Our house is what we would classify as a medium-sized house: a bit over 2000 square feet, three bedrooms and one a half baths with an attached two-car garage. As a back-split, the house has some really awesome structural features. For instance, there are no load-bearing interior walls. In addition because there is a common interior wall between all levels, running things (like a wire from the attic to the basement for our TV antenna) is ridiculously easy – you just put it down the chase. Drop ceiling on the lower level? That equates to easy access to any underfloor areas. Smart and crafty, that grandfather of mine.

The kitchen has two really great features. First, it has this awesome built-in bench as you see in the above picture. It was built around 1962, and has been reupholstered several times over the years. The covering in this picture is from the late 90s and it definitely shows. That patterned wallpaper? 1986. I know you’re jealous. But as you can see – lots of windows (8!) and lots of light. Continue reading →

Before we moved in, my grandparents built our house and lived here for nearly 52 years. One of the cool things about that for us is it means we have literally all of the history of the house in pictures and sometimes our own memories. I have stacks of pictures and slides, and a bunch of pictures I took a while before my grandmother moved out so we could see how different things end up being.

Well, this may take several posts..

Let’s start here. The shot at right is the living room circa 2011, taken from the balcony of the top floor (where the bedrooms are.) When you enter the house (just out of sight on the right side of the picture) you are greeted by a cathedral ceiling and the foyer and living room are open to the second floor. My grandparents had all of the hardwood floors in the house carpeted as of about 1962. The couch in the picture is gold crushed velour – it was reupholstered from the original Continue reading →