the house we bought

third time's a charm, right?

so...here is a picture of the front of the house we bought in december.  i blogged about it back when we first got it and showed a few pictures of the remodeling project underway.  but life got busy...so, a recap.  here's the front.  i mentioned how you can tell the windows on the left end of the house (facing it) are garage bays where they converted the garage into a kitchen/sitting area...

 and here's the new front.  they took the front off the garage conversion and made it look more like an original construction.  we also put a new metal roof on, only because the old roof had more waves than a water bed and had to be replaced anyway and my husband and i have grown to love the metal roof in our current house...they last forever and we love the sound of rain on metal roofs.  so here's the house now:

 when you walked in the kitchen door, this was the view in december.  the floors were gross from two small dogs who were not very house trained and owners who didn't clean up very well after them.  the kitchen was very cramped and the two level floor (because they had to raise the floor to run the water pipes from the original kitchen) made the space very awkward.  i loved the wood stove, but the dryer vent pipe that was rocked into the surrounding wall made the whole thing something that was too expensive to redo and keep.  i'll miss the stove in my kitchen, but it sits in my garage, waiting to be put into the apartment conversion we'll do to half of our four car garage.  :)

and here's the new view from the kitchen door, which was scooted over some.  the whole addition was taken down to the two by fours.  the floor was evened out (which means these are the shortest ceilings in the house).  we moved the island back and made the kitchen space much larger, but there's still a lot of breakfast area space.  we put in wood floors because wood will give a little more on these uneven base of the floors, and we just like wood a lot more.  we also removed the post they had (it wasn't structurally needed...i was assured...pray...) in the middle of their kitchen, took out that overhang, and removed the stove that divided the kitchen area from the dining/living room area.   it's kind of a wide open space that we aren't sure what to do with, but i think it's just going to be nice to have that much space with all these kids growing up and becoming much larger young adults.

 the fireplace that was along the back wall (and thankfully leaked, so we had to remove it):

the back wall of the house now:

 and a view into the kitchen area from the back door:

the same view now, sort of...the stove is not there anymore, that's the main thing:

so that's the house i keep talking about.  i'll post pics of the view when i get some i like.  it just looks kind of scrubby in the pics i have now.  oh, and that fridge in the last picture?  our nine year old fridge?  well, you can't tell from the picture, but it was dropped in the driveway at my present house.  the oldest son and the husband were having some communication issues that resulted in the oldest moving it along on the dolly and the husband not helping but instead walking away to let down the trailer gate...so it really looks like it came from a scratch and dent sale...a BIG scratch and dent sale.  it ties the rest of us in to such a shiny new space.

peace