with 12 total houses which form the home owners association which maintains the road and leases the private river access at the end of the road from the city

This is good view at how big some of these trees are with Ben standing beside this live oak. That branch right above his head would be perfect for a swing for Kat.

This is our front door. It has this beautiful leaded glass inset, but because of the style of the architecture on the front of the house and the color of the wood, it looks really dated from a distance. I plan on painting the wood red and think that will help the dated issue a bit.

This is one of three canna planters throughout the yard. This one happens to be in the backyard and gives you a good view of our gorgeous wood fence (that needs to be painted) that surrounds the entire backyard.

This is the living room. It's a sunken living room with painted wood paneling. This room is gorgeous! I adore that rock fireplace!!! Unfortunately, I am not so fond of the fireplace screen which has been cemented (!?!?!?) into the rock face of the fireplace...not too sure how we are going to fix that yet.

Yes, it was the 70's and here we have the wet bar to prove it, complete with black lacquer sink (the handles are frozen up on it so it is for decorating purposes only.) ;o) I actually don't mind this so much except for those glass shelves. At some point this summer, those will be coming out and replaced with wood wine bottle/glass racks to better suit our style of drinking.  This room is HUGE and because we have all this extra space and three extra high barstools with nothing to do with them in this house, we plan on buying a high table to sit in this corner of the room for drinking/game playing, etc.

The other side of the fireplace has this gorgeous built-in bookcase. I opened the doors here to show the storage inside.

And here is the kitchen. This is an eat-in kitchen with a formal dining room next door (which will serve as our office/library.)

Throughout the house are these gorgeous wallpapers that will be removed immediately upon closing of the house. Here is the close-up of the one in the kitchen...

On the eat-in side of the kitchen is this great little built in desk area (more views of the gorgeous wallpaper!)

One of the other first things to go will be these laminate countertops. They look brand new (and I am pretty sure that they are) and we probably could have stood leaving them if they hadn't wrapped them up the ENTIRE backsplash...combined with that super-shiny faux marble look, it really makes the countertops look dated. We also plan on painting all of the cabinets immediately upon closing on the house a creamy white color and accenting the molding on them by rubbing a bit of stain over the grooves.

The appliances in here are gorgeous, clean, and all fairly new. The only thing we will have to buy is a refrigerator.

Brand new, beautiful sink....

Going back to the living room for a minute so you can figure out the layout of the house. This is looking at the front door from the back door across the backside of the sunken living room. That is the entryway/front door. Immediately to the left of that is the dining room and through that is the kitchen. That entry way is an old dark tile. It has a somewhat dated look, but quite honestly, it doesn't bother me at all and will be staying. The light fixture will be going though. ;o) There is a hall going down the right side (you can almost see it here) and that leads to the kids rooms.

This is looking at the back door in the living room. There is that big expanse of windows there that look out over the backyard and to the right of that is the wall with the bookcase/fireplace/wet bar. That other doorway there leads into the master suite (and it is a master suite in EVERY sense of the word!)

And here is the master bedroom. It is huge...20x21 (not including the INCREDIBLE bathroom/closet space...just wait till you see that!) and yes, it has teal carpet. This will be replaced with wood flooring as soon as we close on the house.

The other thing to go will be the gorgeous matching wall border...

And now just to give you a hint of what is to come....here is the bank (i.e. control board) of light switches that operate the lights in the master bathroom.

Here is that huge vanity that you could see from the bedroom. There is not a door to close off the bathroom from the bedroom and with these 16 (?!?!?) lights across here, I don't know how anyone ever slept in the bedroom if their spouse was awake. The doorway is 44" across and we are trying to come up with a plan on how to close it off because Ben and I are definitely NOT on the same sleep schedule.

As you come around the end of the vanity, you can see this great bay window which looks over a tiny little private garden area. There is room enough in that window to place a bench/seating of some sort.

To the left of that bay window is this incredible (and huge!) waterfall jetted bathtub. Yes, that back wall is all mirror. *eek* I think I am going to be getting much more stricter about my diet/exercise routine very quickly...LOL!

Looking to the other side of the bay window and this is what you see...HUGE shower, linen closet built-ins (OMG, do you see those?!?!), and the private toilet area.

Another view of that linen closet area just in case you missed how incredible it is...and yes, those are his/her matching laundry chutes on the left. hehe.

When you are standing at the vanity, this is what's directly behind you. The closet (cue the angels singing because look at those built-ins!!) But try to ignore the duck border wallpaper...LOL!

