Home Tour (before we made changes)

Here's a tour of our monster house puzzle. I do officially call our house the monster house. 

The front half was built in 1988. The back half was added in 1951. I suspect the porch was added at the same time as the back add-on. 

Below are mostly photos that were available online when we were house hunting. This is what we saw that somehow enticed Chris to want this house. I still don't understand his brain.

The front

The top of the stairs off the foyer. Nice wallpaper huh?

Bathroom off the top of the stairs.

 Kitchen, opposite the bathroom.

One of the upstairs bedrooms

Not shown is the other upstairs bedroom. It has the same carpet and dark blue walls.

If you go back down stairs to the foyer, there is a door to a closet that leads to the kitchen and a door to the living room. The living room is one of the nicest rooms in the house. I don't understand why it wasn't included in the online photos.

Dining room

The room beyond the doorway is the living room. To the right is the kitchen.

You know what's super cool about our dining room? Those french doors lead to a bedroom with super dirty shag carpet and wood paneling painted robin's egg blue. (Yeah, so I lied. Not cool.)

Master bedroom viewed from the dining room. To the left is the mudroom.

Back up into the dining room and turn the other way, and you find the kitchen. The photos don't do justice to its weirdness. See the little door? It leads to a coat closet, with the foyer beyond. The other is a closet under the stairs.

That nice looking granite tile counter has been laid over the top of existing laminate, and the grout is rotting, especially by the sink. In person, it's gross. It's also really heavy, and the floor in the kitchen had done some serious sinking.

The fridge is blocking a cupboard built into a window where the house used to end. It's a monster fridge awkwardly jutting into the room. Isn't it great how the appliances match?

 And pendant lighting from a drop ceiling. Better yet there are 2 big fluorescent lights in the ceiling that don't work at all.

Whoever was selling the house really wanted to show off the thresholds between rooms. The kitchen tile is over top the old floor, so I trip here a lot.

Near to the kitchen is the main floor bath. Mmmm black tile that should have been resealed a while ago. My favorite. (Or not.)

Blue is not my color of choice, but I can't complain about this easy to clean shower surface. I can complain about the lack of vent and the bubbling and flaking drywall that needs repaired.

 This pedestal sink rocks and is sitting on top of a visible board because it is too short for where it's plumbed to (of course that detail isn't in the picture). Also, who doesn't love a stained glass look on their medicine cabinet? (Me that's who.)

Off the kitchen and the bathroom is the mudroom. These vinyl tiles are peeling up all over the place. To the left there's also a sink with pink tile just outside the bathroom. Beyond the shelf you can just see is the washer and dryer.

Upstairs off the mudroom is the sun room. Check out the plywood floor painted gray, the original lime stone, and the corrugated fiberglass skylights. 

This room is for cooking people alive when it's sunny. Oh, and just beyond the stairs, do you see that old sink used for plant caretaking? If anyone's counting, we've seen 5 sinks and discussed 1 not pictured. We're not done with sinks yet either.

To the basement! Yes, they did leave this plaid couch for us.

View from over by the couch. Entrance to basement is up and to the left. There's also a utility room that-a-way. It's FULL of junk.

I was kind of excited about the fireplace, until I learned it was converted to gas and vented through a crumbling fireplace.

Hey our 7th and final sink! While I appreciate the basement sink, plumbing a full bathroom down here is pretty much impossible. Also, since they didn't dig egress window, you can't have a legal bedroom down here either.

Let's get out of this place. It's a joke.

Look out the back door, and you see the garage. It was actually repainted brown before we bought the place. I don't have a photo of it. This was discovered on the county website.

The garage is full of spiders. I hate spiders.

And ta da! The back side of the house, which looks nothing like the front.

We have gravel parking just at the end of this path. The garage sits to the right.

So that's our Monster House. Our great puzzle to solve.