House Tour!

It’s fun to see how excited everyone was to read Part 2 of the story :) I missed that part of writing on the blog. Okay, who’s ready for a house tour? Let’s just dive right in.

Some details to know… These are all listing pictures, except the pool in the garage. Those are mine from one of our walk-throughs. I figured the lighting would be better and you get a bit more of a wide angle on the listing photos than from what I would take with my phone. That said, remember these are listing photos, so sometimes rooms are a bit distorted and it can be hard to get a feel for space. The house is about 1800 square feet. The front yard is a decent size, and the back yard has quite a bit of space too.

I want to mention something else so you have a better understanding of how we’re approaching this. Years ago I was reading the Young House Love blog, and they talked about their “phased approach” to home renovations. They were on their third house at the time, and had many years of DIY projects under their belts. They said that they have a three “phase” process.

Phase 1 projects are those simple, cosmetic changes that you can make right away that are fairly simple. They’re typically things like a fresh coat of paint, changing out lighting, etc. Nothing invasive, but things that freshen up a space right away to make it more yours while you decide what you want to do down the road. They always encourage that you live in a space for a while to see how it actually works for you. How does it function? How does it feel? After a while of living with things you might move onto Phase 2 for a room, which would be making some more significant changes. It might be something like redoing the floors, or adding built ins. Something that really improves the space but isn’t a full on gut job and start over. Most home projects would move into Phase 2 and that would be good. But then there’s Phase 3. These are the big renovations/changes. Things like redoing a kitchen or bathroom. They always encourage this AFTER you’ve lived in a space for a year or two and really hone in on what you want/need. Use the time to really see what doesn’t work and make decisions about what you truly want in there. Budget and plan.

Using a phased approach means you can do small things to make a space more livable for you or your family now, and get a better feel for what you want down the road. It’s easy to go into a house and see all the immediate changes you’d like to make, but you can waste a lot of money by just jumping in. If you live with it for a while you might realize that you like the layout of the kitchen, but want/need new cabinets. Or you decide that rather than pulling out an old built in you actually like the character it brings, so you decide to make it a feature. This approach also means you can budget better and take things in smaller bites over time.

This is the approach we’re going to take with the house. There are things we’ll do right away before we move in, like painting inside. There are other projects that will happen over time, which would be more of a Phase 2 approach. Then, there will be Phase 3 things where we know that eventually we need/want to do a bigger update, but we want to live with it and budget and do it down the road. As I go through the pictures I’ll tell you what things we have in mind for now, and what will be for down the road.

Here she is (yes, I’ve decided the house is a she)…

You can see that the front yard is actually a decent size. Along with the driveway, the asphalt in front of the trellis is actually parking as well. Most of the houses along the street have this extra space that’s actually off the street, which is really nice. We have a cute mail box and that trellis gave me heart eyes. That “tree” is actually a lilac that has been trimmed and shaped, and then there are a couple roses. I love all of those types of plants/shrubs, but we’re planning to take them all out. Before you yell at me, hear me out. First off, that lilac is what’s growing into the sewer pipes, so it needs to be taken out for that reason. The other thing is that these are all planted in a row, right down the middle of the yard. What I would like to do is put in flower beds on either side of the trellis, and we want to have open grass between that and the house so it looks more like a yard and isn’t so chopped up.

Here’s a better view of the front of the house from the driveway. The plants in front of the porch are calla lilies, which I plan on keeping. I want to plant more things in there and fill it in more. The planters on the porch are rotted and falling apart, so they’ll need to go. We’ll save the soil in them to use in other pots or planters. To the left of that are a couple small beds with random shrubs and things growing that we’re planning on taking out. We want to open up the front yard and make room for the things we really want to have there. It would also be a pain to mow because you’d be going around all these little flower beds. In the front corner of the yard is a good sized fruit tree. We think it’s an asian pear based on what the fruit looks like right now, but need to do some research. There are some raised garden beds that we’ll keep for a bit just to use to transplant things into from where we’re living right now until we can decide how we want to do the yard.

I don’t love the railings, but that’s a down the road conversation. The porch is actually cracked and settling, but not bad enough that it needs to be replaced right away. That’s something that we can live with for some years before we decide to do anything. We love the front windows. They let in a lot of light and are what give the house character. If you drive through the neighborhood you can tell which houses have which floor plans based on the windows, which is kind of fun.

The garage is detached and made from blocks, so it’s solid, which is good. We will eventually paint both the house and garage, but again, that’s a down the road project for another year.