A view from inside the closet (and believe it or not, it is BIGGER than it looks!?!) You can barely see them over on the right, but down there, those are her (i.e. MINE) shoe racks and to the right here are his shoe racks.

And the little toilet area isn't much to show, but it even has a telephone jack and a built-in magazine rack....

The whole bathroom has this tray ceiling (with the popcorn finish which throughout the entire house.) I can handle the stripes in this bathroom, but not the ducks. I am trying to come up with a solution that will just cover the ducks that we don't have to strip the entire bathroom.

And now we come to the craft area. This area is just off the kitchen/living area part of the house. This first section right here is the utility room. Looking at this picture right here, this first part is the washer/dryer area with 3 built-in cabinets (you can only see 2 here) above. Past that little half wall is another built in desk and you can barely see the edge of a doorframe to the left...that is the doorway to my craft room.

A good view of the desk area. Because this is immediately outside the doorway of the craft room, I plan on setting up my sewing machine here and using all these cabinets as storage for my craft supplies. I plan on painting all these cabinets in all these rooms too the same color as the kitchen.

This is the opposite wall in the laundry room. There are 2 closets in here, a place for an additional fridge and that little painted door there is the built-in ironing board. Through that doorway is the craft room.

Another built in cabinet IN the craft room (looking back through the doorway to the laundry area.)

The view from the opposite corner with the door closed.

The craft room looks out over the backyard and has this great screen door so that I can keep an eye on Kat if she is out there playing. You can also see the workshop that is out across the backyard that is also ours.

More views of the backyard and our pretty fence.

This is the corner of the yard where we are tentatively planning on planting the garden (without blocking that great double-gate that you can see there.)

The inside of Ben's HUGE workshop (that big red building you could see from the craft room.)

The view of the backyard standing at the workshop and looking back at the house.

And I haven't even talked about the 3 other bedrooms yet!?! Because we have a craft room and a dining room, we actually ended up with an extra bedroom. We really don't have a need for a spare guest bedroom since we live so close to family and they are usually the only ones that stay overnight with us, so we have come up with a plan...

Two of the bedrooms are pretty small (11x11) and separated by this Jack&Jill bathroom, so we have decided to give BOTH of those bedrooms to Jacob (the 15 year old.) One can serve as his bedroom and the other can be his "living room" where he can bring friends over to hang out and watch tv. I personally LOVE this idea! Jacob is one of those guys who tends to have lots of friends who are girls. This way when they want to hang out, they aren't hanging out on his bed. It's a win-win for all of us!

Here is the view of one of his rooms (and him busily planning.) Notice the beautiful 70's blinds that he actually wants to keep...LOL!

The view of his other room. For some reason (which I cannot fathom,) he does not want to keep those gorgeous balloon curtains.

And I don't have any great photos of Kat's bedroom, but here is the gorgeous light fixture (there are actually two of those globes) that is on the guest use side of her bathroom (this bathroom has a great design so that she has a separate vanity area from the guest vanity area and then the bath/toilet area is in between the two.) Oh, and another great wallpaper here that you can't see in this photo, but it has a shimmer to it....yup, major work here too immediately after closing!

Finally, here are some views of the neighborhood's private dock area at the end of the cul-de-sac on the Concho River....

Whew! So are you still with me? LOL....I know that was a lot. We have a LOT of work ahead of us over the summer!

Immediately upon closing, we want to:

*rip up teal carpet and replace with wood flooring in our bedroom

*strip wallpaper throughout the ENTIRE house

*repaint the ENTIRE house

*paint all the kitchen cabinets

*replace all kitchen cabinet handles

Soon thereafter we want to:

*replace kitchen countertop

*tile backsplash in the kitchen

*repaint utility room/craft room cabinets

*replace antler light fixture in dining room (how did I miss getting photos of that to show you?!?!)

*replace light fixture in entryway

*replace light fixture and mirror in guest bath area

*put door on our bathroom

*replace light fixtures in hallway

*figure out a way to cover ducks in our bathroom

Hopefully this summer, we will get done:

*painting floor in workshop and general clean-up in there

*paint outdoor fence

*rework wet bar to make it more of a wine storage area

*rework insides of pantry shelves in kitchen

*prep/build raised beds for garden area

*build fire pit area in backyard

*get club chairs re-upholstered

Things we need to buy:

*refrigerator

*riding lawn mower

*lawn furniture

*Jacob new bed (Kat's going to inherit his old one- I think, since she keeps falling out of her current one and he needs something more grown up) and dresser

*high table for wine area

*more seating for living area

It's a crazy process and I plan to keep you all informed as we go through it all, but first we have to make it to closing on June 15th and then the adventure begins....