Old House Love...the back story

We wavered for years about whether or not we should sell our house. We lived in this great little tudor on the cutest dead-end street ever.  Our house was small, but we had fixed up just about every square inch of it...and this is where we brought our little Peyton home from the hospital.

So we decided to stay for a few more years.

Then I saw this beautiful Victorian house online and I just had to see inside. We loooved it! We listed our house and it sold in THREE weeks! We were excited, sad... and homeless (ahh!)

Everyone we took through the Victorian house mentioned the phrase labor of love and money pit. I was able to see past all of that because, well, love is blind. I was picturing us happily painting walls and sanding floors...but when would all this work be taking place? After work and every weekend for the the rest of our lives? So, we passed on it.

                 front door                     back yard                second set of stairs        
... crazy, right?

We were sure that we wanted an older home, 1930's or earlier, which really narrowed down the search. We also didn't want to look at foreclosures because of the added stress of dealing with the banks and the unpredictable time frame.
No thanks.

Somehow this log cabin was a possibility for like 1 day. (We don't live in Telluride so it felt a little out of place, like The Berenstain Bears live there or something!) Also, the house was left incomplete, so who knows how much it would really cost us. So... on to the next one.

How amazing is this house? It was love at first sight. Such a great original floor plan but then there were several phases of strange, do-it-yourself additions. Our realtor pointed out some structural issues so we moved on and continued our search.

..and chose this one, a 1915 craftsman next to a huge park. So here are the *before* pictures of our house. I quickly took these pictures with my phone while the guys were refinishing the floors. The house was full of saturated gold paint colors, which made the house feel really dark. We painted most of the rooms since these photos, but there is still a lot left to do....that's the fun part!

 Dining Room

 

  

Living Room Fireplace & stone walls

 Living Room

 Guest Bath

 a fantastic built-in

 Master Bedroom

 Master Bedroom

 Peyton's room... before all the toys arrive

 upstairs foyer