Snippets: Welcome Home!

This is a reoccurring series on Macheesmo that shows life from the point of view of my phone.

Betsy and I purchased our very first home in the Denver area last month and we are finally moved in and settled.

I thought I would show you all the new digs!

We have been moving a lot over the last few years and I’m very happy to hopefully call this place home for a very long time.

The house was originally built in 1892 so it has lots of old character with plenty of new upgrades. The previous owners took amazing care of the house and we hope to do the same.

I can’t say enough about the previous owners. They had everything meticulously documented which made the transition a bit easier for us.

Plus, they left us this awesome old cast iron mailbox!

The Downstairs

Before we moved in, we took about two weeks and painted almost the entire house. I did it all myself with some help from a few friends. It was a lot of work, but worth it I think.

When you walk in, there is a beautiful old oak staircase in the entryway, but the downstairs still has a fairly open feel to it which we liked.

The Living Room

We are trying not to hang much on the walls in the living room because the walls are all brick and we don’t want to drill into them too much.

Betsy has done a great job decorating so far though and this room definitely feels like home already.

Porter loves watching the world go by from the large porch window!

Dining Room

When we first saw the house, the dining room was in good shape and had this amazing wood built-in. The piece has mirror backings on the bottom two shelves and leaded glass windows up top which let in lots of light at certain times of the day.

This was how it looked when we moved in. One word: Maroon!

We brightened the room up a lot by painting it two shades of blue, one slightly lighter than the other. We are also getting a nice long reclaimed wood table that should be arriving in a week or two to help take up some space in this huge room!

I think this dining room will be such a nice room to host though once we get it finished up!

The Kitchen

I was very worried that I wouldn’t like this kitchen. It looked kind of dark when we first saw it and it had an electric stove (something I always said would be a deal breaker for me, but compromise is important).

There was a lot of brown in this room!

This room is the example of what a coat or two (or three) of paint can do.

Some white paint and light blue walls was all it took to brighten up the entire room. I really love how the brick pops now.

The electric stove is still around, but it’s actually a super nice electric stove and maybe someday I can afford to switch that bad boy out with a gas model!

This is the first kitchen I’ve ever had where I can actually fit all my kitchen stuff in the kitchen. I already really love cooking in it.

The Upstairs

We haven’t done much to the upstairs yet because it looks really good! When you go up the stairs there is this really old and beautiful stained glass window. I was certain that we would break it while we were moving it, but it made it!

The Bedroom

Our bedroom is insane and definitely the nicest bedroom I’ve ever had.

The ceilings are like 20 feet high and Betsy calls it her resort bedroom.

Even though it’s an old house, the previous owners renovated a tiny corner of the bedroom into a bathroom. It’s small, but it works great for us since Betsy and I are never getting ready at the same time anyway.

The Work

I’ve always struggled with an office space in our homes, but not with this one. We made sure there would be a nice place for me to work. This house has a nice library area that opens up into an office area. It’s perfect and a lovely place to work.

Here’s the view from my desk. Since it’s on the second floor, I get a great view of the city from the windows.

There’s even an attached balcony so Porter can chill out there while I’m working.

It’s his watchtower of sorts.

The Backyard

It’s important to know that Betsy and I have never had a usable yard in our six years living together. Living in the city, it’s tough to find any yard space, but this house has a really cute backyard. It’s not huge or anything, but it’s a nice little sanctuary and it’s landscaped really nice already.

We have big plans to keep this space looking fantastic!

There’s a side area in the backyard that hasn’t starting growing yet. Knowing the previous owners, I imagine stuff will start popping up here once we get into spring, but I may also turn this into a garden in the future.

We were also instructed to leave these trinkets over the backyard door.

The are good luck and we will definitely need it!

Projects

This home is very far from a fixer-upper. There’s not a lot of stuff that needs to be done considering how old the house is. There is a list of 4-5 projects that the inspector said we should focus on within the next year or so and then we have an ongoing dream list of stuff that we would like to do someday.

So far I like spending time working on the house though. While I was taking these photos, in fact, we were working on painting the bathroom upstairs.

Betsy and I feel really lucky to be able to live in this house. It’s not the biggest and doesn’t have many of the things that HGTV says you should request in a new house (DOUBLE SINKS).

But it has a lot of love and character and that’s what we care about.

We just made our first mortgage payment last week. 359 to go!