The Kitchen, Before

While touring the house, the old owner sat in the breakfast nook and told us that the kitchen was entirely new. I'm almost positive that her exact words were "That kitchen is all new. All new kitchen". The part she left off was the year it was all brand new... In 1968.

I'm almost embarrassed to post such a messy picture, but its the only true before shot I have. So gross. (The amount of plastic bags is also very cringe inducing). However nothing is worse than the gold veined marble look counters and matching back splash.

The size of the stove is hard to see in this picture, but it was huge. I'd say it was a little bit bigger than most residential six burner stoves on the market today. Except it was only four burners, with only two of them that worked. Of those two only one worked right because the other one had no temperature control, so it would be red hot no matter the level at which you wanted to cook with. Did I mention that the one working burner tilted so far to the left that the contents of the pan would all slide down to one side? Fun times cooking on that stove...

Here our fridge, the Kelvinator, is seen. Oh, you've never heard of the Kelvinator brand before? Yeah, me neither until I bought a house that came with one.


Wide shot from the formal dining room door, looking through the breakfast nook onto the kitchen. What a lovely patterned floor we had...

Breakfast Nook, Before

The house was listed as having a Dining Room, Kitchen, and Breakfast Nook. When I hear the word "Breakfast Nook" images of a forgotten corner of the kitchen with a tiny table and chairs come to mind. The kind of place where you can take your morning cup of coffee to relax before the day really starts. Apparently the old owners didn't conjure up the same thoughts as me, because the house's breakfast nook was actually a dining room. Just an informal dining room sandwiched between the kitchen and formal dining room. Ah. Two dining rooms, well that makes... no. sense. at. all.

The Breakfast Nook, taken from the kitchen looking towards the formal dining room. Wood paneling and horrible linoleum all around. Hideous.

The Formal Dining Room, Before

This is the room where our old owners clearly invested their focus and money to make a formal for use on special occasions only space. Behold... the glory of their Dining Room.

My favorite part was the off center, walled off mantel. I'm not even a stickler for symmetry and this drove me nuts until the day Pete tore it down. You could tell they put money into this room because it was the only one in the entire house that had wall to wall carpet installed. Couple that with the professionally installed crown moldings and paneling, and you have yourself one fancy formal pink dining room. Do you have any idea how many times I walked into that chandelier before we took it down?

Before Eye Candy...

This is where it gets really fun. The before pictures.... Please keep in mind that in 2003 I never though I'd be posting these pictures for all the Internet to see, so they aren't the best. In fact I thought my boyfriend was nuts for taking pictures because everything was super fugly and why would we want to remember the houses horribleness? Now I'm so happy we have them. Sometimes you forget what your starting point really was and you forget how much work you've actually put into the house. All the painting and scraping starts to blend together after a certain point.

The front door.

Privacy- no. Huge window to the street.

Safety- no. Giant glass windows are easily broken

Rusty screen- Check!! Perfect for the infected cut you've always wanted

The stairs. Such beautiful carpet and a solid handrail.

The upstairs hallway.

Peeling patterned, textured wallpaper all over the walls and ceiling.
I'll post more before pictures as I find them! The final Afters will have to wait until next week. We're staging the house for sale, so it will hopefully look the best its ever been over the weekend.

What we bought

This was our new home in June of 2003 in all its Green and White glory. Even the roof was green and complimented the metal awnings so well. This color scheme extended to the garage and "summer house", which was nothing more than a glorified shed. Here is a hint people, just because the old owner liked hanging out in there during the summers of the 60's and 70's does not qualify a large shed to be called a summer house. Very mis-leading to a buyer perusing the MLS listings.

Some of the highlights that can be seen in this picture are our lovely lawn ornament of a railroad crossing pole, the rotted roof where one could stick your hand through to the outside and our gorgeous metal awnings that made the most wonderful tink tink tink tink sounds when it rained. I don't mean to go off on a negative tangent, because clearly anyone can see the house has visible challenges and we still bought it.

Not only did we willingly buy the house, but we were excited to do so! This was going to be our project and place where we could call home forever. The house had plenty of room for a us and then a family, with a great yard and a garage that could protect my boyfriend's precious 1967 Mustang.

