First impressions

We met Jason at the Clark house on Saturday morning so we could look through the inside and discuss some possibilities.  Ben took this picture of us standing on the front porch-possibly the first of many?

The house has been empty for a year and I was surprised that it's actually pretty clean inside.

This is one of the bedrooms upstairs.  There are three of them and they are all pretty small.  They are also made smaller by being built into the roof.

This is the bedroom on the front of the house.  It takes up the whole front, but is pretty narrow.

This is the third bedroom

This is the upstairs bathroom

This is the front room.  I have always wanted a house with an open staircase off the front door.  Ironic that we were thinking of moving it (not sure that will happen!)

Stairs and entrance into the dining room/kitchen

I think this must have been the dining room

Ben is looking very happy at the possibility of moving

This is the downstairs bathroom, they had the washer and dryer in here

The kitchen!!!

I think overall this must have been a pretty nice house....

Original concept drawings

These are the original concept drawings from Jason's architect. They had thought about not having a garage and having a drive-under car port on the side.  We definitely need a garage.  I have been parking in a garage for 10 years now and don't want to go back to being outside again.  We will also lose the gym in the basement, so Sam is thinking we should have an area in the garage that he/we can use as a gym. 

We will have an addition on the back that will probably be linked to the garage at the back and be joined to the house by a walkway (maybe a narrow office/reading area)

This is the proposed first floor.  At this point, we are thinking about leaving the driveway side of the house as it is and developing the back entrance.  We will probably leave the dining room on the front and build a new family room on the back, with the kitchen in the middle.

We need to have 4 bedrooms upstairs and ideally 2 bathrooms.  I would like to put one of the kid's bedrooms over the porte-cochere and the other one of the front, with a smaller guest bedroom somewhere.  I would like the kids bedrooms to be bigger than they have now and ours to be smaller!!!!

We have decided to move again

After having Jason and Sergei work on our house recently, we got back into conversations with Jason about the possibility of moving into another of his houses in the future.  This is a good time for us to think about moving, especially if we can get into a house that's closer to the high school now that Ben and Maggie are getting older.  Jason has just closed on a house in Webster that would be perfect for us.  It's on a really nice street, only a block from the elementary school and within walking distance of the high school.  The original house is small, and was built in 1909.  The lot is relatively flat and a very nice size (75 x 142).

I decided to start a new blog to document our adventures in building a new house and everything else that goes with it.  The journey is likely to be very painful, but hopefully will be worth it in the end....