This is the living room, standing right in the corner where those front windows are. This will be one of the areas that will have immediate changes made. We don’t love the arches in the doorways because they make things feel more closed off, and they aren’t original to the house. There were changes made, probably in the 60s by looking at materials and decor, and you can actually see the seams in the drywall where they were put in. We’d like to square them off and trim them out, and potentially widen the opening if we can. That we need to feel out as we go.

The carpet will be pulled up to reveal the hardwoods, and we’re hoping that they’ll be in decent condition so we can refinish them and keep them. Not only because we love hardwood floors, but also because it’s less expensive than having to lay new flooring. There’s an exposed corner in one of the bedrooms that looks pretty good, so we’re hoping that’s an indication of how the rest of the floor looks. The whole house is going to get a fresh coat of paint inside, in a nice creamy white that we’ve been loving in our current house. From there we can decide where we want to add color and how.

That dark paneled wall is the dining area. I’ll talk more about that when I show you pictures of the kitchen.

Here’s the view from the dining area looking at the front door. The door needs to be replaced, and that’ll be one of the first things we do. These are original doors and are just wood with no insulation in them, so we’ll be changing them out for something more energy efficient. This doorway is also only a 32″ opening, so we want to change that and put in a 36″ opening so it’s easier to move things in and out.

That light fixture is a whole vibe that we’re not loving. There are two more in the kitchen. All of them are going to go.

The wall with the coat hooks is interesting. The corner where the wall indents to the right, is actually the chimney running up from the basement. On the other side, behind the door, is a closet in what is now the bathroom. When the house was built it was a third bedroom, but was renovated to become the bathroom. They kept the closet in there and just used it for storage. At some point down the road I would love to reverse the closet so it opens into the living room side and expose the chimney. Maybe do some fun things with that. Having the closet open on the living room side would make space for shoes and hanging coats just inside the door, which would be way more functional.

If you go down the hallway to the left of the dining room/kitchen opening, the first thing you come to is the main bathroom. From looking at other houses in the neighborhood and old listing photos, this would have originally been a third bedroom, with the main bathroom across the hall between the kitchen and the primary bedroom. Somewhere along the way whoever owned this house way back, probably in the 60s/70s, decided they wanted a bigger kitchen and moved the bathroom here, and actually put in a half bath on the other side of the toilet wall for the second bedroom. We think, based on the grab bars on the walls, that it was for an elderly person so they had an accessible bathroom.

Anyway! As you can see, this bathroom needs a refresh. Like the kitchen cabinets, the bathroom vanity is solid, so for now we’ll sand and repaint with something that will vibe with that blue faux marble laminate counter top :) Walls and built ins will get painted white. There’s a bit of work to do around the bathtub as a Phase 1 project just to make sure it’s all water tight, etc. And, you can see the closet I mentioned. We don’t need a closet in the bathroom, so it makes sense to eventually close that in and open it from the other side where we do need and want space for hanging coats and putting shoes. And that light fixture? I’m actually kind of digging it for right now in the “work with it” phase. I feel like bathrooms are a place where you can have a bit of fun and add some character, so that’s the plan here. Stay tuned for that :)

Moving down the hall right next to the bathroom is the secondary bedroom, which will be our office.

I know the first inclination in any house is to make the room with the bathroom the primary bedroom, but this room just isn’t big enough for our bed or any of our furniture. We all shared one bathroom in our Haiti house, so having to share the main bathroom isn’t a big deal, especially because we do have this second bathroom. If the main one is occupied, someone can still come in here if needed.

This picture is taken from the corner of the second closet, not the doorway. Yes, second closet. When they did the bathroom renovation and added the half bath, they converted the extra space between the main bathroom and this room into a second closet. At some point I would like to do a Phase 3 project and actually take out the half bath, close up that wall again, and redo the main bathroom by moving the toilet under the window, swapping the bathtub/shower unit for a free standing tub, and putting in a walk in shower where the toilet/half-bath space is. That would be several years down the road though.

