Alright my friends, this one has been a looooooong time coming …
I’m absolutely thrilled to FINALLY be sharing a house tour of our new (to us) home!
I have to say, this isn’t exactly the house I thought we’d end up with when we started looking for a new home in our hometown in northern Alberta.
You see, hubs and I have spent our whole lives living in nothing but new houses and I hadn’t really expected to end up with anything different. But, life had other plans for us as it often does. I suppose I should have known things wouldn’t be so straight forward as the housing market in our little town has always been sort of unique. Figures, there just so happened to be a major shortage of inventory as we started shopping, which not only meant that there wasn’t much to choose from, but also meant that things seemed to be selling the minute they hit the market. Giving ourselves a very wide price range, we had just five houses in the entire town to look at that didn’t already have pending offers. Five. Can you believe it?! What was even more disappointing … we didn’t like a single one of them. The newer houses all had small yards, dark kitchens and a ton of things I’d always wish I could change, but would never be able to justify replacing. The older ones had bigger yards, but were far too small for a growing family or frankly just needed too much work. Turns out we’d been quite spoiled with our brand new, beautiful home in the mountains with that lovely yard surrounded by forest and I was pretty sure we were going to miss the heck out of it.
After a bit lot of thinking and talking about our limited options, Brady eventually made me see that a house we don’t exactly love is something we could deal with, but we were both sure that we could never make ourselves settle for one of these yards that looks into 20 others from our back deck? Time to think outside of the box (and maybe a little outside of our comfort zone).
Enter my AMAZING mother-in-law who, thank goodness, just happened to know of some neighbors that were thinking about moving. With our priorities straight (and very open mind), we agreed to look at the house next door. Yep, right next door. To my mother-in-law. At an older home. Huh.
And of course, by “we”, I mean he agreed to look at, fall in love with it and then convince me to buy it sight unseen, which was a feat in and of itself for sure! That’s right, to top it all off, we were so short on time that I couldn’t even make the trip out to look at it with him before we put in an offer and committed to by this 40+ year old house next to my mother-in-law.
Luckily, I loved it just as much Brady did!
Thing is, it was actually pretty perfect for us. With a massive kitchen, two living rooms with a fireplace each (one gas, one wood), and five big bedrooms upstairs, there was a ton of room for everyone. The unfinished basement gives us an extra 1000 or so square feet of storage space for all of our skiing and biking gear with the option to finish it down the road for even more living space. Not to mention that Carson can now wander over to his Grandma’s house any time he’d like!
It’s more than 40 years old and every single room in the house needs work, but the former owners took such great care of everything that most of it is purely cosmetic. In fact, all of the boring updates like replacing the furnaces, painting the cedar siding and fencing, new soffiting, and even replacing all of the doors inside and out have already been taken care of. So, y’all know what that means – we get to spend our money on everything fun like new cabinets, light fixtures and flooring! Well, all except for the windows, which are double pane vinyl and still doing their job, but look more than a little worse for wear.
It’s got an almost perfect layout, a ton of space, a giant yard and oh so much potential! I’ve always thought I wanted new, but turns out this older home might be just the thing for our newly handy DIY family!!!
I cannot wait to share our plans with y’all soon, but for now here are few photos to give you an idea of what we’re starting with:
Buying an older home has definitely been a big step out of our comfort zone (can you tell?), but we are SO, SO excited about the AMAZING possibilities we see in this beautiful old house!
Plus, Carson’s already feeling very much at home!
Exciting right?! Stay tuned for all of our plans including where we’ve chosen to start work!
Wishing you SUCH a lovely day!
You have a beautiful house. Your very good at decorating. Adorable little boy.
Thank you so much Roberta! You are much too sweet! We’re definitely having a ton of fun making it our own!
Hi Kristi,
I’m new here and love your house! Our first home was built in 1850 and we bought it in 1975. We’ve had new homes too but there is just something so sweet about an house.
Thank you so, so much Peggy! I bet your house was beautiful!!! I totally agree, older houses always have so much character that you’ll just never find in a new home!
Where in Alberta are you? I live in Olds- just half an hour out of Red Deer. My “new” home story is similar to yours- my husband aw this house before I did, and made an offer immediately. I found the house on-line, but there were no pics of the interior, so I just had to go on what the realtor told me ( We were living in Brooks at the time). The realtor couldn’t believe I was willing to move in “sight unseen”. I did see it once before we moved in, loved it, and told the realtor that, yes it did meet my expectations, and yes, I did trust my husbands judgement, hahaha. After 40 yrs of marriage, he knew my taste pretty well. We are still in the same house 12 yrs later, so I think he ( hubby) made a good decision 🙂
Hi Carole! We live in a small town just north of Edmonton, but drive through your neck of the woods often! How neat that y’all went through the same process shopping for your own home! It’s definitely a strange feeling to not be involved in choosing it, but your hubs must have done a great job if you’re still living there so many years later!!!
Kristi, I think living next door to your mother-in-law would be grand, especially for Carson. But “old house”? I had to chuckle. My house is 25 years older than yours, yet I don’t think of it as an old house. To me, an old house would be maybe one built in the 1930s, though my first thought was to say 1916 which would make it an even 100 years old. When we bought this house, a plus of that era of construction was that it was before someone got the bright idea of popcorn ceilings! All our friends who bought houses from the next decade or two have been busy scraping off the popcorn. And, yet, in some houses it looks fine. It’s always something! 😀 Trends come and go, I like to aim for ‘timeless.’
Awwww, it’s all relative, isn’t it?! Too funny! I love a classic and timeless look to things too, particularly things that aren’t too easily changed. Thanks so much Jean!!!