The Saga Begins...

The front entry when we first moved in. Some things you just don't know about a house until you move in and live there a while. One of the things that has given me the most pleasure is the light that comes through the front door in the morning (faces the east) and shines on the opposite wall above the stairs. I love the old wavy glass.



It wasn't what I'd had in mind. I had planned on moving to a bigger city, much farther away. In fact I had actually put down earnest money the week before on another house, and then changed my mind. I weighed the pros and cons in my mind as we swung around the block for another look. Pros: The house looked very nice from the outside. It was an old house, which was what I wanted. We could afford it, because it had a nice price tag. The one I looked at last week was about thirty thousand more dollars than this one.
Cons: This was a small town. A very small town. We had come from San Diego just three years before and had had trouble adjusting to the size of the town we were currently living in, which was approximately four times BIGGER than this town.
Also, this was far away from the airport. We were blessed enough to be able to live anywhere we wanted job wise, because my husband, the breadwinner of the family traveled for a living, but it would be convenient to be near the airport. This was about two hours away on a good day.
As we passed the house again I decided to at least look at it. We called the realtor (from the far away town we had planned on living in) and had him come out and take us around.
I can't say I fell in love right away. My husband was the one who persuaded me. For one thing, two of the bedrooms weren't really bedrooms, they were an old garage alongside the house that had been converted into bedrooms.
The walls in both of those rooms were covered with shabby white paneling and really old square tiles on the ceilings with little outer space stickers all over them.
The kitchen had been remodeled in the fifties and had pine cabinets with particle board shelves. Also there were fluorescent lights everywhere. I hate fluorescents.
But there was a beautiful crystal chandelier in the foyer, and I loved the front door. And there were a lot of windows. I mean a lot. (Later I would count them...there were 44, all with the old wavy glass) The living room was huge. The master bedroom was enormous at about 25x19. It had a really cute breakfast nook and a large backyard. It had three bathrooms, although I wasn't sure whether this was pro or con, because two of the bathrooms were really tiny, and one had a window about six inches away from the toilet.
When we looked at it, the dining room had a pool table in it instead of a dining room table and the owners had built a custom recessed cabinet into the wall for the pool equipment with a lovely painting on the doors that said "Snooker played here". This was completed with a lovely rendition of a rack of balls and two crossed cues.
But the living and dining room were spacious and open. The house had potential. We decided to go for it. It didn't look like it needed too much work, just a little painting and some cleaning. And maybe some new carpet and new cabinets. And that wallpaper in the downstairs toilet...circa 1982...were there wood floors under the carpet...hmmm...maybe we could refinish those...