Here’s the room from the bathroom corner…

Here’s where you get the first peek at the hardwood floors. We honestly can’t figure out why the carpet is on an angle there, but I’m sure it made sense at one point :) Like the rest of the upper floor, the carpets are all coming out in here, and it’ll get fresh paint. We love that these windows let in a lot of light. I’ll be taking those shelves in that little nook down, and that’ll be the corner where my desk goes, because it’s a corner desk and that just makes the most sense. Chris’ desk will go somewhere else in the room, yet to be decided :)

You might be wondering how we’re planning on sharing an office even though we work for different organizations right now. That’s a great question! What we’ve been realizing is that Chris’ new job is actually doing a lot of the same type of work that I’ve been doing, and continue to do for CWH. In Haiti he was more in charge of operations, so we each had our own realms of expertise. Now I’m in a position where I can offer him a lot of ideas and guidance on the admin stuff, and he needs someone to bounce that off of. By sharing an office space we can chat through the day while still doing our own things. I also think it’ll help him stay more connected with CWH even though he’s not in a direct role of responsibility (he’s still on the Board of Directors). When we do have things that need other space, like phone calls or Zoom meetings, one of us can just go work in the kitchen or something like that.

Primary bedroom…

This is one of those listing photos that doesn’t do a room justice. It looks small, but that wall is actually big enough for a king sized bed and nightstands on either side. The window straight ahead looks out over the back yard and back patio area. You can see a covering over the patio area, but as I mentioned in the last post, that was taken down for the appraisal to get done, so this room has more light coming in now. Here it is from another angle…

I feel like this picture gives you a better feel for space. This is standing in front of the window. The door is to the left of the closet, just out of frame. This room is across the hall from the secondary bedroom/office. There’s a linen closet at the end of the hall between the two bedrooms, which is why the closet spaces are placed where they are. We have to figure out what we want to do in the closet. We’re big fans of closets with built in shelves for clothes storage, because it’s so much easier to look at a shelf and see your clothes, pull out what you want, and go on your way than it is to pull stuff out of a drawer and keep it all organized. I actually hate dressers, if I’m honest, LOL. Neither of us has a lot of hanging stuff, so we might just put mostly shelves in this closet and hang stuff in the other closet, or something like that. Or maybe we’ll open up the closet opening so it’s easier to access the whole thing. I don’t know :) Something will happen in there!

Okay, back down the hall to the kitchen!

This is the dining area/back stairs looking from the kitchen. It gives a better idea of the size of the dining area, which isn’t huge. I think our table and chairs will fit just fine, it might just be a case of pushing the table back when we’re not eating. The fridge is also not where it should be in the photos, which actually opens up the space more. Ideally we would like to take out that paneled wall between the dining area and the back stairs at some point and put some kind or railing or half wall up closer to the actual stairs to open it up more. That would be a Phase 3 type project though because it means taking down walls, which has the give a mouse a cookie effect.

Here’s the kitchen. This is one of those parts of the house that will have several phases :) The cabinets are actually really solid, so for now we’re going to clean, sand, and repaint. New knobs, and we have a white cast iron sink and faucet that we got for free that I’d like to swap out since it’s just sitting there. That drawer missing a front can be repaired, too. The front is actually sitting inside the drawer and just needs to be reattached, which is easy. You can see where the fridge is supposed to be. When we finished signing papers we went over to the house and I gave the fridge a good shove, only to find lots of dust and dirt, along with different colors of linoleum under it, LOL. The floors need to have something done as a Phase 1, and I’m looking at options for that. I’m honestly considering pulling up the linoleum and painting then sealing the sub floor, but we’ll see about that. The two big windows let in a lot of light, which is nice.

This is the back stairwell and door. It’s an interesting space :) We think that at some point this may have just been a mud room that wasn’t heated, back when the basement would have strictly been used as a cellar and place to store coal for the furnace. Since then the basement was finished to the state it is now, and this space was turned into more of a utility room. That little white cabinet is attached to something, which needs more investigation. On the wall above it is a little shelf that’s about 4×10″ and would have been where the phone sat. It’s these fun quirks of old houses that I love.

As I mentioned, eventually we’d like to do a lot of something back here, but for Phase 1 we’ll be taking out that brown cabinet and shelf to make space for coat hooks and some kind of shoe storage. On the little wall to the right of the stairs I want to take the little cabinet and shelf out and put in shelves that go all the way across so we can use it as a pantry area right off the kitchen.

The lower part of the stairway that goes to the basement is, um… quirky. It’s one of those things that comes with an old house. It’s steep and you kind of have to duck sideways if you’re tall. We want to live with it for a while to see how it is in the every day, and may or may not change the stairwell at some point down the road. We’ll see.

