Finally some pics!

I know, I know..I've been avoiding putting up any piccies lately and writing more about the drama in the household versus the good stuff.

Well that's changing today!

Here comes the first of some piccies that I have been hanging to put up. Yes, it's the pics of the house in South Carolina.

Now to set the mood I am going to give a little background.

The house has been owned by the same people who built it - The Rudy's {yes, what a coincidence!} - and was built about 45 years ago by a master builder to Mrs Rudy's specific design. This design was based upon a historic house originally built by {I want to say} George Wythe. It is on 2.6 acres and needs a big step forward into the 21st century. As stewards of this house in this century we are tasked with this important task and it is one that both Storm and I are looking forward to. You'll understand when you see the pics.

So here is the front. Unfortunately, I could not find a view from the street as you would get a better idea of the house. I think that it needs a portico or something but I'm not sure that we'll use the front door a lot once we move in.

 Here is a close up for the front door. There is beautiful woodwork around the whole door but we're currently debating the colour of the trim of the house. I didn't like mission brown when it was hip back in the 90's and I most definitely don't like it now. We're tossing up between brick red or an olive green. We'll see...

 Here is the view looking back towards the garage side of the house. Look at the beautiful magnolia tree on the right. It's going to be lovely in bloom.

 This is the fireplace in the formal loungeroom. It's the beginning of our workload. Good bones though. The fireplace has been converted to gas which is nice but I would have loved to have had one of the fireplaces being a wood one. Oh well.

 This is the formal dining room. Both corners have built in shelves which are actually quite deep. Great space for my formal platters etc.

 The view from the formal dining room into the kitchen. Love the double oven.

 Another view of the kitchen. Hate the hardware and the cupboard colours. Storm likes it so we'll see who wins this battle!

 This top portion of the cupboard is most definitely on our "first thing to go" list!

 And this wall too! This will open up the kitchen and the family room.

 And here is the family room!

 This fireplace is huge! It's like 8 of my feet across and I love, love, love it. The wood, the brick - just needs a good clean.

 My laundry/mud room. This multi-purpose room leads {from the left} from the front of the house and {the door leading away from the shot} to the bottom full bathroom and to {the right} the family room and {behind} to the garage.

 And this is a shot of the hardware on all of the doors. All hand hammered and made specifically for the home. Yes, not my type but it's hard to argue with that kind of attention to detail. Also it's going to cost a bucketload replacing every door in the house with new hardware! I mean every door!

 My new craft room! Lots of shelves and there's also two wardrobes that can store all of my crafty stuff so that little hands don't find it. It's also going to double as a toy room of some nature. We'll see. It so needs a complete update and redo doesn't it? And the lighting - well it may be practical but it's so ugly!

 The view to the right of my craft room where you will find an understair storage room {on the left and huge!}, a coat closet {on the right and gigantic!} and the front door {straight ahead!}.

 The view from the front door up the stairs! Cannot wait to paint the risers and update it.

 The view from the spare bedroom to the front yard and the road. The house across the road was also recently sold and we checked it out online and it seemed lovely and had a wonderful, large pond also on the property. It was a little bit more than this house but I was worried about the pond - for the kids and also the dogs. We'd never get them out of the water! What I love a lot about this street is that it's like a P. When I say that I mean that it's not a cul-de-sac but a road that comes back around on itself so no through traffic, only residents, visitors and looky-lu's. Oh and by the way, it was winter (32'F, 0'C)when we took the piccie so the grass is in dormant, winter mode. It will be greener come spring/summer.

 The kids bathroom. Double sinks with a separate room for the bath and shower. From here there is also a door leading out to a separate storage area...

 Yes, this is the storage area. Huge! The door leading to the bathroom is in the background, past the hot water heater next to the light. Yay, so no more storage units for my christmas decorations!

 The view from the girl's bathroom - the door jam on the left is the spare bedroom, the stairs are also on the left, the two bedrooms that the girls will eventually have are on the right separated by a linen cupboard. The door straight ahead is the master bedroom. Don't you just love the lighting? Gotta go!

 One of the two bedrooms that we consider to the girl's. Both are identical with three windows and a whole wall dedicated to wardrobe.

 The view from the bedroom. We're not sure but the land goes way back past the clearing and more to the left. So much clearing to do. Mind you that's where the creeks are so we'll see.

 The master bedroom and the view from the door. Wardrobes are to the right - the whole wall - and the ensuite is to the left.

 The wardrobes - his and hers. The one on the left has extra storage through another hole in the wall access via a panel. Very cool.

 Ahhhhhh....the ensuite/master bath. This is going to be a major renovation for us as we're thinking about taking out the wall behind the shower {to the left of the loo} is another storage cupboard accessed from the main hall. We're tossing up moving the shower back there and making a stand alone shower/bathtub or alternatively removing the door jam {which actually leads to the sink and then via another door to the left of the camera to the bedroom} Confused? Anyway, the green has got to go!

 Back downstairs. This is the sunroom that runs along the back of the house. The door on the left leads to the kitchen and breakfast nook, and the window frame you can see on the left is the one that is above the sink. All of the sliding doors open and have screens on them so it'll be interesting to see how cool it will make that area. It certainly wasn't warm on the day we visited but it's good to note that the area has it's own heating system so we'll see how that goes on a cold winters day....

Oh and the mission brown again - ah...the bane of my existence! Gotta go.

 The view from the end of the sunroom back towards to the door.

 Just outside the sunroom is the back porch with BBQ area. It's great that there's a gas hook-up there too so no propane tanks! That's the cottage at the back. That's going to be our office so it'll be nice to be separate and not to be woken up to phone calls at all hours of the day

 The view from the back.

The time has gotten away from me so I'll have to post more about the outside, the office and views of the block another time.

You can see that the house needs a fair amount of work to bring it into the 21st century and Storm and I cannot wait to get our hands into it.