I look back on the last six years in the house and smile. How far we've gone and how much I've learned from this house... its been a big part in a wonderful chapter in my life, one that I'm ready to close soon for the next one to begin.

House Hunting...

After the first house burned down, we moved back to the drawing board and started the search with even more intensity. The budget was still low. Really low.

One night the boyfriend approached me with what he called the perfect listing. He couldn’t figure out why the house had been on the market for so long. A quick drive by cleared that question right up. The house was in a bad state of disrepair that was not evident from the blurry realor listing and also not pictured was the fact that a rail road track ran right through the driveway.

While loving trains as a kid, the boyfriend wasn’t so thrilled with the idea of having a train run through his driveway. But the price was right and this house came with a two car garage. So a walk through was arranged. The owner was home and that always makes me really uncomfortable when I’m visiting a potential house to buy. Note to self, do whatever it takes to not be home when people are coming for a walk through.

Painfully outdated does not even begin to describe this house. It wasn’t just the old wallpaper all over the ceilings, or the “brand new” kitchen installed in 1968- the house was on the borderline of a decline to the point of no return. It was quite clear that all the basic maintenance of the house had been ignored for about twenty years and if a new owners didn’t decide to fix everything and just live in it status quo, that in another decade the house would be slated for a tear down.

However this house had a lot of charm and great potential to be our home. The town was great and the neighborhood looked loads better than the last one. We decided to take on the challenge of bringing the house back to livable conditions. What a couple of suckers for charm and potential we are!

My boyfriend inked the mortgage papers.
(and amazingly the house did not burst into flames)

The start of the hunt

If I was really smart I would have started this blog about 6 years ago when my then boyfriend, future fiancé and now husband started his search for a new house. Guess I'm just a little behind the times...

Way back, over six years ago, Pete started the search for his first single family home. He was on, what some might consider, the tiniest budget ever for NJ. I'm not really sure if the boyfriend was actually looking for a handyman’s special or if it just evolved to that point after realizing those homes were the only ones available in the required price range. In a show of solidarity and because I love driving around aimlessly I accompanied him all over creation during those weeks doing the all important drive bys of any potential houses.

After countless “no” properties Pete seemed to have found a house in an especially crappy section of an especially crappy South Jersey town. Who gives a poop about the town, the house was cheap! Really cheap and it had a driveway which was on our short list of must haves. We did a walk through and with the puppy tucked in my arms we examined every aspect of the house.

Everything was painfully outdated, but the bones of the house were there for us to fix up. We could see ourselves living there, fixing it up before we moved on. It was the perfect lets not keep living in our college townhouse where people try to throw kegs onto your roof solution. The yard was small but cute and bursting with potential, even with the railroad tracks running through them.

No less than an hour after Pete signed the papers for our Realtor calls. The house was on fire and was currently burning down. No joke. Call it divine intervention or call it insurance fraud that was never proven. That house was just not meant to be.

So our search started all over again.

Welcome!

Hi! I'm Eva, I'm a New Jersey newlywed who has an affinity for falling in love with the ugliest house on the block. Just call me a sucker for potential. My husband Peter and I have finally reached the stopping point on our current house and are itching to get it listed/sold/off our hands so we can move on to our next renovation. The next project up is what we affectionately call the "Wee House", which was built in 1888 and has solid bones with a whole lot of ugly packaging.

Since we already lived through one complete house renovation together, I'm confident we can do it again. Though it is quite possible all the paint fumes I've inhaled have made me forget how horribly annoying it is to live without a kitchen. That's the funny thing about renovations, the interruption of normal life is straining but once they are all over you have this great space to enjoy.

This is for everyone who asks "how's the house going?" Frankly most people don't want to hear about the discounted slate tiles you scored for 75% off in real life conversation or about the time you woke up during a surprise summer storm when the roof was off*.

In addition to keeping everyone posted about house progress, which is going to be painfully dull and long during the rip out and demolition phase, I'm going to keep all my ideas and inspiration here. Those ideas will help me motivated to get through this again without loosing my marbles.


*Although I swear that is a really funny story.