This is the room at the bottom of the stairs. You can see how the stairs are and that header beam that you have to duck around when you come down. I LOVE that little shelf built in and want to clean it up and the fill it with treasures and curiosities :) This room is basically the room that you go through to get to the other rooms. It’s a good size. The TV we were given and currently use is rather large, lol, and instead of getting a new one to fit the living room space upstairs we’re planning on putting it down here, along with one of the couches from the set we have. With the kids getting older, and with the available space, we thought it would be nice to have a hang out space downstairs. The video games and watching of shows can happen down here, and we can still have a cozy living room upstairs to hang out in. Right now our current house is an open kitchen/dining/living room set up and while I love that in many ways, I don’t love that someone playing video games monopolizes the entire space.

This and the other rooms down here will all get a fresh coat of paint, and I think we’re planning on painting the floors as well so they’re all one color. Eventually we’ll put some kind of flooring through the space, maybe a waterproof vinyl planking or something like that.

You’ll see in all the rooms down here that the foundation was poured, with a block wall put on top of that, so we have a ledge around the perimeter of each room. It’s actually kind of cool and will add some personality to the rooms as we finish them.

Here’s that same room looking from the bottom of the stairs. The door to the left will be Alex’s room, the door straight ahead will be Olivia’s room, and the opening next to that to the left goes into the laundry room and what will be my soaping room :) Like I said, there’s a decent amount of space down here and I think we can make it a cozy hang out room.

This will be Alex’s room, and is the basement room that needs the most finishing. For a reference point, the window opens to the driveway side of the house. The ceiling needs closing in after we run some more electrical for sockets on the walls, we need to put in an egress window, and then finish the cement walls with drywall and flooring. Also either building in a closet or adding some kind of wardrobe that we do or don’t build in.

Between this space and the laundry room are all the utilities, like furnace, hot water tank, and sewer and laundry hookups. The house doesn’t have central air and has a gas furnace that’s about 20 years old. We’re going to use it for the next year and just see how things are, but are thinking that down the road we’ll put in a heat pump system. This would mean we can take out the furnace, and look at going to an on-demand hot water system. Doing that would open up the whole utility space, and since it’s right where the sewer lines go out, we have the possibility of putting in another bathroom with a shower down here. We’d just need to use a grinder system with a pump to push things to the sewer lines because they sit about 2 feet up off the floor. That’s not a big deal. It’s just nice to know we can put another bathroom in down here for the kids.

This will be Olivia’s room. The window straight ahead will be the one we change to an egress window and will end up being quite a bit bigger because Washington code specifies an almost 6 ft square opening, so a window that’s 2×3′ is what we’re thinking, which will bring in a lot more light. That window faces the side yard. The window to the right faces the back patio area, which is cement, so it’ll just get changed out for a newer window of the same size. As with Alex’s room we’ll do something for flooring, and finish the cement walls, and some kind of closet or wardrobe unit.

This is the laundry room. When I walked in I knew immediately what this would be used for, aside from laundry :)

I’ve had quite a few people ask if I planned on getting back into soap making since we’ve gotten here, and the answer has always been, “Yes, but right now I just don’t have the space.” Our current house is great, but it lacks the space for me to cure shelves and shelves of soap for 4-6 weeks at a time like I could in Haiti. Yes, there are spaces where I could squeeze things in, but I also have to consider that the bars are all fragranced, which can be a lot when they’re in a space that everyone is in. In Haiti, the storage room I used wasn’t a high traffic area, and even with the door open as it was most of the time, we didn’t really smell things outside of that. I also need to get to materials and supplies easily, which can be really bulky.

On top of all that, life has just been a lot since we got here, and I didn’t have the headspace to figure things out over recent months. Now that we seem to be moving into a different phase I’ve had more space to think about things and decide how I want to do it. I know I want to set things up as an actual home-based business, which meant waiting on certain immigration things so I could properly register. In recent weeks I’ve gotten my Employment Authorization, which meant I was able to finally get a Social Security number. Now I can move forward with all of that registration stuff and be able to claim any income I make in the future without issue.

When I walked into this room in the basement it felt like one of those sweet, “Here you go, let me give you more than you wanted or expected” moments from God. I would have been content making soap in the kitchen and just having space downstairs to cure bars, and kind of do what I did in Haiti, but this was so much more than that. Let’s look at it from the other side so you see what I mean…

I walked in and saw the utility sink, and then saw all the built in shelves on the foundation walls. When I lived in Haiti we had a storage room upstairs with shelves that we installed that I used for curing my soap, and I knew that wherever we ended up, that would be something I would need to add to a space, whether it was a free-standing shelving unit that we bought, or I built in shelves somewhere. When I saw that this room not only had the sink, but shelves already built in at exactly the perfect depth and heights for curing soap and storing supplies I got really excited.

