Yesterday we went out house-hunting. Well, it was more of a trip to see what’s available in our price range. And it wasn’t pretty. (I’m being kind.) I tried searching for a picture to insert here as an example & didn’t want to hurt any feelings by using actual listings, so I googled “dilapidated house…” and sadly, I liked the dilapdated house pictures better than what’s on the market in our price range. (They have character & potential!) So, here is a picture of the type of house I love:
In Northern Virginia, although housing prices have dropped some due to the economy, it’s still a really tough situation for young people like us who want to buy. Our goal is to find the saddest, ugliest house in the best neighborhood we can afford & to renovate. If a house has new cabinetry & granite countertops & beautiful touches, we’re not interested because we don’t want to pay for someones else’s renovations (I think we all know how defined my tastes are) and I’d feel terrible ripping something pretty like this out:
Give me this baby (below) any day!
SO I am constantly reworking floorplans for these tiny little houses & figuring out what we’d need to do to make them liveable & beautiful and then trying to estimate the costs. Here’s a typical home here (we would love to get our hands on something like this in a year or so.. maybe sooner if something pops up):
And I’d want to do something like this: (from seamanandsonsbuilders.com)
I love the idea of changing the pitch of the roof & adding dormers although we couldn’t justify this unless the roof needed replacing. Lucky for us, many of the houses in our budget need new roofs… in fact, my favorite house yesterday had a huge hole in the roof that the rain had poured through & ruined the floor beneath too! yay (ok, am I seriously saying I was happy about this??!! yes, because I saw it as money off the price & in reality it’s all we can afford.)
Check out their beautiful kitchen. A wall of windows over the counters instead of uppers is a must in my dream kitchen.
Oh-so-pretty!
And here’s a cool little thing they did in the back of their living room. They made his & hers office nooks for each of them. (He’s an architect & she’s a designer, aww) The doors slide shut when they’re not working.
