For those of you who like to know about how the house is going, here we go!

For those that don’t care, feel free to skip this post as there’s no recipe. But next week I’ll have a Thanksgivukkah recipe coming your way! :)

So today (Friday), I’m going out to NJ because I’ve officially chosen a contractor (!) and he’s going to do a walk-thru of the house with me so I can point out everything I want to save. I want to preserve as much of the original house as I can, both because it will hopefully save money and because the house is 85 years old and I want to be sensitive to its history.

We’ve already begun work on the detached garage. We removed the very cracked and old concrete floor and poured a new reinforced slab. We also had to reframe the door opening because it had two old doors on hinges, with each opening from the middle. Here’s the “before” garage pic- sorry for the cut-off pic, but the contractor took it:

Anyway, as much as I would love to keep these awesome doors, we really don’t want to have to get out of the car and open them every time we want to pull inside- there is currently no electricity out to the garage. Can you believe the little 96 yr old lady who sold us this house used to get out and open those doors??

Since we’re installing an electric door, we decided it made more sense to have one big door instead of two small ones. If we had kept the two small ones, they’d be really really narrow. But because there were two doors there was a column between them holding up the front of the garage. In order to get rid of that structural column, we had to put a big header over the door.

That has now been completed and we’re just waiting for the door to be delivered so we can install it! I’ll add a pic when it comes in. I tried to pick a door that looked very similar to the original doors. Here’s a pic of the style I chose. They look like they open on hinges like the original doors, but they really go up like a typical electric door:

Ours will be all one piece tho, not two separate doors. I may paint the trim like the existing doors, though not green…i’m thinking black perhaps, or gray. I dunno. The “hardware” isn’t included (like the handles, and fake hinges if we want them), but the door company charges an arm and a leg for them. You can get cheap ones at Home Depot which is what I think I’ll do and just install them myself. 

As for the house, the architect finished up the floorplans and here they are!!! I’m so so excited. Sorry they’re kinda blurry. I couldn’t figure out how to get them the right size.

I’ve included the current floorplan so you could see the difference. I already gave you a tour of the inside of the house’s first and second floors, but go check that out if you haven’t seen it. Pardon all the call-outs and measurements that gunk up the new floorplan drawing. Hopefully you can read around them. 

First Floor Plan “Before”

First Floor Plan “After”

Did you SEE MY NEW KITCHEN?! How glorious is it? :) Oh my gosh, guys, I’m going to cook you so much yummy food in that kitchen!

Here’s the second floor:

Second Floor Plan “Before”

Second Floor Plan “After”

That whole front part of the house is the Master Bedroom suite!

And here’s the third floor where there is currently only an unfinished attic:

Last weekend my mom came into town and we went tile shopping. What I learned is that all pretty tiles are really expensive :(

I ended up making most of my decisions for the bathrooms though, so that’s good. If you know me at all, you know that I’m extremely indecisive, so this was a big step. Thank goodness I had my Interior Designer mama there helping me out or it would have been futile. 

I think maybe in these coming months I’ll post moodboards every so often for the various rooms, showing the color/decor that I’m thinking. Would you guys like to see that?

Sorry for the photo-less and recipe-less post. I hope to have more updates soon. The house is supposed to be done in 4 months! I can’t believe it :)

Before I get to the house, I must wish a very

Happy Birthday to my wonderful husband, Nate!!

We’re having some friends over tonight and I’m going to cook him up quite the birthday dinner feast, complete with a butterscotch cake. So, I will have recipes for you soon, assuming I don’t forget to take pics :)

Alright, so I left off last time after giving you a tour of the first floor of our house. Today, I’m moving onto the second floor!

Again, here’s a friendly floorplan to help you ground yourself while I’m giving my tour:

Right now the second floor has 4 bdrooms (one is miniscule- the top left) and one bathroom. We’re going to turn it into three bedrooms and 2 full baths, and then put another bed/bath on the third floor (currently a walk-up unfinished attic). One of the bed/baths will be a master suite with a walk-in closet!

 Ok, so remember those stairs that you could go up and down to the kitchen? Well if you were to turn right on the landing, you’d head up to the second floor. Here we go.

Gotta love that carpet. Again, hardwood floors are underneath it throughout the house! 

Here you are at the top of the stairs. Directly ahead of you is the bedroom that’s in the top right of the floorplan. Unfortunately, I completely forgot to take a pic of that room…and in my opinion it’s the nicest room. Oh well.

If you turn to the right, you’re facing the bedroom in the bottom left of the floorplan. Here it is:

It’s a decent sized room but I just couldn’t capture it well. It’s going to be combined with the room next to it to turn into a giant master suite.

If you come back out of that room and look across the hall you can see the bathroom and the corner of the bedroom I didn’t get a pic of:

If you come out of the room and turn right, you see what was being used as the master bedroom. It will become the hall bath combined with the master suite:

Ironically, the master bedroom is the only bedroom that has carpet over the hardwood, but after we renovate it will be the only bedroom with hardwood…I think. I feel like kids’ rooms are better with carpet but look prettier with hardwood.

If you come out of the master bedroom and look across the hall, this is your view. It’s the best view to kind of get a feel for the size of the hallway upstairs:

Come walk across the hall and check out the existing bathroom. Please try not to be jealous of the wallpaper ;) The sink is actually in really good shape so I’m thinking maybe I can reuse it in the guest bath upstairs:

The two bedrooms that border the bathroom are actually going to expand into where the bathroom is, and the bathroom will no longer be there. The two new bathrooms will be on the bottom right part of the house.

I’ll share the new floorplan when it’s final.

And finally, let’s head up to the attic:

You walk up some stairs to a landing, turn right and continue going up the stairs. Here’s your view at the top:

As I said, we’re going to finish part of it and put a bed and bath up there. There’s going to be a huge dormer put into the back (left of the pic) with several windows.

If you go to the other side of the attic where the fan is and turn around, this is your view…and Nate’s favorite pic of all the photos I took of the house:

That concludes my house tour. I hope you enjoyed it!

I’ll update you with the floorplans when the architect is done…and I’ll show you a pic of the backyard when I take it, because it’s super cute :)