Like the other rooms, this room will get a fresh coat of paint in a creamy white, so it’ll be fresh and bright. We’ll be pulling down that stick on wall covering first. Chris actually already pulled the piece of carpet off the window when we were at the house after signing all the papers. The glass has been replaced with plywood, but we can either get new glass cut, or leave it as is for now until we replace all the basement windows. The floors will get painted and I’ll probably paint the sink cabinet too, just to protect it from water damage. The washer and dryer will get installed to the right of the sink as well.

For my soaping space I’ll built a work table, probably something with some storage on the bottom, and it’ll sit more in the middle of the room. We currently have shelves in our garage that will move with us. One set of the them can be separated and set side by side, and have a really high weight rating, so I’m thinking about using those to make a counter like space along the interior wall that I can use to store all of my oils. The containers are often heavy, and the counter space would mean that I could get some 5 gallon buckets and put spigots on them, then have my oil and lye water mixtures all done up and ready to go. I’d just need to pour some off and weigh them out. The wash sink is deep enough that I can mix up my lye water solution right in the bucket in the sink too, which will be amazing.

The whole time I was making soap in Haiti I would love what I was doing, but also feel frustrated that I didn’t have a means to ship outside of Haiti to all the people we were connected with that wanted my soap. I loved the times where we traveled so I could actually do that. And in all honesty, I would dream about one day being able to run Mozaik Soap from the US, but just knew it wasn’t something that would happen in the near future. I would follow other soapers online and watch them pack orders and wish I could do that in the way I wanted to. I loved being able to do what I could for our expat community, and loved the feedback I got from people about what I made.

The fact that I now get to do the things I’ve dreamed about is kind of blowing my mind. And not just an “I’ll make soap in my kitchen” type of thing. God brought us to a house that has the space for me to have a soaping studio! Space to do all the things I’ve been dreaming about and wanting to do for years. And while I’ve really missed making soap for the past year, the time has been good for me to think and dream, while knowing that I now have access to all the supplies and materials and tools that were so hard to get in Haiti. I’m SO excited!!! I will definitely be sharing about getting the whole process up and running with you, so look forward to that.

And I just want to say, I love that not only do I get to still be doing the work I’m good at for Clean Water for Haiti while I help empower Alexandre and our team there (who are doing an AMAZING job, btw), I also get to fully develop what has become a crafty love for me, and know that I get to make something beautiful and useful that people love and enjoy. My plan is to continue to donate a percentage of sales to CWH to promote and support the work we’re doing there. I figure soap and water just go really well together :)

Phew! That was a bit of a diversion, but I know you guys will be excited about this for me, so I wanted to share.

Okay, you’ve seen the inside of the house, now let’s move outside.

This is the back patio area. The back door at the bottom of the stairs is just left and out of the frame of the photo, and the garage is to the right. Basically if you were parking in front of the garage you would go left and walk right into this space.

The covering has been taken down, but I didn’t get a picture when we were at the house (I’m writing this the day after closing), so I’ll need to share that later on. All that’s left are the posts that were holding the roof up, which will be taken down. They need to be removed with an angle grinder so we don’t break the concrete pad. We’re not really sure what that ivy arch is all about. It’s metal posts with the ivy growing over it. We’ll be taking that out and the chain link fencing at the end of the patio. The previous owners had a dog so there’s fencing up in parts of the yard that we don’t need, so it’ll come down.

This is the back yard looking straight from the patio. This whole neighborhood has a lot of big trees, which are nice in many ways, but can also be problematic in others. In our yard they don’t let in any light, and the ones growing right next to the house are hanging limbs on the roof and have the potential to cause issues with the foundation. We’re planning on taking out most of the big trees at some point down the road. Chris was actually talking to our neighbor and they’re planning to do the same, as is the neighbor behind them. And before anyone yells at me, we LOVE trees. Most of these are incredibly tall and VERY hard to manage. We will absolutely plant more trees in their absence, but they’ll be things like fruit trees or trees that are easier to prune and manage over time. And we won’t plant them right next to the house. The neighborhood was built in the 40’s so most of these trees were probably seedlings at the time or came along shortly after, and just kept getting bigger through the years. They’re beautiful, but just need to be removed for safety reasons.

