Visions of the Future

At last, this is probably the post most people have been looking for, what I am going to do to the house!  As someone who generally likes to be very organized and precise about things, naturally the first thing I did when I bought the house was inquire about floor plans, which of course the seller didn't have.  So instead, I made my own.  I measured just about every wall in the house (As Betsy would attest, some walls 2 or even 3 times!), then drew up rough 2D plans using a CAD program.  Then I discovered the wonders of SketchUp, and that quickly evolved into 3D renderings of the house and what I want it to look like!  It should come as no surprise that I've enjoyed making the 3D model of the whole house way too much!  :-)  So below is a list of what needs to be done, what I want to do, and some renderings of what things will look like, enjoy!

First and foremost, the back of the house needs to be fixed!  The siding was poorly installed, and, frankly, is just ugly stucco.  The lack of proper trim and flashing means that water has gotten behind then siding, so it's started to rot out.  Thankfully, there's Tyvek under the siding at least, so the structural wood is in tact, but the siding needs to be replaced.  This is the most important task.

A corner of the rear siding where the underlying rot and water damage is evident

The stucco siding itself is really not all that attractive anyway, so the house will look much better after it's replaced

Along the same lines, the deck was not properly constructed, so many of the boards are splitting or warping, the stair are in danger of falling off, and the whole thing shakes if you move too much.  So it will be replaced with a new deck of roughly the same size and design but using composites instead of wood.

The current upper and lower decks.  If you look closely at this picture, you can see some of the large structural members are split around the bolts holding them together.  Also, the stairs in the front of the image and poorly attached

Some of the boards on the railing are also splitting and warping

Even some of the decking boards are splitting and rotting

The garage is also a disaster, as the concrete floor is broken, the roof supports are rotting, and there's mold on the walls.  The simplest fix here is to just tear it down and put a new one in its place, which will match the new siding on back of the house and won't collapse under the first good snowfall of the season!

The outside of the garage is a cheaply covered, showing the jungle of a backyard, too!

The inside is not in good shape, either

Many of the roof supports are rotting, and they have been "repaired" by nailing new boards into the rotten ones!

There's a few other minor repairs, too.  The front retaining wall is missing some stones and needs better drainage, the front of the house needs to be cleaned up (there's lots of chalk and paint splatter on it), some repairs to the front sidewalk, and a few minor things on the roof.

The front wall has some group and stones missing, and needs better drainage

But now, on to the fun stuff!  My plan all along when buying a house involved redoing the kitchen and master bathroom.  In the case of this house, the kitchen isn't in bad shape, but it's about 10 years old and used very basic quality materials.  There's also an existing kitchen in the basement that is much older and more cheaply done.  So I'm going to save the cabinets from the kitchen that I'm removing and put them downstairs as a bar in the future!  Then, I'm going to redo the kitchen with new appliances, adding a peninsula, and floor to ceiling cabinets.  Since it's a relatively small kitchen, this maximizes both the amount of counter and storage space.

The new kitchen layout with peninsula.  The bottom is the left wall, which will be exposed brick, and has the pantry cabinets and refrigerator.  The top is the right wall and will have the sink and dishwasher in the peninsula and the range against the wall.

3D view showing the pantry cabinets and refrigerator

3D view showing the stove and over counter cabinets.  The peninsula will have an overhang that will allow for seating.

The view as you walk into the kitchen, showing the cooking area.  I've chosen to go with a double oven range, as it gives a little bit more oven space, and provides the advantages of having two ovens without needing to have a full wall unit.

In many of the houses in Capitol Hill that I've seen, people have exposed one of the brick walls, and it looks very nice!  So I'm going to expose the brick on the left side from the front door back through the kitchen.  In addition, I'm going to take out the small wall between the kitchen and front living rooms, so it's more open, making the whole first floor an open floor plan.  Finally, I'm considering removing the random box around the chimney and installing a fireplace with a gas insert.

Upstairs there actually is no master bathroom.  Therefore, I'm going to take the existing bathroom and expand it, turning it into the master bathroom, then adding another small bathroom next to it to be the main bathroom on the second floor.  The master bath will feature a stand-up shower, rather than a tub/shower.  People buying now look for two sinks in the bathroom, but I don't have that much space, so I found a sink the is wide enough to allow two faucets without needing as much space as two separate sinks!  The existing bathroom has a clawfooted tube, which I'll save and put in the new spare bathroom.

The bottom shows the existing floor plan, with the small room between the middle and rear bedrooms being the current bathroom.  The top shows the new floor plan, where the existing bathrooms has been expanded into the master bedroom a bit to make the master bath, and some space has been taken from the adjacent closet and middle bedroom to create the new main bath.

Floor plan of the master bath, showing the shower and double sink/vanity

3D rendering of the bathroom

3D rendering showing the shower design

Finally, there's some things for the future!  All this is a lot of work to do, so some of it might get pared down for now and saved for later.  Also, the basement needs some updating, so a year or so down the road after I've moved in, I'm going to modernize the basement.  Also, the backyard layout currently makes more than half of it really unusable, so I'm going to do some work eventually to lower the patio under the deck so I can use that space, remove some of the jungle-like foliage, and add an outdoor gas fireplace.

All in all, it's a lot of work, but the house should be really nice when all this is said and done.  I'm definitely nervous about taking on such a large project, but I'm really excited about what it'll be like when it's done.  And by the time I move in, I'll have taken this I bought house and really made in my house!