Perhaps the best part about purchasing your first home is the satisfaction of home ownership, owning your piece of the rock. Second to that is the pure joy and excitement of adding your personal touch to a space! I mean the possibilities are endless, especially with a newly renovated or constructed house. You have a blank canvas.
My husband and I are just about three months in to our “brand new” home. I put brand new in quotation marks because it’s not in fact brand new per say, just new to us. In actuality it’s a Mid-20th Century house, built in that old English Bungalow style reminiscent of the simplistic living in 1950’s New Providence. It’s a modest two bed, two bath, with an enormous back patio for which I have massive plans!
This is near the beginning of demolition. There was a wall bordering the front and a buckling car port to the left of the house. Looks like a jungle!
When we first viewed the home just over a year ago it had this grungy pink wall-to-wall carpet in the living room, that was painted in a coordinating faded peach. The rest of the floors in the house were concrete tiles, which I thought were actually pretty cool and contemplated keeping for a nanosecond (again I was keeping our budget in mind, and truthfully concrete tiles and floors have recently made a resurgence that is placing them in the chicest of ultra hip and modern homes).
There was very little that was appealing about this home to make a newly married couple want to jump in and start building a future. It was dark, dingy and dated. But there was something about it (besides the extremely affordable price tag) that screamed home to us, and our minds immediately started churning with possibilities.
There were tons, I mean tons of upgrades needed for it to be our dream home, but luckily for us it was structurally sound. This home was so sturdily built that the natural Abaco pine roof frame was still in perfect condition more than half a century after it was built. A huge sigh of relief for our renovation budget!
So one year later, five months after our contractor promised we’d be in our house for Christmas (that’s another story for another post), we’re finally starting with the finishing touches of our newly renovated home. And I had this crazy thought that I would take you along for the ride!
There is still so much left to do, but we’re finally in our home. Plus side: there are so many projects I get to post about!
Our house was a bit of a fixer upper; and much like my life (and this blog), it’s a work in progress, far from finished.
I promise to post more before and after pictures of our renovation at another time.
The Ambiance in Here 