We would like to get grass going back here, and plant things we really enjoy. When we looked at the property I thought, “This place literally has all the things we want. The only thing missing is a little green house…” A few days later we were visiting some friends who have a little green house made from old windows. This is my favorite kind of green house and what I would want if I was to build one. I’d said nothing about my green house thoughts to Chris. While we were there it was like he saw the green house for the first time, and he loved it. On the way home he said he would love to have one like that, big enough to have a table and chairs in with some room to grow some tropical plants. I got really excited and told him that I had been thinking the same thing and just hadn’t said anything. I would of course want it to be big enough to have a potting bench and space to start seeds, and grow things like lettuce through the winter. The climate here doesn’t get crazy cold, so being able to grow things through the winter would be really fun.

In the right side of the photo you can see the side of the garage, and behind that is the little shed I mentioned in my last post. Here’s the little shed up close…

They’ve obviously cleaned it out, but left most of the shelves in there, which was really nice. They even left the little grey drawer screwed to the wall with all the bits and bobs in them :) It’ll be a great tinkering or project space, along with having storage room.

Here’s the backyard looking towards the house from by the little shed. You can see how close to the house those big cedars are, and that the lower branches are actually sitting on the roof. On the other side of the fence is the neighbor’s garage, and the limbs are touching that too. In both cases it means potential roof issues, and foundation issues. That side of the yard is south facing and where all the sun comes from, so having the big trees means the entire backyard is in shade all day. I like shade, but I also like grass and flowers and trees. We’re going to take out the yucca plants because they aren’t our thing. The fire pit will stay where it is for now, but will most likely get moved down the road and redone once we have a better idea what we want out here.

And now, the part I know you’ve all been waiting for… the garage!

The garage is technically wide enough for two cars, though the door is really only wide enough for one. With the climate here we don’t need to park all our vehicles inside. The priority is Chris’ VW van because it’s so old and not, well, weather tight :) With the van parked in here there’ll still be LOTS of room for other things. To the left of this picture there are built in storage shelves that are big enough to hold plastic totes and larger items. To the right of the parking space in the garage there’s also a workbench area that could also be used for storage if needed. That giant lathe is now gone and behind the peg board is a big window.

Now, that doorway goes to the pool room…

When I said this was a whole thing I wasn’t kidding around. It’s a whole thing. To the left of the photo is more space with a cabinet to hold pool supplies and another big 4×5′ window. Here’s the other end of the room…

Now, the big question we keep getting is, “Why don’t you just keep the pool?!?”

Well, because we don’t want to. :) If we wanted a pool it would be outside in the yard. We really just don’t want the maintenance and upkeep of a pool, and this space is perfect for putting in a rental unit. The dividing wall between the garage part and the pool section is just drywall, and on the garage side there’s actually about 5 feet between the wall and parking space that is currently taken up by all the pool pumps and heaters and pipes. There’s a natural gas heater, the actual pump system, and the endless pump that makes it possible to lap swim.

We’re planning to square off the room by removing the interior doorway between the garage and pool room, and may even push the wall back further into the garage section after all the pumps and equipment are removed. That would leave space for a nice sized studio or one bedroom apartment. After we move in we want to direct a lot of energy in here to get the unit set up and ready to rent so we can start bringing in that rental income.

Initially we’re most likely going to look for a longer-term tenant, but are also considering doing a short-term rental unit, like an AirBnb. We need to do more research on that though, because the city is currently in the process of changing it’s short-term rental laws. Right now the only legal short term rentals are BnB’s and the rules around those are interesting. But, there are over 250 “illegal” short-term rentals, as in they aren’t permitted. In this part of town there are only a few hotels close to or in downtown Vancouver. Everything else is east of I-5, which makes it a bit of a trek to get to the downtown area, which is the part of town tourists will really want to be in. A lot of short-term rentals are in the downtown area and north because that’s where people want to be.

We’re in that area, and just minutes from downtown. If the city chooses to make permitting short-term rentals easier, and there’s a market for it (this is where the research comes in) to the point where we could make the equivalent or more income as we would with a regular long-term lease (a year or more), we’d love to go that route. One of the things we loved about running the mission, before COVID and the security issues increased, was hosting guests. We met all kinds of people from all over the place, and our lives are richer for it. We love practicing hospitality, and having a space that we could block out for when friends and family wanted to visit would also be really nice. I’ll keep you posted as this all develops.

Ooff, that was a LONG post :) But now you’ve had the full tour and can get a feel for what we’re starting with. Like I said in my last post, the house is “tired” and needs a refresh, but it has really good bones. Everything is solid. I know that pulling up the carpet and refinishing the floors, putting a fresh coat of paint on all the walls, and painting the kitchen and bathroom cabinets will already do a ton. Add in our own furniture and decor stuff and it’ll look like a totally different house.

Let the fun begin!

~Leslie