Know thyself. Know thyself. Know thySELF!

All about Eve: (errr... Tanglewood. yes, that's what I meant). I'm going to do a photo dump, because I'm indecisive about photo layouts and such. Here are a bunch of photos from the real estate listing when I bought Tanglewood. The big tree in front is a crepe myrtle. (White, if you're wondering. It was the first thing my friends asked me, if I knew what color it would bloom in season). That tree is much bigger and fuller now. (Or it was, until this past weekend when a tornado took out about a third of it... later share, promise).

Now, if I were smart, I would have started this blog when I bought my house in 2016. But it’s 2019 and I didn’t do that. Also, the nature of my time and budget is usually such that I can’t do a whole room top to bottom the way I’d like to or the way that they do on tv shows. Who can do that, as a single person living paycheck to paycheck? My plan is to give you an overview of the house, how it was when I bought it, how it is now and then describe one project at a time assigned to the room it is. I would love to have a huge 14 room Victorian build in the 1800’s with layers of history and detail, but I don’t. I have an 80 year old (still pretty old, right?) Modern Minimal built on the cheap in Northeast Texas in what used to be a railhead town. There’s still some old house archaeology to be done, and I’ve learned a lot about how stuff has been changed. More on that as we go. Let’s begin. It’s just under 1400 square feet, originally built in 1940 as a single family home, 2 bedroom one bath. Sometime between 1980 (I’m guessing) and 2016 when I bought the house, a large addition was added which moved the kitchen from the front of the house to the back, added a larger second bedroom and reconfigured the old kitchen into a utility room and the old second bedroom into a dining room. It is unclear if the garage was original or added. I have seen sale listings for houses in the neighborhood which share the same original floorplan, some with different additions or (remarkably) no additions. Between those photos and the scars of renovation, I have a pretty good guess at the original floor plan. The previous owner to me flipped the washer and dryer connections to the other side of the wall into the garage, so the utility room became an alleged third bedroom (my house is still listed as having 3 bedrooms, 1 bath). This isn’t really fair because the third bedroom had no door and no closet… just 2 open doorways to the rest of the house. (Stick with me, when you see the floor plan, you’ll get it.) Also, notice the garage now has direct house access… into the 2nd bedroom. That was weird. Ok, so here’s the floor plan when I bought:

And here’s what the original floor plan was most likely. This is all pretty definite, except for the closet detail between bedroom 2 and the kitchen. Those walls don’t exist anymore, so I can only judge based on scars on the original wood flooring and pictures of closed doors in similar for sale houses.

Sick of maps yet? Well brace yourself because there’s more! Within the first year, I made some minor updates like a built in microwave, moving the laundry out of the garage, and fixing that access door into the bedroom. The garage is really too narrow to have laundry machines in it, as they would stick out into the middle where a car is supposed to go. Fortunately, all I had to do was cut holes from the other side for the washer faucets and a vent hole for the dryer. (but since there may not have originally been a dryer, there was no actual vent tube for it, so I had to create one out through the front wall of the garage. Not ideal, but passes safety for the time being. Here’s the layout now:

Notice the garage access now opens into the dining room, and the laundry is back inside the house. This is how the house is now… and how it will likely stay for the next 3 to 5 years as I gather capital for my master plan ™…. Which will probably cost a few $k… and that’s if I just pay for rough in and do the finish work myself, which is what I want to do. Without further ado, the master plan:

Cute, right? Let me talk you through it. This finishes the reno the previous owner tried to do, turning the once kitchen, once laundry room into a legitimate 3rd bedroom. It moves the back wall of the this room to its original location… because I’m actually concerned that this should be a supporting wall, and I’m not sure why it was moved anyway! The water heater is out of the garage, freeing up floor space to use the garage as a working space. The laundry is back in the garage, but in a place that doesn’t hinder car access. And most exciting of all: The 2 closets in the back bedroom have been combined to make a ¾ bathroom. It won’t be luxurious, but it’s pretty good. The closet is abnormally deep, a full 3 feet (all the other closets in the house are 2 feet deep) and when combined with the weird little linen closet, about 8.5 feet long. So you can fit a shower stall, a sideways wall mount sink (unusual, but available) and a commode. Now it’s a legit 3 bed 1.75 bath house. The only really expensive part is going to be the plumbing. Pex is easy and cheap to run, but the drains will have to be dug up and either connect to the existing drain line under the dining room or go around the side to hook directly into the sewer line. That’s the X factor. I already know where the water and power will come from… now where will the $ come from? Remains to be seen. When will it happen? I honestly don't know, but I'm hoping in the next 2 years to have made some moves that direction.