September 2008 Weddings
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Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Open House
I don't have access to my pictures at work...so I thought I'd start the post before I left this morning.
Here's the outside of my house (with 2 dogs in the window):
It looks much better in the summer when the flowers are planted and blooming.
Dan & Emily: 09.06.08
Re: Open House
This was asctually before we bought it, but is really hasn't changed. I'd like to paint the front door and replace the screen door with one that has more window and less door. I'd also like to pull out the 2 front bushes and replace them with something else.
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These were taken by the city assessor 2 falls ago, prior to our fence being installed.
The landscaping needs some attention, but the big tree in the front and the fact my house faces West makes it difficult. Shutters are on my wish list too
this is our MLS listing photo (taken last yr). I REALLY need to remulch the front beds. Probably Easter weekend since I'll be out of town with my rugby kiddos this weekend.
I'm going to be a little bit of an AW and show some pictures of the building process as well.
September 2009:
When we bought it in October 2009:
This past fall (shutters and landscaping):
In January we had a double window put in in the basement because we didn't have enough outdoor venting to finish our basement:
We just put the shutters back up yesterday but I forgot to take a picture.
Here's the back (Oct'09):
And of the back yard (Oct'09):
/AW
Here is the front of the house (taken right after we got married during renovations - you can see all sorts of boards leaning against the tree) We wanted to extend the front porch to wrap around that big tree and have it so you can get to it from the patio door too. But we are talking about knocking the house down in a couple years and don't want to put all that work in it if we will.
This is where we actually enter the house. The window on the far left is our laundry room, then the door, then the next window is in the kitchen and the top window is B's room, the bottom window is my office. All of those bushes are being ripped out this summer! I can't wait!
View from the street so you can see some of the other buildings... L - R is the "Shop" Aka Garage then the chicken coop where we store a bunch of outside stuff (we don't actually have chickens) then the dogs house is behind the cars you can see it a little bit. (The dog house is a house with access to a fenced in run.) Behind the shop is our garden, there is probably 40 feet between the back of the shop and the corn field.
Here is the last building on our property - the corn crib where we store all of our firewood and J used to keep his snowmobiles out there and now there is just a flat bed trailer in there. (you can also see part of the shop)
And just because I like our view here is a sunset...
We have a crappy lawn so this picture is perfect for the open house. This was taken last winter. I would use ANY excuse to get outside and play in the snow.
This is from when we first moved in:
This is after a few changes:
New light fixtures, new side storm door, stone paver garden edging, bird bath, new flowers planted (still hadn't trimmed back the bushes in this picture though), and you can't quite tell here, but our front door is now painted red.
We're still working on repairing the lawn ... by the end of last summer it was much better, so we're hoping that by the end of this summer it should be where we want it to be.
1920 Dutch Colonial. You'll notice there are two front doors; according to our neighbors (who have almost an identical house), the religious beliefs of the families who lived here in the beginning required men and women to enter the house through separate entrances. We only use one now. There's also an entrance on the side of the house.
Front taken last winter after a big snowstorm; it is the only photo I have of the whole front of the house:
P and I same winter; you can see the porch and the side better:
Front porch (taken when we were looking to buy it):
Last spring, new porch furniture:
Closeup of chimney and new furniture (and a 9 month old P):
2012 Reading Challenge
These were taken on Saturday, so obviously there will be more green in the coming weeks. We also need to work on our lawn. It actually looks much better now than it did when we bought the house, but it still needs work. We actually have toyed with the idea of taken out the bushes in front of the windows and making a front patio/porch area. I'll put some potted plants on the porch this summer and pumpkins in the fall.
The left window is DH's TV/computer room. The other window is out guest bedroom.
I painted the front door last summer and never got around to painting the shutters. Right now the shutters are an ugly brown color. I want to paint them to match the door, but I'm afraid it will be too bright. What do you think?
We also are going to put in a stone border around the front beds soon. We priced the pavers on Saturday and plan to buy them this week and hopefully work on it in the next couple of weeks.
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really?? I've seen a lot of houses in the area like that and it's never made sense to me!
That's really interesting. I was thinking maybe one was for coming and one for going.
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I know Shakers use separate entrances but they also live in separate parts of the house and they live as "brothers/sisters" and marriage is forbidden and looked on as a sin.
Maybe Quakers have the same type of tradition but do get married- maybe it was a quaker house? or something similar
I now officially have house jealousy of most of you- I SO wished we lived on the east coast as far as architecture.
We live in a condo and we share 2 walls so here is the place as best as I can take pictures
Quakers make the most sense around here; I'll have to look into it. My neighbor said Amish, but that doesn't make sense because the construction style according to our inspector makes it look like a Sears kit house, and most of PA's Amish population lives further west of the city. Our neighbor only has one door now - a previous owner had it removed and a window put in its place. The former owner of our house is the one who told our neighbor.
