So, a lot has been going on behind the scenes over here at The Fat Hydrangea household. We recently stumbled upon this beautiful fixer upper for sale on a beautiful street at a beautiful price!
We had been admiring it for awhile from drive-bys, walk-bys, and pictures, and just were able to actually tour it the other day. We were super excited about the potential this had to be our next project and our "forever" house.
As I mentioned, it had a PERFECT location, an amazing yard, beautiful curb appeal (painted brick = so right up my alley!), 4 beds and 4 baths, an attached oversized two car garage, fireplace, jack-and-jill bath in the kids rooms, a huge linen closet, and a den.
The only ingredient this house needed was to have the ability to open up the floorplan on the first floor in a similar manner we did in our current home.
Guess what one thing the house was missing?
The whole first floor was separated into very distinct rooms and actually felt significantly smaller than our current home, even though square footage wise it is technically bigger. Each room was bright and cheery and spacious on its own, but they weren't exactly adjacent to one another so you couldn't open up walls and make it an open floorplan (or even a semi-open floorplan!), which was an absolute must for us. The only wall you could easily open was between the kitchen and the dining room, but even then you were still pretty isolated from the rest of the living areas in the first floor. Also, the kitchen was about half the size of our current kitchen and this is one area in which I really did not want to decrease in size. There were also lots of spaces with 1 or 2 steps up and down to different rooms, and it made the house feel choppy. Just not ideal. Not for a "forever" house!
Here is my super rough sketch of the current floorplan:
The only feasible option to transform the house as we saw it would be to do a full addition off the back. If you blew out the covered patio, blew out the dining room walls, kitchen walls, and hallway walls, and added loads of massive beams to hold up the house, THEN you could have the open space. If we had an extra $150k lying around, I'd totally do that too because it would be amazing!!! :)
We even talked about moving in and saving to do the dream addition, but I also just don't want to spend my life waiting/saving for some big addition several years down the road. Call me impatient (I am!) but it would just drive me crazy until we reached that point! I'm cool with doing smaller projects over time but the layout I would want situated immediately. Since doing a massive addition is not feasible for us right now, we quickly and easily decided that our best bet is to keep an eye out for another great house that meets our needs/wants with less overhaul required.
I wouldn't even say we are actively looking (hello to being almost 6-months pregnant and we just refinanced our house!) but we are definitely in a position (mentally and financially) to make that move if the perfect opportunity arises. This was a good opportunity, but not THE ONE. I'm both disappointed (this house had SO much potential!) and relieved (the closer we got to making the move, the more daunting moving felt!)
The other thing about touring a "blank slate" home is that it made me realize how cozy and warm we have made our current home. Our current house was in about the same state this one was in when we bought it. Good bones but completely dated. We have totally transformed the space into a cozy, welcoming, happy home! It made me excited to do it again someday, but it also made me really appreciate the home we already have.
