Home Exterior

Happy New Year!!!  I am over the moon excited about 2020!! And mostly because we are in our new home!!  If you have followed along on Instagram at all, you will know that we finally found our new home and moved in late last Fall.  You know, just in time to host all of the holiday festivities… no pressure. And while I hated basically every second of the selling/buying process (except for looking at new houses!), it was definitely worth it now that we are in our new space.

WHAT HAPPENED TO THE ADDITION?

So many of you have asked… what happened to the addition you all were planning?!  I loved our old little home.  All 964 sq. ft. of it.  And it honestly worked fine for our little family of three.  We had optimized every single inch of that home to suit our needs, but also knew some more space would be nice.  Especially a second bathroom.  So we planned a great addition that would have kept the integrity of our existing home.  It basically included a courtyard and a new Master Suite.  This would have made the home a 3 Bed/2 Ba.  Also during this time, my mother was planning her retirement and knew it was time to move back to Atlanta.  We were all thrilled and were playing around with the idea of a detached garage with an in law suite above.  This was our ideal situation…  Unfortunately, the city didn’t agree with us and the plans for  the detached garage were rejected.  This left us with a few options, build the addition as planned and search for a condo or apartment for my mother.  Or sell, and find something that suited all of our needs.  we decided there was no better time to do it, so we did.

WHERE DID YOU MOVE?

We had looked at nearly every single home for sale in a two mile radius of our existing home.  We LOVE our city and knew the only way we would move, were if we stayed here.  Obviously that makes the hunt all that more challenging.  But I love the hunt ;). After multiple offers that fell through on both our old home and other homes we were interested in I stumbled across a For Sale By Owner that had been on the market for 1 day.  It had four terrible quality exterior shots that were from years ago and a small description.  After I read the phrase “Detached Garage with Apartment” I knew we had to see it!  I didn’t care what it looked like at this point!!  And when I found out it was only 1.1 miles away from our old home, well this all just seemed too good to be true.

We hopped over to the house to see what it really looked like!  And much to our surprise it was really charming and looked nothing like the old photos.  It is a deceiving little Colonial Ranch, that feels nothing like all of the other homes we had been looking at.  It checked off so many boxes… Older home.  Hardwoods.  More than one Bathroom.  Finished Basement.  Check, Check, Check & Check!  Now did it need some work, lets stamp a big ole CHECK on that one.  But that didn’t scare us off.

Then we walked out back… The Detached Garage out back was once a three car garage that had been transitioned into an apartment years ago.  And not just a little studio apartment, it is a two bedroom full bath apartment with a full kitchen, living room and laundry space.  We made an offer that day.

THE TOUR

Welcome to our new home… a 3 Bed / 3 Bath / 3 Story split level (that doesn’t feel like a split level).  Hopefully you too can look past some of the less than desirable elements and see the potential!

You enter into a large vaulted space with 12′ ceilings and are greeted by the stairs.


To the right of the main stairs is the Living Room.  Ironically, it is almost the exact layout of our old living room.


And to the left ( you might want to avert your eyes, lol) is the Kitchen.



Yeah, I know… it is bad.  It is even worse in person.  We have since taken off all of the cabinet doors because they were on broken hinges and fell on our heads when trying to open them, lol.  Also, the appliances don’t really work either… so this will all be going away.  Sadly, this kitchen is twice as large as our old kitchen, but so inefficient in comparison.  We could actually store more things at our old home!  But, there is the space to work with as well as the original hardwoods.  So lets move on…

From the kitchen, you step down into the dining room.  I love the 10′ vaulted ceiling in here.  I also love that there is a huge laundry room as well as a large storage closet as well.  I am planning on making the closet into a very efficient Butler’s Pantry!


There is also a massive window in here, which allows in tons of natural light.


Now lets head upstairs…

This is Chloe’s new room.  Again, almost identical to her old room in layout, but larger.



And down the hall is her bathroom… again with the brown. You will see the same paint and tile throughout the entire home.


Now a look into the Master… it has not one, but two ceiling fans! lol. But it also has a full walking closet and its own bathroom.  A very nice upgrade from my 24″ of closet space and our one shared bathroom in the old home.





Finally we head down into the basement for a quick peek into the main room.  Which is not up to my standards of “finished”, but compared to all of the other homes with basements that we looked at this one is awesome!  It is full height (huge win because most aren’t!) and has its own bedroom, bathroom and a closet larger than our old bathroom!


So all in all, we have a lot of work ahead of us, but we are so thrilled with our new home.

I’ll be posting much more frequently now that I have the time and all of this new space to play with!! Not to mention a brand new nursery project and finishing off the basement over at #ProjectFamJam.

Missed you all!!

xoxo – Kristin