Here are a few photos from when I bought the house 3 years ago. These can serve as a starting point... looking back, I've changed a lot of things!

The house


The hall


The living room


The dining room (which sold the house!)


The kitchen


Master bedroom


Front bedroom


Horrifying paint job in the small bedroom


The yard

In the beginning...

I've owned my c.1915 American Foursquare since October of 2005. I've taken some time to dig into the history of the house, and I guess it's fairly average. When I moved in, everyone told me that my house was "The O'Hare House." All I knew was that a family with that name had lived here for several years and that the house was supposedly haunted by the matron of the family. Some history. Anyhow, a little digging showed that the house had been in the O'Hare family from 1915 to 1979, pretty impressive! The original owners and builders of the house were Emmett and Nellie O'Hare. Nellie put up the money for the purchase of the land and her name was the main name on the original deed. Unusual for 1914! Nellie died shortly after the house was built... I'm not sure when, but she may have never even lived here. The home was passed to Emmett's son after his death in the mid 1950s, and stayed with the family for 20 more years. Between 1979 and my purchase of the house in 2005, it had changed hands 3 times. I snapped the house off the market before the "for rent" sign went up in the front yard.
Luckily, not too many changes had been made to the house over the years. Much of the original grain painted woodwork was intact, and very little of the original character of the house was gone. The main alterations were updates to the bathroom (which involved the removal of the original subway tile, and the installation of a smaller-than-original window) and a 1960s remodeling of the kitchen that blocked up a full sized window with kitchen cabinets.
My first task was to get the house into move in condition with a lot of cleaning and a few coats of paint! I also removed all the ceiling fans and modern light fixtures and replaced them with period light fixtures. It's amazing what a light fixture can do for a room! The first winter was tough with no storm windows and a not-so-reliable furnace. My first summer here was spent painting the exterior, ordering and installing new storm windows and a new boiler for the steam system, and re-planting the missing flower gardens (which had been removed by the previous owners to make the house easier to maintain as a rental!)
The following summer and fall involved many projects inside the house. I will be posting more blogs about these in the coming days and weeks. I should have been blogging all along! I hope that everyone will enjoy my journey as I blog about it. I know I've enjoyed it (even though it has been frustrating at times!)