Our house is 51 years old. Ever since moving here, I have been very interested in knowing what life was like in the 60s, so I could better understand what sort of life the original owners lived when they moved here. What did their kitchen look like? How did they put their living room furniture? How did they decorate, and did they like the dark paneling in the bedrooms? In some ways, I think it will help me decorate our house to compliment the features (especially because our house hasn’t been updated much from how it looked originally).

Today I was playing around with Photoshop, and I liked how this picture turned out. I took it yesterday, but it looks like it was taken in the 60s (minus the car!). Maybe when we finish painting the front I’ll take another one and be sure to move the car to the street first. :-)

(Someday I want to make this picture into a header for this blog.)

I haven’t been writing in here recently because there hasn’t been much to update. Projects have come to a standstill while we start saving money to fix the foundation. I am hoping to save it in a year, so that 2012 can be focused on projects like the kitchen and bathroom. Originally, we were planning on getting the backyard fixed right now, but I am not sure about that either. If they’re going to be bringing in bobcats and digging holes to fix the foundation, I kinda don’t want them to do that over new grass, you know what I mean? However, the question remains how bad is the lack of drainage? Can we wait another year to fix it? How much worse is the foundation going to be if we wait?

We’d like to spend this spring working on making our yard look nice, manual labor. I still need to redeem my Groupon. I tried to redeem it at the end of the summer, but I think they got overwhelmed and when I tried to make my appointment they said they weren’t redeeming any more Groupons through the end of October, and then it was winter and seemed silly to have someone come cut my grass. I’m thinking in a month or two will be a great time to redeem it!

One project I have for the spring is I’d like to paint the shutters. I’ve been thinking about it a while, and will write a separate blog post about it later. Exciting! :-)

I’ve been trying to figure out what should be our next project in our house. I’d really like to work on details this winter, especially those little projects that don’t cost money. Example, putting up the pictures around our house. Sanding the walls and touching up paint. Finding good organizational solutions, and taking boxes to Goodwill to clear out some of the clutter.

In the meantime, Paul and I have talked about getting the backyard taken care of. We’re not planning to do anything fancy, but we definitely need to get the whole yard graded and grass put in. At the same time, we’ll fix the water issue to keep our foundation from getting worse.

It’s absolutely pouring here right now, and every time it rains I see the water rushing and I am reminded that this is important and needs to be taken care of!

I have posts in mind but recently haven’t had the motivation to sit and write. Hopefully I’ll figure out a way to get over that.

A long time ago, someone sent me a link to a website called Young House Love. It’s about a couple our age who bought a 54 year old house, and in the past 4 years have updated and renovated it to create a beautiful, stylish home for their family. I love reading their website, and at the time it inspired me to start this blog.

I had lost the link until today, when Joanna linked to it on Twitter. I was very excited! I spent part of the evening reading through it again, and getting inspired.

It’s easy to get discouraged about our house because the projects seem so expensive. We don’t *have* $15,000 to fix our foundation. We probably will never have the money to do all the things I want, like tear out all the paneling and put in drywall. I’m trying to be content with what we have.

If you want to get inspired, take a poke around Young House Love, especially their before/after pictures. Hopefully our house will look just as beautiful someday. :-)

I complain a lot about our house, but really I need to focus on the positives. So here are some things I love.

1) I love our neighborhood. I initially refused to look here, and only consented because it was the only affordable thing we could find, but I’ve been surprised at how much I like it. It’s a pleasant neighborhood with lots of trees, no HOA, very close to the train station, we’re a block away from the bus stop, and we’re only a mile each from 2 major highways. We can get downtown in about 15 or 20 minutes, which I love. We’re technically in the suburbs, but we’re closer to the city than to the real outlying suburbs.
2) I love the bay window. It’s so pleasant and lets in so much light.
3) I really like the yellow we painted all the walls. I wanted to get something light and neutral to start, and this is perfect I think.
4) I like the original hardwood floors. We had them cleaned before moving in and they turned out beautiful! They’re in great condition too for being 50 years old.
5) I love our stove/oven. It came with the house, and I assumed it would be cheap or old, but I have been pleasantly surprised. I love cooking on gas.
6) Now that we have the den fixed up, I really like having that space down there to put all of Savannah’s toys. I think it will be especially useful when we have more than one!
7) I like the split-level layout. It’s more interesting, in my opinion. I like that our house is not too big, but big enough that we could raise a family here if we wanted.
8) I like the size of the bedrooms. Some of the houses we looked at had big master bedrooms and teeny-tiny other bedrooms. Our room is about the same size as the guest room, and they are both a good size I think. Savannah’s room is smaller, but still definitely big enough for her.
9) I like that we have a utility room big enough to put shelves for storage. It’s a good size, and I prefer storing things indoors if possible. It’s also small enough to keep us from going crazy, hanging onto things we don’t need.
10) I am grateful for central air. I doubt there was central air when this house was built, so I am grateful that a previous owner added that.
11) I am glad there is a half bath in addition to the full bath – I hated living in a place with only one bathroom, especially when we had guests.
12) I like having a yard big enough to do something like have a garage sale if I want to. Or have a slip & slide. Or a kiddie pool.

Today is the one year anniversary of closing on our house! Our closing went really well, for which I was grateful. It wasn’t until after it was over and we said goodbye to our realtor that I finally breathed a sigh of relief and admitted to myself that we actually WERE going to own a house!

I thought our journey was over, but really it had just begun! I have learned SO much this past year. It has been a real struggle for me to find pride in our house, and not focus on all the work that still needs to be done. I think this blog helps a bit with that – trying to channel the “adventure” aspect instead of the “burden” aspect.

I think if I could pass on advice to others, here’s what I would say:
1) Don’t move into a house and have a baby at the same time, if you can help it. Give yourself time to enjoy your baby. It’s okay that you don’t have a house yet – your baby won’t notice. :-)
2) Be willing to walk away from a house, especially if you start seeing red flags. There are others out there. I wanted this neighborhood so badly and I thought this house was the only way to live here, but in the past year there have been several other houses on the market which may have served us just as well. (Or maybe not, but still…)
3) Houses built before 1978 have really high labor costs (if you get a contractor) because of a new law passed last April that require contractors to take certain hazard precautions. Unless you’re willing to do everything yourself or it has already been done by previous owners, think hard and seriously before buying an older house.
4) Fixer uppers are great, but only if you have the money. Going from two incomes to one at the same time as having a baby, may not be the BEST time to buy a fixer-upper. Make sure you have a lot in savings.
5) There will ALWAYS be more “wrong” with the house that you discover later!! So if you barely have enough to fix the problems that you see at first, then maybe you should walk away.

I think overall my advice is… patience, young grasshopper. Or maybe that’s just what I’m lacking myself. :-)

I got a digital copy of our land from the survey company, and I thought I’d share it here (with identifying features and measurements removed). The first is the map of our house on our property with the sun porch and deck, and the second is with them removed (since they are now gone!!!).

Also, the grey line with the x’s is the chain-link fence, so you can see how the fence deviates from the property. I hope this makes more sense… I feel like it’s really difficult to explain how our house sits on our property (and how close we are to the neighbor’s!). Click on the picture to see it bigger.

If you’re ever building a house… please stop and think about where it sits on the property, and don’t try to get all cute by angling it.

By the way, there is 8 ft. from the top left corner of our house to the edge of our property. I’m pretty sure that violates current setback laws!