Wednesday, March 10, 2010

House Tour

Well since I can’t get everyone down to Dallas on standby tickets, I thought I’d give you the tour of the new place from the comfort of your own computer.  The house is about 10 minutes south of our current apartment, located just off the highway southwest of the airport.  You only have to go on the highway for one exit to get here from the airport.  It’s in a prime spot for both of us to get to the airport for work quickly without having to worry about getting stuck in traffic. 

Like I said before, it’s an older house but it’s in pretty decent shape.  It’s got yard space but not much grass yet.  Former owners were obviously Texas Longhorn fans since the door is a bright orange color and their logo is all over the house.  We are planning on replacing the door with a windowed one, or at least painting it and the garage trim a more maroonish color.
Open the door, and you have some choice which way to go. 
Look to the right, and there is the formal dining room which will be outfitted with doors and turned into a kickass computer den.  Only issue with this room is there is no overhead lighting.  I assume the light switch controls one or more of the outlets which could cause a problem if someone goes to turn on a light and turns off half the computers. (View from the back of the room)
Straight ahead leads to the Living Room area.
Let’s go to the left first, down the hallway.  In the picture, you’ll see two doors on the right.  The first one is the water heater and the second is just a linen / coat closet. 
The first room you pass on the left is the guest bathroom.  It’s really nice, real tile floors, shower wall and sink.
  At the back of the hall are the two bedrooms.  I don’t really have any pics of them.  Just ~10x10 empty rooms.  Each has a fan and light in the center, and small closets.  One will be a guest room, the other is going to be some kind of workout room.
If you went straight after entering the door, This is what you’d see.  This is the living room area.  There’s a door to the Master Bedroom on the left, the kitchen is to the right, and straight ahead is the Sunroom / Dining area.  The TV and sofa go in this room, obviously.  We just don’t know yet which way to orient the room.  Probably have the TV viewable from the kitchen if we can.  (View from the back of the room)
Taking a left, we enter the Master Bedroom.  You see the master bath which….has no…doors or walls on it…  This was the biggest surprise when we first saw the house.  Who does that?  Not only is that gross, but I’m sometimes up pretty early for work and turning on the light in the bath would ruin Alison’s sleep.  We came up with a remodeling idea of some sort of semi-translucent glass thing on the top to lower the door height, and then putting a sliding door on it like a closet.  Should end up looking pretty nice.
On the other side of the room is the master closet.  One of the best features of the house, this closet is unbelievably huge.  It goes all the way from back behind the bathroom wall to the other side of the bedroom. 19x6 feet I think.  Again, one of the selling points. 
Backing out of the Master bedroom and across the living room, you’re now looking at the Kitchen.  Former owner must really like the color of wood.  First thing to do after we close is paint most of it white.  Counter tops will eventually be changed to a gray or black finish.  We’re looking at new appliances, but the size of the current oven is much smaller than standard replacements.  Everything does work though, so we’ll get by for now. 

At the end of the kitchen, there’s a pantry door to the left, washer and dryer hookups in the back, and the door to the two car garage to the right.  It’s my job to figure out how to flip the washer and dryer hookups, since that stuff is loud and would work better out in the garage.
If you walk out the garage door, you’ll see the automatic door opener, which is nice and fast.  In the back there’s a workbench and some storage.  The workbench is great, but with the washer and dryer going to be there, space will be tight.  I’ll probably put out a craigslist ad offering to switch with someone else’s smaller table. Hopefully someone will be interested in that.  There’s access to the attic from the garage, but there isn’t much room up there.  A few boxes of storage space, not anywhere you’d want to be.
Going back inside, through the kitchen and back to the living room.  The only space left to explore is the sunroom.  This, like the master closet, is an addon to the house.  You can see the brick painted white, and big open windows on the west side of the house.  Since it’s between the kitchen and the deck, we thought it’d make a great dining room since food can come from the grill outside, or from the kitchen right next to it.  There’s plenty of room for a big table, and storage space for the nicer dishes and maybe kitchen stuff that isnt used as often, if necessary.  (View from the back of the room)
The sliding glass door at the back of the sunroom takes you outside on the deck.  I’ve heard a nice deck sells the house, and it sure did with us.  It’s huge and super nice out here.  We can see many evenings grilling dinner in the evening sunset.  Lots of sitting room, a set of outdoor furniture..  Landscaping already pretty neat.  Along the backyard is a solid wood fence so we can kick the dog outside.  Oh yes, the yard is nice.  Not pictured on the garage side of the house is a paved area inside the fence that can be used for extra parking and car washing.  Also a shed for bikes, lawn mower, etc…  The former owner has a boat there now.  (Maybe they’ll leave it?)  Excellent Quakecon parking!
Well, that’s pretty much it.  Hopefully you can come down and see it soon.  Quakecon is August 12-15 and it should look pretty good by then.
Posted by eclipse on 03/10 at 08:28 PM
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