Touring for Ideas

Bright chandelier in a new home

Once again, Carl and I are back on the road in search of bright ideas for remodeling.  Luckily for us, we live between two fairly large cities which host new and remodeled home tours every spring and fall.  We started looking at the twenty-six houses on tour this past week Thursday and Friday evening and all day Saturday, and still have ten more homes to tour on Sunday.

I should have taken more pictures but there were a great many people in the way, so I refrained for the most part. When we tour so many different styles of homes, it's hard to remember details after awhile; they all blend together.    

This new house caught our attention because of the dormer and the front porch.  

 

Architect's drawing

 This house was a ranch style; the dormer was actually a cathedral ceiling in the living room, there was no upstairs. 
In one of the homes, we found a 'bonus room' over a garage that is very close to the size of the dormer we're hoping to add on to our house for stained glass on the south and who knows what on the north.  I asked Carl to pose for me so we could get an idea of the size.  (Tomorrow we must bring a ruler along.)  

Carl looks so thrilled here, doesn't he?

C'mon, Carl, be more animated!

 There, that's better.

Actually, he was trying to give me perspective on the size of the room here.  (Though he could be in a romantic movie waiting for me to run to his outstretched arms, or he could be asking, 'Why ME?!')

  As long as he doesn't try to take flight out the window, we'll be fine.  The dormer we're proposing for our house would have slanted ceilings similar to this, but with a window (or three) on each end.  So far, this is the closest we've come to a reasonable facsimile of our upstairs room.  The only difference will be our upstairs staircase will be right in the middle of the two rooms.  This will  make one room a little bit smaller than the other, but we'll still be utilizing what has been wasted space under the eaves.

 A few of the homes were very glamorous.  The one below had a plethora of shiny chandeliers.  (The chandelier at the beginning of this post was one of them.)  Their decor was all black and white, the contrast was very dramatic.  This house is nearly 4000 sq ft. and priced around $600-700K.

This same home had a lot of fancy mosaic tile work, too, all in black and white.  This was in front of a bathtub. 

 The floors were sumptuously heated which felt great on our boot-ied feet.  (You have to wear booties in the homes to keep them clean.)

This same home had the wildest carpet I'd ever seen on a staircase. 

 With my history of gracefulness on staircases, this one had me cautiously looking for the next step.  This is truly a bold pattern.  I know in our house, the white part of the rug wouldn't be white for very long.  

Hence, the need for a mudroom!  There was a mudroom in this house, but oddly enough, nowhere near as large as what we are contemplating building.  Isn't that funny?  Our house is barely 1500 sq. ft. and I want a gigantic mudroom.  And I'd like more storage than this very costly house offered, too.  I guess they're more disciplined than we are and don't keep a lot of useless junk around.

One of the much smaller houses had an amazing mudroom and laundry area and I was happy to see it was about the same size as what we are hoping for.  I made sure to compliment the builder on his design because he had also worked in a huge pantry and drawers galore for storage.  

Crib for sleeping or baby jail?

 I wasn't sure about this baby crib; it was made of metal and seemed rather stern.  I guess there would be no worries about a toddler teething on the bars.

We toured a home on Thursday night not too far from ours.  The builder constructed the residence for his mother.  I didn't take any pictures of this one, but wish I had. 

 This is another very large structure, well over 3200 sq. ft and around $500K.  Though it looks like a two story, it is a ranch and has very high ceilings.  It was an amazing home, with, I might add, a great mudroom.  Oh, it also has a home theater in the basement, a sunroom, office and just about every amenity you can think of.   

We spent a long time talking to the builder since there was no one else touring the house that night.  We discussed everything from flooring, windows, countertops, cupboards and shingles. He had valuable information to share even after he found out we were only in the market for a remodel and not a new home.  His firm only builds new homes, but he was very gracious.  

We also talked to the two remodeling contractors at the remodeled homes, too.  It was very interesting having them show the before and after photos and how much the homes were changed.  

Though I think Contractor Phil will be our builder, in case he decides we're too much for him, at least I know there are two more builders out there who specialize in older homes.  Remodeling a house is not for everyone; there can be unexpected problems when renovating and just like with ours, there's only so much space to work with.  Phil had said that he enjoys the challenge over building new.  That's good to know.  Because one thing's for sure, this old hut will be a challenge.

 The last house we toured today was a home built in the 1950's.  When we entered the front door, there was a sweeping curved staircase ascending right in the foyer with a crystal chandelier overhead.  Sad to say, but none of the new homes we've toured in years has the charm and grandeur of the older homes.  The house was probably around 2000 sq. ft. which isn't huge in comparison to the new houses, but was much more elegant.  The woodwork was warm and inviting and the built-in cabinets were gorgeous. 


Here's a few pictures of small houses with a lot of detail I've pilfered off the internet over the course of a year or three:

For a mere $2537.00 this house could be yours, delivered in kit form for you to build.  Of course, the price was not cheap back then, as people didn't have high wages, but oh, to find one of these kits sitting somewhere in a warehouse, wouldn't that be fun?

We haven't seen any like this one on the new home tours:

We sure wish there were old house tours every spring and fall, but there aren't many that I know of.  We try to go to open houses if a historical home goes up for sale, though.   

One thing's for certain, Carl and I have old-fashioned taste.

And they just don't build houses the way they used to.