Fixer Upper | Part 1

If you’re anything like me, you love a good home makeover. About a month ago, my husband and I went to a couple of open houses in our neighborhood. We are not on the market to buy right now, but were curious about what our options were in terms of housing. Historic Urbana has a great school district, it’s walking distance from shops, cafés, restaurants and it’s right across campus.

Known as the “faculty ghetto”, the houses are older than the majority of buildings in the area and are architecturally charming, inside and out. The brick-paved streets are lined with old trees that look particularly beautiful in the spring and summer months. In the fall, the foliage turns yellow, and brown and ruby red, and it’s just the prettiest thing to see. 

But for me, the best part about the neighborhood is the architecture. No two houses look the same. Walking down the street you’ll come across colorful, century-old Victorians, fairytale-like Tudor cottages, Spanish colonials, elegant Georgians… it’s torture! 🙂 So, naturally, the idea of touring some of these beauties was very appealing to us. Plus, it gave us valuable insight into the local market.

One of the first homes we visited turned out to be also my favorite. It’s a little Cape built in 1949 that has had only two owners over the decades. As a result, despite its excellent location and potential, the house is in an estate. It suffered some neglect and needs a ton of work to become a comfortable, functional home for a young family.

Here are some pictures I took of the interiors during our tour.

I love the staircase detail!

Underneath the carpet, there is hardwood flooring installed many years ago by the first owner.

Can you see the potential? 🙂

The kitchen has a cute little window above the sink and a French door that leads to a breezeway that connects the garage with the backyard.

On the main floor there’s a full bath that separates the kitchen from the front bedroom.

The upstairs bedrooms are a lovely size, with one dormer window each.

The upstairs bathroom is quite small but it faces South and has plenty of natural light.

The other upstairs bedroom. You can’t see it in the picture but the blue wallpaper is not as bad as it looks 🙂

The thing about open houses is that, before you realize it, you start imagining how you’d live there, what you’d change, where your things would go… Talking to our realtor, I got excited and started thinking about all of those things. Could this tiny house become a comfortable  home for our little family? That is, if we stayed in Urbana long enough to make this work (and that is a big “if” )…

I played around with a virtual makeover to try and get a picture of the home’s true potential. Since we now know we won’t be making an offer on the place,  I will be able to share some ideas with you over the next couple of weeks. In a future post, I’ll tackle the exterior – little things as well as major changes that can turn this puppy into a real show-stopper!

Have a great day!

xo,

Eva

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