New House Reveal!

Mr. Cheddar signed the lease yesterday at 1:00.

We are renting-to-own, as I've mentioned before, and it's a 70's style house in a small town outside of Tallahassee.

Now... prepare yourselves. The pictures Mr. C snapped on his iPhone are not very pretty. This house is not our dream house as it looks right now, but it has great potential if we stay diligent and budget properly for the next couple of years. There isn't a single room or aspect of this house that doesn't need work--it's a fixer-upper in every sense.

First, a rough floorplan I drew up on floorplanner.com (and then was forced to re-create and edit in Photoshop since Floorplanner has some irreversible glitches). 

I'm phenomenally horrible at spatial reasoning. Just... completely hopeless. So obviously, all of these dimensions are off (like I'm sure Guest Room #3 isn't that long, the master bedroom is certainly not that big) and minor details don't make a lot of sense. One thing that is accurate is the size of the bathrooms, especially compared to the rest of the rooms. Postage stamp-sized bathrooms! The homebuilders must not have spent a lot of time gussying up. But we'll get to that.

Now, on to some pictures.

That is a red kitchen floor. A RED KITCHEN FLOOR.

This is a shot from the door to the carport. When I pictured my dream kitchen, I never pictured an alley kitchen. The very thought of this room made me nauseous, at first my stubborn mind could not rectify this room and make it into my dream kitchen, and I kept making the case to Mr. Cheddar to keep looking around, since I was pretty sure I'd be miserable in this room.

But that's just stupid. As he rightly pointed out, alley kitchens have their advantages--less steps from sink to stove, for instance--and there is a small breakfast nook on the right bottom side of this picture that we could fill with more cabinets to actually make room for my considerable stuff. It's not a bad room at all.

But those cabinets have to go--inside, they're all made of uncovered particle board. Original to the house. I wanted our kitchen to be our first project, but with a complete cabinet overhaul, it's something that will have to stay on the (ahem) backburner.

Do you see the brick masonry in the entryway just past the kitchen? That's also coming up one day. I love a beautiful red brick exterior, but I'm not a fan of it in my house. Except maybe in a rustic Tuscan-style kitchen. Even then, it'd be in the walls and not in the floor.

This is a blurry shot of the living/dining room space from the kitchen. Obviously that chandelier signifies that the dining room table used to sit there.

It's looking like, if we extend the kitchen the way I want to, we're also going to use this area as our main dining area.

I have big, big plans for this entire room. It's shaping up to be our first big project!

The view down the stairs from the foyer. (You can sort of see this in the shot of the kitchen too.)

So. Much. Wood. Paneling. We haven't decided if we're going to paint them or if we want to tear it all down and start from scratch. It's not staying though. Wood paneling is the opposite of Batman. It's basically the Britta of interior decorating.

The stairs need to get refinished; all of the wood floors need it but the stairs need it the most. We're hoping refinishing will be enough, but I'm afraid "replacement" is going to be the keyword eventually.

Straight ahead is the downstairs guest room, and to the left are the doors to the laundry room and the future Man Cave. (Yes. We will have one of those. That is what we'll call it. And I am really excited about it.)

Don't let those floors deceive you--they are not carpet. They're some sort of laminate flooring, like what you find in supermarkets.

The laundry room! I'm actually excited about this one. None of the houses I'd lived in had laundry/garage sinks (like for rinsing paintbrushes or other things you don't want in your kitchen sink) until we lived in the house Justin's parents were renting for the past year. That sink was a lifesaver, and I'm excited to have one again!

Even better, there's a whole right side of the laundry room that Mr. Cheddar took one look at, then turned to me and said, "You could do your mudroom thing right here!"

I guess I lament Florida's lack of mudrooms enough that it stuck in his brain. Mudrooms ideally go by the door most often used as an entrance/exit (like a door from the garage) so you don't track snow (or in our case, mud from rain) into your house. But the concept is still solid--I could build a mudroom structure that functions the same, just not by the main doors.

