Our New House

This will not be a short post. Which is typical of me. But I thought I'd warn you anyway. As many of you know, Ammon and I like a good project. When we were house hunting this last time, our goal was to find a place that needed some fixing up. We wanted a big lot, a nice neighborhood, and a lot of potential. We found that. The house is in pretty rough shape right now, but we have big plans for it. We have a half acre in Lindon. We are really close to the base of the mountain. Our lot is very secluded. We have tons of fruit trees, a chicken coop, and lots of room to improve. All the neighbors have chickens, dogs, peacocks, turkeys, geese, and other various animals. We will not be getting chickens. I can't even imagine how that would go over with our dogs.

The house is in rough shape. The gentleman who owned the house before was a pack rat, and the family didn't exactly finish getting it all cleaned up. So we have a lot of stuff lying around that will need to be hauled to the dump. Ammon has torn out the carpet already, so we will be getting that replaced. We are going to do some minor remodeling now, get the place cleaned up and cozy, and then sit on it for a while. We will be doing lots of landscaping next summer. In about 5 years or so, we hope to have saved up enough money to do a massive remodel on the place. We want to add on and do some other repairs. In the meantime though, we are pretty excited about all the fun projects we have to keep us busy. We are weird like that.

This is one of our pear trees. We are going to have to get about half of them sprayed next year. Possibly more. There is simply no way I can keep up with that many pears. We couldn't even find enough people to give them away to. And while I like a good pear and plan to can many, once you get a 5 years supply of pears and are still going you know that you just have too many.

This is the front of the house. Lots of bushes and weeds to pull up. The tree is also way too close to the house for comfort, so all of this must go. Those bushes are way too friendly to spiders for me to allow them to stay right there.

We also have a wood shop on the property. It is huge. I think it may be bigger than the first place Ammon and I lived in after we got married. Notice the huge wood stove and blower. Ammon has all kinds of benches. There is a small room built on the side as well that is going to be my garden room. We are pretty excited about it.

This is the side of the woodshop. We want to make it look nicer eventually, but it is a project that can wait a while. We've got a basketball hoop though. So Ammon can teach his son how to play.

This is a view from the backyard looking out toward the house. As you can see, there is a lot of junk. They left their hot dog cart in our yard too, which is unfortunate since it is nasty! The storage shed on the left is going to get torn down.

This is our huge back yard. There are many thing in the middle of the backyard, like wild roses and pine trees. We are going to clear it out so that we have a nice big open field in the back for football and soccer games. And, of course, big family BBQs.

This is the side of the kitchen and the back of the detached garage.

The fabulous garage. That golf cart didn't get to stay. Too bad.

This is the view looking down our lane from the garage. It is very private and secluded.

This would be the front door. We have a sort of little sunroom thingy that you walk in to before you head in to the main room where the kitchen, dining, and living room is.

This wood stove is in the living room. It has a huge blower on it too. Now we just need to figure out where to go to get firewood.

This is the cold storage under the stairs in the basement. It needs cleaning, but it is very roomy and will allow us to finally start building up a food storage.

This is one of the bedrooms in the basement.

Here are the stairs and the very scary closet above the stairs. We are going to block off the closet so that it isn't usable (we can access it from the other side which is safer anyway) and build something here so that little baby boys don't feel the need to crawl out on the ledge that is almost big enough, but not quite.

This is the side of the house on the right, and the woodshop on the left. This is the view looking into the backyard. What a mess.

This is the side of the house. We think this was supposed to be the front door, but it isn't very clear. So, we are going to make it into a private balcony and put our master bedroom on the other side of it.

This room will eventually be the master bedroom. We will be putting up a wall where the stair rail is. I'm not sure what we are going to do with the closet just yet, but it will be great.

Another view of the future master bedroom. We are pretty sure it was intended to be a formal living room (thus the pink carpet?). But since the layout of the house is so strange, we have decided to make it into what we want.

This entire bathroom will be gutted and redone. We have to replace a wall because of dry rot. The toilet is black and must go. The sink and tub are disgusting. All of this is going to be replaced. But this is our second bathroom we have had to totally re-do, so it will be a breeze.

This is the office. Ammon has already taken down the shelves. Don't let the picture fool you, they were not nice shelves and really needed to go.

This is the laundry room and half bath. The toilet in here has already been replaced by my masterful husband. There is plenty left to do though.

This kitchen is a mess, but is actually in great condition other than that. There is a huge pantry off to the right as well. I'm so excited to finally have enough space and storage in my kitchen.

Like I said before, the man was a pack rat and they really didn't bother to clean up too much. It looks so much better than it did, but there is still plenty to haul off.

This is the big living room. I took this picture standing in front of the bar of the kitchen in the dining room. I love how open it is. I think we are going to put down a wood floor in here.

And here is a view of the place looking up the lane in front of the neighbors house. As you can see, it is very private. It has lot of trees, lots of space, and lots of potential. Just what an Ammon and Melanee need. We are supper excited about it. Yeah, it needs some love. But that is something we excel at. The best part is that there is plenty of room for us to grow into. We have a big backyard for puppies and little boys to explore. Oh, and the neighbors have a chicken castle. But I'll save that story for another day.