The previous owners have done a wonderful job in the upkeep of the home, and we think it has been beautifully updated. We have hardwood floors everywhere but the stairs and the finished attic, and somewhere down the line, someone added a half bath downstairs. The outside has original siding but someone redid the front with fake stone, which we love. There is crown molding above the doors throughout the house and we have an original fireplace with a beautiful ornate mantle.
The windows in the living room are frosted and etched, and our front door has "123", our house number, etched in as well. We also have a stained glass window on the right of the entrance. Another thing I really liked about the house when we first walked in, was that the front entrance doesn't lead directly into a room. Rather, when you step in, you are in the hallway. I feel like it gives it a more dramatic effect. The light fixture that the previous owners had was nice, but I felt like it was missing something. A couple hours of hard work of figuring out knob and tube (this is the only place we still have this), Gary was able to move the light fixture from the first floor and replace it with the ugly one they had upstairs. We replaced the first floor light fixture with a cute chandelier we bought at IKEA.
Because of the added half bath downstairs, we decided to use the dining room as our living room, and the living room with the half bath and fireplace as our dining room. The kitchen is very open and there is TONS of cabinet space. Previous owners have done a great job at keeping some original cabinets, while adding in a lot of new cabinets that match the originals. There wasn't very much counterspace, but because the kitchen is open, we were able to find a kitchen unit at IKEA to fit the space and the colors match perfectly! The kitchen unit from IKEA also has a lot of drawers so that created added space so I can stay organized while cooking.
Upstairs on the second floor we have a full bath and 3 bedrooms. The master bed has two closets! One is Gary's (which is a decent size, especially for an old home) and the walk-in is mine and connects to the bathroom. There are lots of shelves and organizational units and I absolutely love my closet. The bedroom also has 3 windows that look out to the ginormous tree outside our house. The bottom windows are all frosted so people can't see through. I absolutely love waking up in the morning to see the sun shining through the tree leaves! In the springtime, the tree was flowering, so we could just sit in bed and look at the beautiful flowers through our window.
One of the other bedrooms is our office, and the third is my make up room (although I am waiting for Gary to buy me a nicer vanity. Hint, hint.) We are eventually going to install shelves in the make up room closet because we don't have a linens closet! That is probably my only complaint about the house in terms of things we are missing. The make up room also connects to a sun room that is virtually unusable. It is very slowly pulling away from the house (as in, over the course of 10 years or so), and they never installed the correct size windows, so they don't shut properly. I don't really know what to do with this room. If we wanted to, I suppose we would have it re-finished and take the roof off so it would be an open balcony. I have thought about a green house, but there isn't enough sunlight. For now, it's just there!
When we were looking at the house, I almost completely missed the attic. Then I realized that there was a door on the second floor that we hadn't opened yet. I assumed it was the linens closet, but then realized that there were stairs that lead to..... this!
I was so shocked that we still had so much space up there! The attic is fully carpeted (with ugly blue carpet that we will probably change once we have a kid who will play up there) and is separated into 2 rooms. One room is an open area and the other is what we would consider to be our 4th bedroom. Apparently, the finished attic is fairly common in the Clintonville area, so a lot of people convert it to a master suite bedroom. As much as that sounds like a totally cool idea, we probably will not be doing it because of the awesome closet space we have in the master bed already.
The bathroom upstairs is interesting. I'm not a huge fan of where the builders decided to place things, but at the same time, it doesn't bother me that much. I feel like they wasted space because they put the tub smack dab in the middle of the room. The tub is a clawfoot tub, which I was completely opposed to until I saw ours. Someone had painted it navy, which apparently in my mind, makes all the difference. We have a pedestal sink, which I highly debated changing to increase storage space, but then found that they sell metal racks to put under your pedestal sink at Target! The tile in the bathroom is a little weird, so I think sometime in the future we might change it out. I also definitely plan on repainting the walls to a lighter blue and changing the current mirror.
Finally, we absolutely LOVE LOVE LOVE our backyard. Many backyards in the Clintonville area are not very large, but because we live on a ravine lot, we have a good amount of space. The yard isn't very wide, but is very long, and backs up to a cliff that goes down to the ravine. There is also a secret tree house in the back, which we haven't been in yet.
We have a lot of VERY large trees that makes our backyard very shaded. Just to give you a visual of how tall the trees are, here is a comparison of tree vs. Gary.
The previous owners must have cared about their yard for a while, but then gave up, because they had let a lot of things overgrow. The yard is definitely a work in progress. My goal is to create a border of shade plants in the back end of the yard, and where there are trees, I would like to put some cute birdhouses and maybe a hammock.
I found an amazing book at the library by Better Homes and Gardens that gives you outlines for every gardening situation. It tells you which plants to buy, how many, where to put them, etc. for shady borders, wooded areas, inclines.... basically anything you can think of. I feel like it's the great, lazy-man's guide to a professional looking garden, which is why I like this book. Maybe if I had more time and knew what I was doing, I would try to be more creative, but let's not kid ourselves... I am quite clueless when it comes to gardening. I will trust the professionals on this one and maybe in ten years I will be creative.
I am also planning on redoing the flower bed and reshaping the herb garden. I also think it would be fun to create some sort of flower box that is about 3 feet tall to line the edge of the patio. They have one at Mozart's cafe on the patio, and I think it would look really nice to make one to put out by ours.
Gary is learning how to take care of the lawn and decided to take on treating the lawn himself. He is currently "at war" with the squirrels that keep digging up his new grass he worked so hard to grow. Kuma is a terrible hunter so she offers no help in this area.
We are also planning on cutting out the peach tree and planting sakura (cherry blossom) trees instead! Someone gave up on pruning the peach tree properly, so it has grown in a strange and ugly shape. We have tried our best to try to prune it to look a little better, but it seems pretty hopeless. Either way, the tree bears small fruit that falls off and Kuma loves to eat it. I read somewhere that they are not good for her, so we don't want to have a sick puppy on our hands either. I also figure that if we have sakura trees in our backyard, it would be fun to do hanami (flower watching) in the springtime as an annual Peterson event!
So that basically sums up our home! I will continue to post as we make any changes to the yard or bathrooms :-)
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