Everybody hit the floor(plans)

And now…a 2D unofficial version of what our house’s layout will be! I feel like we should name our house and/or project. Abodesinger? Casa Canton? Rehab-itat? Sanctuary in the City? From Dumps to Digs? From Flop to Flat? (that one is for the Brits reading...) Vote in the comments! 

But I digress. Here is what we are thinking for the floor plans. 

The first floor. We wanted a very open layout with a wide open view from the front door to the rest of the floor. We are planning to move the sink and dishwasher to underneath the window. I really like the idea of a wide open island that people can hang out around, as well as a large place to cut and cook. I also love that we have a coat closet!!

 The basement. Mike had a great idea to move all the bathroom and washer/dryer/storage against the side wall and have the hallway go along the stairs so it feels a bit more open. We are so excited to have a third bedroom for guests, and it's actually a legitimate third bedroom with an exterior door (not a standard Canton third BR that has a window that only a small child could fit through)! It will also be nice to have an extra family room. I have a feeling that I will get the most use out of that room on Monday nights whenever Bachelor/ette/Pad is on!

And this - the second floor - was the biggest challenge for us to figure out. Mike did an awesome job downloading a free CAD-esque program to convey his ideas of where to put everything. We ended up deciding to bump out the back of the house an extra four feet to fit in everything that we wanted - two decent sized bedrooms, two full baths, a walk-in closet, and interior stairs leading up to the rooftop deck. After going back and forth many, many times, the only sacrifice I think we really had to make was not having a double vanity in the master bath. But we're still working it out - we can probably figure out some way. 

So that's it! What do you think? Any suggestions for us to improve on anything? Nothing is official until the framing starts, so speak now please!

Speaking of, demo has officially started! There is a dumpster outside of the house, but we haven't been able to get in to see it ourselves. I want to try and get in soon to take some pictures. So exciting!!

Ummm…what did we just buy?

So we did it! We signed alllllll the papers last night, and got the keys to our new pad. And I must say….you will not be impressed. Just be very glad that smell-o-vision has not been invented yet. The previous owner must have had 17 cats – it smelled TERRIBLE in there, and I felt like I couldn’t breathe. So luckily every single thing in that house will go – carpet, floors, drywall – everything will be GONE! So without further ado…
(sorry that this images are all out of order - I couldn't figure out how to fix it. Anyone know the secrets to controlling where the images go on Blogger? I'm still new to this...)

It doesn't look SO bad here. I like the upstairs bay window. But that formstone and door will definitely be gone!

The lovely kitchen. I like the back entrance though - coming from our very own parking pad!

It's hard to capture on camera how broken up the upstairs is, but when we are done with it, it will be two bedrooms, two full baths, interior stairs leading to the rooftop deck, and our dream walk-in closet!!

The future master bedroom - LOVE LOVE LOVE the big bay window area!

The scary, scary, disgusting basement. Mike had to duck to walk around - it's probably 6' right now. We're going to dig it out to 8' and put in another family room, a bedroom, a full bath, and a washer-dryer.

Yikes. After we got over being punched in the face with the smell, we started to explore. Luckily, we know that all of this will be gone! The stairs on the left will be on the right when we are done, but the openness of the living/dining/kitchen will remain.

The other side of the basement. Just as scary and disgusting. This will be the third bedroom - and I LOVE that it will have its own back door, leading outside to the parking pad!

Three words: Everything. Must. Go!

The only redeeming thing that we've found in this house - kind of a cool chest!

Ta-da!!! We have a PARKING PAD!

So that's it! Kinda scary, huh? But it definitely got us excited about all the potential. It will be so much fun to see the "after" pictures to compare to these "before". Only 17,243 decisions to make between now and then!!  

