We Bought a House!
Regardless of age, the thing I’ve always looked forward to was the space I was going to occupy next. How would I decorate the coveted “Downstairs Bedroom” once my sister went to college? (Answer: aqua walls, white Ikea Malm furniture.) Next was my dorm room, and then my first apartment - this is where I began obsessively searching for “the one” whenever moving - you were not going to find me in an apartment building built any time after 1930. After that, my now-husband, Mike, came into the picture and I was looking for bigger spaces (lol, our first apartment was probably 550sf). The amount of research that I put into neighbourhoods and charming apartments was significant, but we’ve always landed in great rentals that we cared for like our own. Obviously this was all leading to the biggie: our first home.
Some people train for the Olympics; I was training for this.
Mike and I were looking for a home that had character and maintained as many of its original features as possible (flooring, windows, trim, etc.) It had to have curb appeal, or at least the possibility of it, and it had to need work. I was not interested in paying for someone else’s renovation, unless it was a great one, which was not in our budget. Lastly, it had to have a front hall closet - seriously, where are all of you storing your jackets? I don’t understand this.
Cruising realtor.ca has long been a hobby of mine, and once I was really looking and not just window shopping, it was very easy to have the wind knocked out of my sails by the sheer number of “Newly Renovated!” homes that are devoid of personality and “feature” grey linoleum floors, grey walls, grey cabinetry, grey everything OR were renovated à la HGTV in their “for the masses” style. I’d seen the listing for our future home a few times in my search but had skipped past it - cute, but not for me. After doing some soul searching and trying to open my mind, we booked a viewing. Honestly, I went into it with a bad attitude. I walked through the door and saw that it had no front hall closet (strike one! Feeling good about my bad attitude), the bedrooms were small, and the bathroom was very weird (strike two). The ceilings were high, though, and the solution to the floor plan came to me quickly and required minimal shifting of walls. The flooring looked original, and the threshold into the kitchen and bathroom was significant enough that I thought surely there had to be original flooring under that, too? (For the record, this remains to be seen). Then, in the front bedroom’s closet, I noticed that it was way too big to be the original size, and the flooring was mismatched - half matched what was in the bedroom, and half what was in the entry on the other side of the wall. What do you know, there was a front hall closet! We just had to take it back to the original spec. (If you’re keeping count, my two strikes are null-and-void at this point). The house surprised me, and after a few days of deliberating, we decided to put an offer in.
The house itself is 1.5 stories and 3 bedrooms, but we have plans to move some walls around to make it suit life in 2023 a bit better. We’ll take it down to two bedrooms on the main floor, using the space we’re stealing from elsewhere to create a truly special bathroom, a large primary bedroom, and a walk-in pantry off the kitchen. We’ll put a new kitchen in and have hopes to fix up the back porch and possibly extend the dormers on the second floor. All of these renovations will be in keeping with the age and character of the home - I want it to look how it would if one were to build a craftsman home “the way they used to”, but in 2023.
I can’t wait to take you on this journey with me and share all of the inspo, plans, and progress along the way. Stay tuned!
- Laura