As with any good house renovation, it's always good to have a vision and a plan. I also like to figure out what the house's inside used to look like. Once the house was cleaned out, it was time to figure out just what this house was telling me it used to be.
I could see that the main floor bedroom was originally open and once part of the living space. But it is hard to know what the main floor bathroom was once. Perhaps a small bedroom?
It's our intention to rent this home, so we needed the bedroom to stay a bedroom. Of course, it could be used for an office or a guest bedroom or a den. But for a bigger family, they may need that space. I also decided to keep the bathroom a bathroom and use it as a large bath, since it had the space.
So the living area is pretty small on the main floor. Good thing there is an extra space upstairs for a second living room or a game room or maybe just a very pretty closet system.
I can also tell by the architecture of the house that the kitchen was added on to the original house. The kitchen runs the length of the back of the home and is pretty good sized. The previous owners were going to add a sliding glass door where the windows are, but there are so many doors already. And, there's a breezeway to access the backyard. In my opinion, it wasn't necessary. I would rather leave that spot open for a little table and chair set. There are actually two spots for tables and chairs in the kitchen. The other end could be a little banquet table or a pub table. Or it has the space to accommodate a farmhouse table. Whatever they choose, it will be spacious and have lots of storage. I think it's bigger than my own kitchen, but ours is not very big.
Upstairs there was a bedroom, a large bathroom and a scary little closet, plus access to the attic door. Again, I think bedrooms are important, so we will convert the large bathroom to a bedroom and relocate the bathroom and reduce its size.
We talked about making the second bathroom a full bath, however, I didn't want to eat up any unnecessary space from the bedroom. So we'll end up making this just a half bath. This is really the only huge footprint change that we'll make to the house.
The stairs are a conundrum. I feel certain that there may have been a set of stairs in a different location in this house. Because the stairs are so narrow and closed in, we decided we'll raise the doorways on the steps and also from the living room looking into the hallway. We also decided we will be taking down the wall separating the steps from the kitchen to open up the space and to help get larger things up the stairs. It will really brighten up the whole space and make it look much larger.
The stairs also had to have been different originally as the top step doesn't match up with the rest. I'm guessing there was an open railing here.
Lastly, the long-term plan. We'll do as much as we can to the inside of the house, but the exterior is on the back burner for now. I know the neighborhood would really love to have it updated but it's just not a super big priority. So someday down the road, we'll paint or side the house, add a concrete driveway, and maybe even put on an addition with a two-stall garage. But that's going to have to wait. Trust me, there's enough to do on the inside. :)
