We closed on Haven House on February 14, 2020. Although 2020 brought a lot of challenges for us and for the rest of the world due to the emergence of COVID 19, the silver lining was purchasing Haven House. We are both so grateful to be by the lake in this beautiful place.
My plan with this post is to introduce you to Haven House how we first met it and link to other posts as we make updates. So, welcome to Haven House!
Some basic stats:
-This raised ranch beauty was built in the late 1960s
-The main living level is 1370 sq ft and the lower level living area is 747 sq ft. Total: 2,117 sq ft
-The house has 3 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms on the main living level
-There is a half bath on the lower level that is plumbed in for a shower
Here we are with the front exterior view. Although we both like cedar shake, the color along with the lower level brick don't inspire much curb appeal. See details about our remodel aspirations here.
Let's head to the deck. This deck is amazing. It is covered, lighted, and plenty big for some nice outdoor entertaining. Additionally, the railing and deck (not the posts) are all composite - so this baby is low maintenance and will last a long time.
We no longer have the bird feeders or furniture from when we first viewed the deck, I'll post an update for you this spring. It really just needed a good power wash, a grill, and some patio furniture.
And here it is...the reason we bought the house. 250 feet of lake frontage in our front yard on a tiny little no-gas-motors lake. You don't see any houses across the way because that is county land (and is also basically un-buildable due to some wetlands over that way). The shot below shows you the site of our future dock, which you can see in this post.
Here's another shot. You know I can never get enough lake view.
One more? Ok.
Let's go inside! Here we are looking at the entryway from the main living level. Yes, that is pink tile and don't forget to notice the vintage light fixture. We have plans to remodel this part of the house so we won't be updating anything here (aside from the light fixture) until we start ripping things apart.
If you turnaround from the entryway railing, you will see our kitchen. The previous owners did us the favor of updating the kitchen, and although I doubt we would have selected natural cherry cabinetry or this particular granite -- the cabinets are of a high quality and the granite matches the look, so we have no pressing plans to replace them.
They also put in recessed lighting with the kitchen update. It doesn't read well in these photos, but the kitchen walls are a very pale shade of pink. Oh -- Did you notice that there is no dishwasher? Not yet there isn't...
From the kitchen, let's move into the main living space which serves as both a dining room and a living room. Again, these are the listing pictures -- none of the furniture you see here is ours! See how the vintage parkay flooring is combined with inlaid tile. Wait, what? Yeah, we don't know either.
Here is the other side of the room. The kitchen is walled off from the main living space, something we hope to remedy with our remodel plans.
In the below picture, we are looking at the front part of the main living space. Yes, again with the parkay/ inlaid tile??? Nobody knows what that is about. That large window behind the chair overlooks the lake and on a wall to the right of this view, there is a brick fireplace.
Let's check out the fireplace. Roar (the lions are gone now). We both enjoy a good fireplace, but this baby is taking up a lot of space. In the remodel plans, we remove this 2 story fireplace to gain back the lost space and add a gas fireplace on the outside wall of the main living level instead. We did update the look of the fireplace in the meantime, details about that are here.
In the fireplace pic, you can just barely see the hallway on the right, this next picture (below) is of the "hallway of doors". On the right starting towards the front and moving back you see a hallway closet, the main bathroom, a linen closet, and finally the master bedroom. On the left, the 2 doors are for the additional bedrooms. Check out how we updated the doors here.
Let's see the main bathroom. The previous owners obviously updated this bathroom, albeit with some builder grade finishes. We didn't replace everything, but we did make some changes to this bathroom. Details are here.
Now to the master suite. This room is toward the back of the house, so no lake view :( -- but the hardwood floors in here are real, original, and in decent shape. See what we did with this space here.
Check out the master bathroom. Yikes. We tackled this project, here . It looks much better now.
Next, we move to spare bedroom one "the grey room" and also the largest of the two spare bedrooms. We made some minor cosmetic updates. You can check them out here.
"grey room" second photo. Yes, that is a lake view. Both of the spare bedrooms have one.
Now to the second spare bedroom, the smallest of the bunch. What you see through the window is a cedar tree that we have since removed to enhance our lake view. I confess I don't know the exact dimensions of this room, but I do know that you can barely squeeze in an 8x10 rug.
From the vantage below you can see the hallway of doors. This bedroom is across the hall from the bathroom and you can see the linen closet door to the left across the hall.
Well, you made it through the main living level. Now let's go downstairs. The garage is a very large and deep 2 car that is underneath the half of the home containing all of the bed and bathrooms. Note the paint peeling off the duct work, classy!
When you enter the home from the garage, you pass through a small hallway underneath the stairs and enter the main lower level living space, pictured below. The front of this room faces the lake and contains the second fireplace.
Here's the rest of the room. You can see the door to the mechanicals/ laundry room, and the bathroom on the left. Let's also not forget that the tile down here was asbestos tile which had to be professionally removed.
Here's the lower level bathroom in all her glory. Behind the door on the right is where the pressure tank is. I really am excited to see what we do with this room since it is such a mess right now. I'm betting she'll clean up nice.
Now, for the final photo. I know many of you won't find this to be interesting, but our driveway is 5700 square feet and by far and away was our single most expensive project we have tackled to-date, so you are getting a "before" pic of this driveway!
Welp, that's it for now. Thanks for checking out Haven House. I'm excited to share the journey with you.
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