Since I'm going to be sharing a lot more of our home life now, capturing every last filled hole and caulked crack, I thought I should do a "before" tour of the house. We have lots of plans, as I'll layout later, but for now let's keep it a simple photo tour. Shall we begin?
You enter the house through a small foyer, which opens up into a long, narrow room with 2 huge windows. This was originally the Living Room, but Ryan and I have decided to make this the Dining Room as it's shape is better suited for this use. Something we don't want to do, is remove any of the original walls.
I've been doing a lot of reading on row home architecture, and one of the things they talk about is how these homes were designed to be energy efficient and by removing the foyer or vestibule area you're opening the house up to drafts and energy loss. Both Ryan and I are very conscious of this and want increase our energy efficiency, not decrease it. Also, I'd be lying if I didn't admit I always wanted a foyer in my home.
From the Dining Room you enter what we're using as our Living Room space. It's darker and smaller in size than the Dining Room and admittedly best for TV watching. There's lots of great space for built-ins, hint hint.
The Kitchen is by far the smallest room in the house and there isn't much room for improvement. This will most likely be our biggest project down the road (like 5-7 years down the road).
Off the Living Room, you descend a steep, narrow staircase to the basement. Normally I wouldn't show this space off, but it is serving an important purpose. The front half will be Ryan's Music Space and the back half will be the Laundry Room and workspace for all the tools we'll be needing.
On to prettier things - The foyer also contains a tall staircase (with original bannisters) that leads to the second level. Up here you see our Master Bedroom. This room alone makes me feel like a real adult. It's spacious, bright, and affords a spa like escape in the evenings.
Also upstairs, our petite bathroom. It's not actually that petite and has more than enough room for all our needs. It too has a large window that looks out on the back yard (!!).
Our second bedroom will serve as the Guest Room and Art Space for me. I have big plans to make this my feminine jewel box.
Finally, the Backyard. It is 3 times the size of most Philadelphia spaces and our imaginations are going wild with ideas on what to do back here. For now we plan to leave it as is since the interior space will be used far more.
And that's it. Our sweet Chatham St. House in all its original glory. We feel extremely lucky that as it sits now it looks and works just fine, all we'll be doing is fine tuning the details and making it feel more ours. - b.