Our "Hobby Home" (Part I: Upstairs)

Also known as That Time We Bought A Seventy-four Year-old House That Had Been a Rental for Forty Years. This has been our life for the past 3.5 weeks. We closed on the house on Aug. 21st and have been spending most of our free time since then working on various projects to turn our 864 sq. ft + basement + yard into our little oasis in the city. Most of those projects have taken longer than expected, and practically none of them have gone as planned. Such are the charms of a "pre-war" home.

I share these photos with some trepidation; there is still much work to be done before I will be satisfied to declare victory on any of the rooms, but we've gotten nearly all the boxes unpacked and things are at a state where we can go about our daily routines without too much inconvenience.

MASTER BEDROOM
The real victory here is that our king-sized bed made it up the narrow staircase and that it actually fits quite nicely in our bedroom. The side tables (Kevin's Craigslist find from a couple years ago) slid neatly into place on either side of the bed and the lamps from my living room provided some nice symmetry and warmth.

The closet is actually a decent size (although definitely smaller that your standard modern closet), so we're still working out how best to use the space. A closet make-over is on the list for future projects (right now, there are just dual level wood rods in place). We did hang a iron rack on the back of the door, which provides a nice place to tuck the iron out of view. A new dresser is also high on the list; despite the best efforts of our movers, Kevin's dresser was just too big to make it up the stairs (unlike the king bed, it didn't bend ;-/).

I love the view out our window here. Makes me happy to see trees and nicely updated homes across the street rather than a glass & steel high rise. It's also MUCH quieter here than at our old place where cars, planes, and other city noises were rattling the windows at all hours of the night.

A Room With A View

NEW REGISTERS THROUGHOUT!...said no real estate listing ever.
Most people don't even know what these things are called; I certainly didn't, until our home inspector mentioned that we should have our vents cleaned and I removed the old ones (which were painted over with multiple layers of paint!) and discovered that all of the vents were coated in (74?) years of dust, pet hair, and various other varieties of nastiness that I'd prefer never to have in my air supply again. It was quite the task to remove all of the old ones (10 total), and a project in and of it self to measure & mount the new ones. After some trial & error and several trips to home depot, I finally got the right sizes ( 6"x 12" vents on some and 6" x 14" on others; most weren't standard sizes) & functionality (each room has an intake  and outflow, each of which fits differently). We also had our ducts cleaned, which may have been the best $200 we've spent yet!

New Vent Registers. Get Excited. 

2ND BEDROOM (A.K.A - THE STORAGE PIT)

This room also gets great natural light (and the newly refinished floors are gleaming in this pic!), but at present this room is just an unorganized mass of things we don't have a place for, but hope to soon. Namely: a desk, some type of storage/low profile bookshelf, and possibly a bed or sofa (I'd like it to be the later, but my old sofa may not make it up the narrow staircase). That new dresser for Kevin (who is currently living out of the box in the middle of the room) and improved closet storage (so I can stop using the plastic storage bins I bought in college) should help with the clutter factor and allow us to turn this into a home office. 

THE BACKYARD (as viewed from our second floor bedroom)
Kevin has put in some major work back here, removing several truckloads of ivy, relocating the shed to the back corner of the yard, and overseeing a tree and stump removal last week while I was out of town (the tree was rotted out in the middle and the stump was leftover from the previous owners). Kevin is currently overseeing a major grass re-growing project and is monitoring the progress carefully. We've got big plans for this yard: Trees! A patio! A new fence! Landscaping! A new shed! Patio furniture...we'll get there (eventually). For now, we're making do with our little stoop and grill that Kevin's parents gave us as a housewarming gift. Barkley is enjoying all the sniffs.

Our backyard on Sep. 13, 2014 (hoping for a big makeover in the next year)

 THE BATHROOM
Nice natural light and recently updated, but certainly nothing fancy. We're focusing on adding functionality and upgrading some of the rental grade hardware. New bath mats purchased this weekend freshened up the look. There is a nicely sized storage closet with shelves, which Kevin recently removed the door to (it was bumping up against the other door and getting pretty annoying), so I'd like to get some nice storage bins to organize the stuff on the shelves and a bright colored curtain that we can close when we don't want to stare at all our bathroom stuff.

Shower curtain pulled back to show window

shower with curtain closed to show other bathroom details

our massive bathroom storage closet; now sans door.