The Hosford House Before

Why the Hosford house? Well, location was key. It has the prettiest view out the front. Even though it is right in town, it is up on a hill, across the street from a beautiful little farm and the Olentangy River. It feels so rural watching the geese and the deer. The size of the home is a good size, around 1,100 square feet, not too big, not too small. It is also on the west side of town, which in this town, is the "good neighborhood". All the houses in the area are super nice and this was the worst house in the neighborhood.

So here are the before photos and a bit more detail about what we are up against.

 The front has good curb appeal, at least to the naked eye. Upon closer inspection you will find peeling paint, rotting window sills, and an un-cared for landscape. (That's me being nice)

The back is even worse, a swampy yard that hasn't been raked in a few years, overgrown bushes, a broken garage door, and someone had the bright idea to remove the siding off of the garage and replace it with unfinished bead board... yeah....  Since the house is up on the hill, the entry is in the back, so curb appeal back here is just as important as the roadside. 

When you first enter the home you find an enclosed back porch. Lovely wood paneling, unraveling carpet, water damage from left open windows, and yeah... those windows are a blast from the past. 

From the back porch you turn left to enter into the kitchen. Dated 1950's cupboards and an awkward layout at best. See the far left, the stove sat IN FRONT of the cabinets! The fridge was to sit lonely on the other side of the big open wall... Lets just say I have a plan for the kitchen and this layout isn't it. Might I add... Wallpaper. Ugh

From the kitchen you enter the dining/ living area, The light in this room is amazing! So bright, the view overlooking the farm and river is beautiful, and from the dining windows you can see a second pond. So pretty. When we first looked we pulled up the carpet in the closet to see if there was hard wood and there was! However during demo, we found that the living room hardwoods had been removed.  :( Dang! There was also light water damage from a previous leak around the chimney. 

  From the living room you enter into a hallway with 2 big closets, one for linens and one for toiletries since the bathroom is tiny! The first bedroom to the right is the smallest. This room will be toughest bedroom. The only window it has faces into the sun porch which means low light . The second weird thing is that door... it is a pocket door that leads to the kitchen. Lastly, this room is behind the chimney and had substantial water damage to the drywall from when the chimney leaked. Not to mention the wall paper scraping.

I wasn't kidding when I said that the bathroom was tiny. The floor space is literally a 4 foot by 5 foot .The dated shower doors, dated tiles, and the peel and stick floor tile... what is not to love about this bathroom!? Add in a tub that is unusually short and could only hold enough water to bath a toddler, we are going to have to make this bathroom amazing to get people to fall in love with it. 

Bedroom number 2 isn't too hateful. besides some peeling paint, this room is an easy fix! We also found hardwood floors underneath! 

The master bedroom is a great sized room. It has great views and hardwoods floors, From this photo you can see the bank's amazing paint job... someone came in and sprayed everything, trim, floors, outlets, lights... goor thing everything in this house is being redone.... 

We plan on replacing all outlets, lights, doors, and hardware, but you will see more on design in future posts. 

The last area of concern is actually a MAJOR concern, the basement. The 2 walls you see in the photo are bowed and cracked. Pretty scary sounding, especially for a home buyer. Thankfully we has a plan in mind that is financially feasible to fix the walls and have a civil engineer sign off and warranty that once fixed the walls will be structurally sound as long as the home stands. (Much more comforting) The water coming in is from grading issues in the front where water overflowing from the gutters made big mud holes next to the foundation. Once we fixed that... ta da! The water dried right up. We also found a leaky gas line, a strange entry into a cistern, and a lot of stinky wet wood, don't worry.. there will be more photos to come as we progress! 

So there you have it folks... this is the mess that we got ourselves into and the only way to get out of it is to fix this place and sell it!