We had been thinking about downsizing for several years. Our main home is now in Florida but we still have family and friends here in the Midwest and we wanted to have a place to come back to. What we didn't want was all of the expense and upkeep of the large, century-old home that we had lived in for the past twenty years.
There is a development of detached condos (which are actually houses) in our city that gave us the opportunity to still live in a house but not have to be concerned with lawn care or snow removal when we weren't here. This is a community that we had been trying to get into for over a year but homes in this development are often sold before they even hit the market. So when a friend called to tell me that she had heard of a home that might be coming on the market we jumped on it.
Although this is a very desirable area, the homes in this development are all thirty to forty years old and most of them are in need of some serious updating. Ours was one of those homes that were in need of more than a little love.
One thing led to another and before you knew it we had taken the entire home down to the studs.
We moved windows and walls,
replaced the old screened-in porch with a larger one,
and replaced the roof which allowed us to get rid of all those hideous tubular skylights.
We considered a light grey with white trim but ultimately chose this darker shade with black and white accents.
We were fortunate that we weren't living in the house while all of this construction was going on because it took roughly a year and a half but it was worth it. We had a great architect and contractor so the end result was even better than I had imagined.
So please sign up for email updates or stop back soon to see all of the changes we made to the interior of this home...
sources: front door