This room is conspicuously missing one thing... a washer. The renter regretfully informed Mr. Cheddar that he wanted to fix the broken one, but it was going to cost more than just getting a new one. Mr. Cheddar called me right after signing the lease and told me to start searching for washers, and I giddily jumped at the opportunity. Since then, we've picked one out!

Image courtesy of Lowes

This is a Samsung front-loader, one of the many I've been drooling over for months. Hubs is saddened by the fact that we have to immediately buy an appliance (and something as crucial as a washer! We could've done without a dishwasher or an oven for a couple of months, but we kinda need a washer...) but I couldn't contain my excitement.

I think after being broke for two years--as in, putting our student loans in forbearance, figuring out semi-healthy meals that could feed two people on $10, leaving my car parked in the driveway for three weeks when it stopped cranking, and, for me at least, the humiliating task of filling out unemployment forms--none of this seems real. And part of me is afraid Mr. Cheddar will never pull the trigger on spending money on something until that old something that we want to replace is broken. I totally get his hesitation--neither of us ever want to be this broke again--but if he's the Mr. Penny Pincher in our little newlywed family, then someone has to be the cheerleader who convinces him every once in a while to crack open that wallet, right?

So I guess I was excited because we HAVE to spend this money, he has no reason to say no, and I am determined to find the best bang for our new bucks. It's still nerve-wracking, but in a good way... after all, this is the way our nerves should've been wracked for the past two years, instead of all of that heartbreaking cancer stuff.  We're starting to feel like proper newlyweds!

Somewhere down the line, we will buy the matching dryer as well. Since the old one doesn't appear to need replacing, we can live with it until we have enough $$$ saved up to get the washer's life partner.

This is the space the washer has to fit into. We're a little concerned, since it looks pretty narrow and our chosen washer is 27". But Mr. Cheddar is going to venture back out there with a tape measure one day this week.

Oh look! More wood paneling! An entire room of it! With matching shelving! 

This is the Man Cave. This will be Mr. Cheddar's entertainment room; less of a retreat from the rest of the house and more of a place for him to veg with our eclectic furniture. Like the hand-me-down recliner we got from our former Tallahassee neighbor. Plus the custom-made La-Z-Boy recliner his mum had made a few years back for herself, which is now sitting unused in his dad's house. I have my heart set on bringing that thing with us (it's one of the few material things left that we all instantly identify as "hers" and I want to take care of it properly) but that's not a done deal. If it does come with us, it will live in this room.

If we keep those shelves, they will almost certainly be painted. And moved to another room. We are considering one day installing a wet bar where those shelves are, but that's a far-into-the-future plan.

A blurry picture of the back of the Man Cave. That sliding glass door is the one that was shattered when we looked at the house the first time. His one-day-far-into-the-future flatscreen will likely go in that corner or along that wall. Gotta watch those Seminole games in style.

The downstairs guest room. This was originally an "in-law suite," for a separate family (I think an older generation) and the downstairs mirrors the upstairs as far as this layout. This is NOT carpet on the floor.

That's a view from the guest room into the guest bathroom.

I'm not sure if this in-law business actually worked in execution. My parents would never be able to live in such tight quarters, on top of sharing a house with one of their kids and their family. 

The weird cubby to the right of the toilet is even more of a head-scratcher. The rest of this house does a great job of utilizing space as much as possible, but these bathrooms are where it all fell apart. To the right of the cubby is a small shower stall. Claustrophobic guests will have panic attacks in that shower. Why didn't they utilize that whole space and put in a shower/tub combo? Why did they wall it off and throw in a random, nearly useless storage compartment? Hopefully we'll get to the bottom of this once we move in.

Everything in this bathroom needs to be replaced, unfortunately. Even the shower.

A view upstairs from the foyer. 

Guest Room #2, funkily shaped but still very manageable. 

This is a good illustration of our closet situation throughout the house. ClosetMaid or Ikea or one of those other storage planners will probably be our best friend.

Guest Room #3. This room will either get the star treatment or will be our undoing. I'll get into that.

A shot of the closet and bedroom door from inside the third guest bedroom.

