Our 1940 Foursquare... The Tour Continues

In my last post I gave a house tour of the downstairs area. If you missed it you can see the downstairs home tour. I'm now going to show the upstairs via the realtor's MLS photos.

Not sure starting at the bathroom is the best place to start the second part of the tour but... here goes!

At the top of the stairs is a hallway and to the left is the bathroom. It is the one and only bathroom in the house. And, this has taken some getting used to. Another issue I've had to get used to is having guest go upstairs to use the bathroom. However, it doesn't seem to bother them.


Adjacent to the bathroom is a medium sized bedroom.

 

 

As you can see a little girl resided in here. I'm sure she loved her little room but my thought was, "These stripes have got to go!" I think it was our second night in the house that I found the can of purple paint and painted over all of the pink stripes. It was a temporary solution... a very temporary solution but one I could live with for a little while.

 

Directly across from the striped bedroom is the master bedroom.

 

 

As you can see... It isn't palatial.

 

 

 

To the right of the wooden dresser, with the mirror, is a walk-in closet. But truly, calling it a walk-in closet depends on your size and if you are claustrophobia. I would actually call it a reach-in closet... However, you do need really, really long arms to reach the back side of the closet. 

 

I’m formulating some ideas regarding making something acceptable for a closet without taking up to much of the floor space in this small master. But, that is another project that is on our to-do list and I will do the before and after's in another post.

 

Adjacent to the master bedroom is the smallest room.

 

 

I think it was the second week we lived in this house, that I painted this room a creamy white and made it into our temporary walk-in closet. I will share the details in another post.

 

You can't really tell from the photos but the house actually has really dark paint colors and one of the first things on our to-do list was to lighten the rooms up. 

 

As I have said before, this house is small be it seems to fit us perfectly right now.

 

Please visit again as we make this house into our home.

 

Thank you for stopping by!

 

Nan

 



 



 

Our 1940 Foursquare

We are slowly making our house a home. I thought I would share the house as we first seen it. These photos are the realtor's MLS photos and show the house as it was when the past owners lived there.

Our house is a cute little 1940 house built in the classic style of a "foursquare." They are very common in this area. It isn't very big and it is what it is, nothing hidden... just a simple basic layout that covers 1,300 square feet. The square footage doesn't include the full basement.

 As you come in from the large front porch you enter directly into the foyer/stairwell/living room.





The fireplace is a working gas fireplace. To the left of the fireplace is the doorway that leads into the walk thru butler's pantry and then into the kitchen.

 



Looking at the living room from the front door. 

It's a small living room that leads into the dining through the arched doorway to the right of the fireplace.

Looking from the far end of the living back toward the front door and staircase.
 

 

 

This is the view from the staircase looking down. I'm not sure why they had so many sofas in the MLS pictures??? When we viewed the house, only the gray sofa, mirror and curtains where in the living room.



To the right of the portable stand/window is the backdoor.

This was the view of the kitchen and as you can see... it is VERY small. It was one of our very first projects we worked on. In another post I'll show how we made it work and flow so much better for us.

The sellers kindly left us this rolling cabinet but it just wasn't our style. And, I thought that so much more could be done to make the kitchen more functional. To the right of the rolling cabinet is the back door that leads out to a little porch and patio area in our backyard.
 


This is the view of ALL of the counter space that was available.

The white door, in the background, is directly across from walk-thru butler's pantry and leads to the side entry off of the driveway.  


View of all the built-in kitchen cabinets.

See that little teeny tiny cabinet to the right of the dishwasher? That was the only drawer in the whole kitchen. No really, the only drawer and it was only 9" wide.
 


Looking back towards the walk-thru butler's pantry.

See the wooden cupboards in the background? That is the walk thru butler's pantry I mentioned. It doesn't look anything like this now. [huge smile]  Again, I'll share in another post.

As I said, these are the MLS photos and they didn't have a lot of views of the kitchen area.

To the left of the refrigerator you can walk through a doorway into the dining room.




Viewed from the arch way in the living room.

The dining room is a very good size and accommodates my family with no problems. As you can see, there is plenty of natural light.

The doorway on the far left side leads into the kitchen. You can get a little glimpse of the back door.



Plenty of sunlight streaming into the dining room.



Looking towards the living room.

That's it for the tour of the first floor of our house. As I said, it's a small house but it really does work perfectly for us. In the next post I will show the upstairs.

Thank you for stopping by!

Nan

North to... well, north to New York.

My husband and I moved to New York to be closer to my father's side of the family. In April of 2013 we bought a cute 1940 foursquare style house in a little village.

This is what our house looked like the day we viewed it.

While making the house our home I will also start a new career as a home stager/redesigner. 

 
This is where I'll be sharing ideas on interior design, do-it-yourself projects, home staging (staging/redesign), treasures found and anything else I think might make life more pretty!  I hope you'll follow me on this new and exciting adventure.

 

Thank you for stopping by!

 

Nan