Best Guest Blogger Ever

So, I’ve only written three posts for this blog, and have only sent this link to one person, but ALREADY I have the best guest blogger with a featured spot today. She was so excited for us to close today, she wrote us a song. Ladies and gentleman, Mrs. Alice Ockleshaw Phillips:

Closing Day (sung to the tune of Closing Time by some random one-hit wonder band I can't recall) (Editor’s note: the band name is Semisonic)

Closing day

Time to put your signatures to endless pieces of paper.
Closing day

Now you have more B-more houses than every boy and every girl.

Closing time
One last call for currency so empty your wallets and purse.
Closing time
You now have a new home but you CAN'T STAY THERE! :-)

ConGRATS on your brand new fancy home!

ConGRATS on your brand new fancy home!
ConGRATS on your brand new fancy home!

Fan-cee home....

The end

It's showtime!

Tomorrow is the big day – CLOSING DAY! I can’t believe that this day has finally arrived – we started this process with Joe back in April, but Mike and I have talked moving or upgrading for much longer. So excited!!

We have been doing little things to prepare for all of the decisions that we are going to have to start making soon. We’ve been talking to people about ideas, I started a Pinterest  page, and we’ve started researching wood floors, since that will be one of our most important and expensive decisions we’ll have to make. Who knew so many factors went into flooring – hardness, color, width, variance, reaction to sunlight, etc. Mike is really set on getting super-hard floors, which of course means more money. But we don’t have any pets, and it’s not like I’m always walking around the house in stilettos or anything. So I’m not convinced that we need to spend the extra money. A good compromise is getting the distressed look for the floors – that way if there are a few dents here and there, it looks like they should have been there all along!

I’m leaning towards dark floors with a wide plank, but that could make our rowhouse look smaller than if we used narrow planks. I had also really thought I’d want dark cabinets in the kitchen, and I think the house would be too dark if we had dark floors AND dark cabinets. So maybe we can put light tile in the kitchen so we can have those dark cabinets? Decisions, decisions…we’ll have to make some of these final decisions SOON! Exciting!!

One cool thing about tomorrow is that we got $2000 towards our closing costs through a Live Near Your Work incentive program. All I had to do was spend about six hours on an online class, and then met with a housing counselor one-on-one. Since I had already bought a house, it was a bit repetitive. But I wish I had known about it when I bought my first house, because it did have a lot of helpful information. That $2000 is split between my company and the city.

I’m so excited to get into our new (old) house tomorrow or Saturday and take the “before” pictures! It will be SO much fun to compare them to the new pictures in six or seven months! I’ll also be posting our floorplans and asking for opinions. Yay!!

IT’S OFFICIAL!

We have the closing date for the house! It was touch-and-go there for a while – negotiating the contract, settling on a final lay-out that we like, getting a crappy appraisal price, not seeing proper insurances for the contractor – but we are back on track! We even have a time table and completion date – March 15^th. Y’all are invited to a St. Patrick’s Day party at our new house!! Just kidding – we are fully aware of the fact that March 15^th is a very arbitrary date, and it would be shocking if it was actually completed by then. And I KNOW we won’t be organized enough to be having any sort of party!!

Speaking of, we had been agonizing over the thought of selling our house while going through this process. What if it sells too early and we are homeless? What if it sells too late and we are paying two mortgages for six months? How will we have enough time to be picking out everything at the new house, while accomplishing all the little things that need to get done at our current house to sell it? (Not to mention trying to keep it spotlessly clean nonstop!)

So we had a real estate agent come in to help us evaluate. It’s not surprising that the price she thought we should put it on the market for was less than we were hoping. So, we made the decision: we are just going to rent our house out for a year or so, and see what happens to the market. This way, we have more control over our schedule, we don’t have to spend a ton of time perfecting the house, and we can leave dirty dishes in the sink once in a while J And hopefully the market will turn around in a couple of years and we can sell it at a higher price. It is not ideal for us to own three houses within about six blocks of each other, but oh well! We have planned to keep the Foster house for a while as an investment property, but we will most likely sell the Glover house as soon as the market gets better.

Who knew Mike and I would become such land barons in Canton?