Our realtor might have been hesitant to show is this house. We had told him we wanted “move -in ready.” Another friend of mine told me she wouldn’t have bought this house based on the many many projects that needed to be done in this house.
However, when we described the location of our house our list included:
- Established neighborhood in Fort Collins – Our house was built in the 1980’s, it’s as old as I am. And the neighborhood has been kept up! Large trees, beautifully landscaped yards.
- Commerce that is close enough to walk to – Grocery store, a deli, chinese restaurant, ice cream shop. And that’s just a few just down the path from our house.
- Grade school in walking distance – Our kids will walk out our back door and onto a city-maintained trail and be at their school in less that 5 minutes.
- By some type of water – Not only did we find a house by the water we have a view of the water.
We had met with our realtor a week or two prior to give him the specifics on what we were looking to find. We also had said there was no rush. We were paying month to month on the house we were renting. One Tuesday night we went out and saw 3 or 4 houses with the realtor. We didn’t fall in love with any of them. However we saw a house in our new neighborhood and instantly liked the neighborhood. That evening Tim pointed to a street in the neighborhood and said, ” If a house goes for sale on this street, we want to see it.”
The very next day in my email I got delivered the houses that were put on the market. I opened them and was completely blown away that a house ON THAT STREET was now listed. I called Tim immediately and texted our realtor. We were in the house less than 4 hours later. Had a contract to them the very next morning and it was accepted early Friday. No one else even had the chance to get into the house. Talk about devine intervention! In a time that people were putting multiple upon multiple offers on a house before one was accepted our experience was extremely rare.
So here it is folks the pictures from our house before we bought it. They are the pictures from the listing so of course the lighting and everything looks okay.
Kitchen:
Kitchen! Check out the fact there isn’t a fridge! Fun and to make things worse there is a wooded box that any potential fridge has to fit inside. And who doesn’t love a purple sponged wall with wall candle sconces.
What you don’t see is the damage to the floor in front of the “fridge”
New fridge and new floor was put on our list.
Master bedroom, bedroom and bonus room:
The master bedroom and bath and bonus room. Bright. Orange. Yellow. Can we put primer and paint on the list twice?
Future kids rooms:
I fell in love with the dormer spaces. The colors, not so much.
This is a bonus room on the side of the house on the main floor, they took this addition all the way up to the roof line which resulted in the bonus room in the master bedroom as well. I saw this room and immediately thought play room – it has a door that I can close to block out some of the kid noise.
(As I write this, Joshua is in the playroom singing at the top of his lungs to KidsBop – why haven’t I gotten up to close the door yet? )
Basement- This wasn’t the most flattering picture of the basement, it is actually finished fairly well. I’m not a fan of the drop ceiling but it is only in 1/4 of the basement. The basement also includes a 3/4 bath, laundry closet and huge storage with built-in shelves. Can we take a moment and take in the bright sea-foam green color, it was somewhat blinding. Which is actually unnecessary because the space has some good natural light.
Sunroom:
This room is the best room in the house! Whoever added this room on knew what they were doing.
They didn’t include any pictures of the living room off the kitchen, or other bathrooms – This house had 5 toilets! Good thing I’ve taught my son how to clean them.
Back yard:
The back yard is actually quite tiny and has an additional problem- the koi pond. Our realtor actually said, “Why have a pond in your yard when you have a small lake right there. ” The pond was pretty but we tried to keep it up for a few months and it was impossibly murky and gross by the time we were able to find someone to buy the 18-20 fish that were in there. And the issue of the small yard wasn’t even when just beyond the fence was a park!
Main floor lay out (not to scale, but you get the picture)
Upstairs layout:
SOLD. And my mind was spinning with all the amazing possibilities that laid ahead of us for this house.