A glimpse into the hallway guest bath. You see it, but you probably don't believe it, so I'll clear it up for you: Yellow tile. 

I called this room "prison chic," because of that sink and mirror situation. This bathroom does boast the only tub-and-shower combo in the entire house, so this will be where Lucy gets her baths. (We aren't highfalutin' enough to install a fancy dog bath area in our laundry room... yet...) 

This will also be where WE get our baths for the foreseeable future, for reasons I'll get into next. Unfortunately, this bathroom will also need to be gutted one day. (The shower/tub might be salvageable, I didn't take a close enough look at it when I was there before.)

The master bedroom, with a bureau or a dresser that I don't remember from the walk-through. Wood flooring! You know what that means--adorable rugs!

A shot down our closet-hall into our state-of-the-art master bathroom.

This is the dealbreaker.

If we can't do something drastic (and I mean DRASTIC) to fix this, this will be the room-situation that keeps us from optioning to own this house.

The iPhone picture doesn't really show that the counter in this bathroom is navy blue. If you didn't think navy blue was capable of being a violent color, you've never seen this bathroom. There's another weird cubby thing (bigger this time) next to the toilet. And the shower...

I want to do a feral scream every time I think of the shower.

The frustrating part of this bathroom is that there's no room for expansion. Expanding into the bedroom results in precious closet space being lost. Expanding the other ways--back and out--just aren't options.

I came up with a crazy whack-a-doodle way to rectify it all, though. It'll take a considerable amount of time, a good bit of money, and tons of patience.

Here's the old layout from earlier in the post, to save you from scrolling:

And my lofty plans for the future:

See the difference?

It would require turning Guest Room #3 into our master bathroom, and converting the old bathroom into a luxurious walk-in closet.

It would take considerable re-plumbing, some structural work, and maybe even some electrical work, not to mention the sheer amount of demos and installs we would have to do. 

But let's face it: It would be worth it. This house would be marketable except for this tragic bathroom situation it has going on. By converting it to a real, actual master bathroom, the house would instantly become marketable. Adding in a fancy walk-in closet with built-in shelving would add a wow factor that would actually set this house apart. And it would make my life (and the life of my uniform-wearing cop husband) a lot easier.

I've never needed (or had) a huge bathroom but I do need one that can fit two people comfortably... maybe a separate toilet room... maybe a shower that doesn't feel like it's closing in on me....

Also on that floor plan, the space between the kitchen and dining room is wider. We want to demo out that wall if possible and open the whole thing up. Even just widening the doorway would suffice.

Other things the house would need:

1) Redoing the exterior. I haven't pulled the trigger on posting an exterior shot yet, partially because I'm a private person, and partially because it's tragic in its own 70's way.
2) Painting all of the interior trim white. All. Of. The. Trim. There's nothing I hate more than brown trim (Mr. Cheddar's old house had it everywhere and it made the whole place seem darker) so it has to go. This will also include all interior doors.
3) Removing the popcorn from the ceiling. This is something Mr. Cheddar isn't onboard with, but I feel strongly about it. Popcorn retains that older-house smell, it's unsightly, and it's difficult to work around when you have to paint along the ceiling or install crown molding. It has to go, and I'm determined to do it one room at a time (starting with the living room.)
4) Refinish the wood floors. One of our friends who works in construction refinished his wood floors with his roommate and he said it was the worst thing he's ever experienced. He highly recommends hiring out for it, but if my time outweighs the cost (meaning, if it takes me twice as long but I can do it for half the price) then I'll be doing some serious research into how to do it myself.
5) Redoing all of the downstairs floors. I have to find out what the flooring is called, but it's not ideal for a guest room or man cave. Maybe some nice tile...
6) Painting all the rooms, including ones with paneling.
7) Rebuilding the deck that almost certainly used to be outside of the living room doors. The siding stops about a foot from the bottom of the house, leading us to believe that there once was a deck there. We'd love to have a deck again, especially since our backyard is nothing to boast about.

So that's it for this long introductory post. I'm nicknaming this house Braintree, for reasons that will make a lot of sense as time goes on.  What do you think?