Before we put furniture in front of the second door, we used to get the hand delivered junk mail by 2x! I hated that.
2012 Reading Challenge
Probably not - I know my mom's family who have lived the area for generations and are typical of the original settlers have a superstition that you can only go through the same door. Even when she lets the dog out, he has to come back through the same door. And my mom isn't even superstitious normally!
2012 Reading Challenge
Beautiful homes, ladies!
Here is our home on final walk-through day: Oct 2008 from corner of driveway
And one year later in 2009 from the street:
We've planted tulips now under the fence that are coming up, the wetlands you see on the front left are now our garden. We plan to put a stone wall into the hill behind the fence one day (it's hard to see the hill from this angle) and we've redone all the beds since this photo as well. The two windows on ground level to the right are the garage, the bay window is our formal LR, the window about the bay window is our MBR, the next 2 windows are M's nursery, then the next 2 windows are a guest BR, and the small window above the garage is our loft for our office.
The side of our house circa closing day in 2008: we are kicking ourselves for not putting windows on this side for the formal LR and DR b/c it has the best view. We may knock a wall out one day and still do it, but that's a project for WAAAYYY down the road. The lone window at the top is in our MBR. The windows and door are for our basement.
Here is the back of our home on closing day circa 2008:
Here's another angle of the back during construction to show the windows better:
Top left dbl window is our main guest room, next window is laundry, next sm window is guest bath, then the 3rd sm window is in our bath, and the large opening is another window over our tub in the master bath. Bottom level left two windows (with FP in between) are in our FR, next is solarium off eat-in kitchen, then the smaller window above kitchen sink, and double window in formal DR. The windows on the lowest level are for the basement. In the pic above you can sort of see part of the wood brace in the siding by the kitchen/solarium where we'll build our deck off of one day. We know what we want, just need the funds to do it.
And this is a pic our builder took of our home during construction with the view behind it...the sunsets over the mountain are to die for!
I love everybody's houses! I like that we have so many different styles.
Heather, your house is so huge. I already knew that, but seeing the pictures just made me go "dang!" all over again. What do you do with all that space?!
Here's my picture from late fall of '09. Nothing has really changed since we built it, other than our lawn has grown together and looks much better now. Oh, we're planting an apple tree where that open square in the lawn.
This was taken at a really bad time of day to see the house. In Santa Fe all the houses are Native American pueblo style, so everything is brown stucco.
In the summer when the lavender is blooming the yard is much more inviting!
I LOVE Santa Fe! I have family in Los Alamos and when we have visited them, we always went to Santa Fe for a day. The buildings are so gorgeous.
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You will have to let me know the next time you come to Los Alamos. The building definitely have their charm but when you live here full time and all the buildings are brown and then a lot of the vegetation is brown because of the desert it gets a little monotonous. Sometime I just wish there could be a blue house!
LOL, try to play catch up keeping it clean! I kid, I kid. We actually use a lot of it for entertainment since A has such a huge family. It's come in handy for parties/showers/holidays etc. and when my family is in town it's nice to have the two guest rooms available. Once we have another LO, one of the guest rooms will go away and become M's big girl room and her nursery will be for the newest baby. The basement isn't finished so we aren't down there much except for A's younger tween cousins when we have parties. When we have gatherings (like M's 1st birthday party) with all of his family there are 50+ people in our house, so we're glad we went with our forever home right away. When there isn't a gathering our formal DR and LR don't see much action. We do let M play in the formal LR at times to give her a change of scenery and it's nice that all her toys are really kept in the FR separate from where we entertain.
this is our house when we moved in 3 years ago...
this is it as of last summer...
I'm not sure exactly when I took this...I would guess it was our first fall (judging by the color of the tree & the weeds in the "lawn") here, so Fall 2009. Looks pretty much the same now, except we've planted 3 Azaleas under the front window and a Hydrangea tree to the right of them off the corner of the house. We also planted a lot of spring bulbs that are coming up now in both the Azalea bed and at the base of the tree.
Ok, so this is actually my neighbors house, but you can see my front door on the left, and they are exactly the same. The bay windown in ours is ben's room...I'll take a pic of ours tonight or tomorrow, but I wanted to play today. and from the outside, they look exactly the same, minus the decorations.
Ok, I am officially envious of all of you! Sigh, I wish we had a house. I think some of your garages are bigger than our apartment.
It does give some insight as to what I like to see for our future home.
I can not wait to other parts of the homes.
Ok this is not the best picture. And we rent from DH best friend. But we are getting new windows and siding this year since it needs it really bad. And I get to pick out what I want.
Sorry it isn't the best picture. Our bedroom is the top window. My steps look better in the summer when my herb box is green and flowers going up the steps
Sorry this pic is of our resident praying mantis, but you can see the courtyard in the background.
Closing day, June 2009!
Our first fall
I don't have a great shot of the back, but on the bottom right you can see a good view from the MLS sheet from when we were buying