A Big Project

As I mentioned in an earlier post, we recently purchased a home on an adjacent lot at our property north of here. Here are some pictures of the house that we purchased. Every time I go there I alternate between this is a huge mess and will be so much work, and its not so bad. Last time I was there I was fully on the huge project side. You can see some of the needs from these pictures.

Here is the house from the road. The lot is mostly cleared. It has two very large beautiful magnolia trees on it, one right in front of the house, and one near the road. (And we still have some junk to clear out as you can see).

Here is the kitchen. We have counters from when they replaced them in our last house, so we will do that. We will probably do something with the cupboards (plus a thorough cleaning) and we probably need to put a dishwasher in.
Here's the bathroom. I scrubbed for an hour and a half a couple of weeks ago with bleach and as you can see it still looks pretty dirty. We probably will replace the counter, do some work on the shower and replace the flooring, in fact, we have to replace all of the flooring in the house as the house stinks horribly like smoke. As you are walking up to it you can smell it through the walls.
The living room/ "dining" looking from the front door to the kitchen. The living area is L shaped.
The other side of the L. This is one of the 7 broken TVs left behind. There is a cute under the stairs closet to the right that the kids like to play in.

The stairs. Old, narrow and steep.

The only real deed restriction states that you can only build up to a 1 1/2 story house. The upstairs fully works under the 1/2 story restriction. You can stand in the tall part, but not on the sides. This is the L side, as you come up the stairs you take a quick right.

This is the other side of the room. You can see the opening to the stairwell to the left. Ellie is there so you can see how tall everything is.

To the left of where Ellie is standing is a partition that works as a closet. It has a poorly placed water heater.

That is the whole of the inside. We definitely have to repaint (and possible more) all of the walls. We plan to replace all of the carpet (if anyone is replacing their carpet with wood, we'll take your old carpet off your hands).

The outside of the house on the lot is gorgeous. In front where there was the kitchen and a sliding glass door, there is a large wooden deck.

The deck is also L shaped. It runs along the front of the house and then is longer on the far side.Looking out from the deck back to the house. There is also a little shed next to the house. You can see the bottom branches of the magnolia tree.

This is the first lot in the subdivision. Next to the lot is a stream/ water drainoff area. It runs along the boundary line and empties into the lake. Down a ways you see a bridge to the neighbor (in a different subdivision) house.

This is from about half way between the house and the lake. There is a picturesque lawn bordered on the right by an inlet of the lake full of lilies.

This is a view from the edge of the lake. (Isn't it so pretty? I'm not that great at photography, so you can imagine it is MUCH prettier in real life) What you see is an island. Our other lots owned half of the island, and with this lot, now we own the whole island. Joe has great paintball plans for that when the boys are older. You have to swim or canoe to the little island, but Adam swam it last year by himself so its not that far.

So the lot itself is in great shape. Except for some occasional mowing and more trash disposal (and two abandoned cars not pictured) there isn't much to do there. The house is a project...good thing Joe is such a handyman. I am excited for when it is done, we can all go up and the women (and the babies) can stay in the house while the men and the kids camp. I look forward to that! Plus my folks can come stay for long periods of time and the kids can really enjoy having them around! Now if we can just get my Dad to retire!