As is

Welcome to our home!  Here's a pre-reno tour, warts and all, so you have a good before shot to compare when everything changes.

Step up to the front porch.  We think this porch used to be a different shape but was made smaller at some point to enclose a walk-in closet (which retains the completely un-insulated climate of the front porch) for the master bedroom.  We're going to make this sucker bigger and properly quadrilateral, the better to swing on without whacking something, my dear.  I think we're adding about six feet to it in depth and moving the front door to the North wall of the porch (next to that existing window).

Here's our wee entryway.  It's going away entirely to become part of the new front porch (or East Porch, as our architectural plans grandly dub it).  I THINK it will work well to have the front porch function as the entryway, and I trust our architect when he tells me it will, but there's the rule-following part of my soul that wonders how you can possibly have an entryway that's not behind a door.

And of course, that's not a ghost in the mirror, just a tastefully blurred photographer.  This house shows no signs of being haunted, and I would know, since I've lived in a haunted house and if I'm not exactly psychically sensitive, I am for sure a giant scaredy-cat.  I'll tell you my ghosty house story sometime.

From the entry, you walk into the living room and dining room through that doorway on your right.  The party table, of course, isn't usually there, but this is a good picture (read, not a disaster as it is two minutes after the kids wake up).  These rooms are going to stay the same, though there are marks on the floor that show there used to be a wall, maybe with pocket doors, between the two, and we did consider rebuilding those walls.  Though we're going to continue to use these rooms in the same way, it will be nice to have the room be big and open as it is now, and we nixed the dividing wall for now.

And here's where the changes start.  I love this kitchen, and in another shot I'm standing at my mixer next to the stove, barefoot, frumptastic, and happy as a pig, making yummy messes in my laboratory, which is how I probably spend a whole lot of my time.  Add in the kids running laps around that little kitchen island, a giant mess somewhere, some carpooling, and that's my life that I wouldn't trade for anyone else's. I hope, above all, that the new house still has a heart like this shiny, busy little room that I love.  We're going to add a hallway here, and a big, well-lit pantry, and then the new kitchen will extend to about where that back door is, and to your left it will open into a new family room, so big changes are on the way.

The house has a style like a lot of houses of its era with two bedrooms and a bathroom in between on one side of the house.

Bedroom:

This one is going to stay, get a pair of windows on that East (left) wall that will look out to the porch, and be a guest room/study.

Bathroom:

This will stay but get a little bigger, and we'll add a real shower.  Because we've been showering in one of those clawfoot-with-the-curtain deals for eight years, and that's just not a good way to make people feel welcome.

And Bedroom:

This sunshiny little room is going to be opened up to the kitchen and made into a family room.

And the rest of the house is going to make the acquaintance of the backhoe in a few days:

The back porch/hallway/laundry room/mudroom/pantry off of the kitchen.

The guest room/Lego room/storage room that clearly used to be a back porch (we know because of the precipitous grade of the floor) and was enclosed to rent out sometime in the 30's.

And the second bathroom.

Then you pop out of the back door of our cozy little house into a cozy little backyard, and your tour is done!  The new house is adding a big garage and an upstairs, with three bedrooms, so "little" may no longer apply when we're through, though I hope "cozy" still will.

By the way, if you like the color of the house, thanks!  I picked it myself.  If you don't, keep in mind that I was 8 months pregnant (in July, in South Texas) at the time.  Not to be held responsible for decisions made when ankles are the size of monster truck tires.  I go back and forth about the color even now, myself, but I see it popping up on new houses every day, so I can't have been all wrong.