We Bought A New House! Take A Tour With Me {Part 1}

We have some big news to share - we bought a new (old!) house!

This 1920s Colonial Revival home came to our attention last fall when a neighbor friend let us know that it was coming to market. We’d been eyeing the neighborhood for awhile, but it’s a very competitive area so we were prepared to be patient and wait for the right house to come along. Once we heard it was going to be listed, we jumped on it and managed to snag it off-market - it was quite a whirlwind!

We just moved in a couple of weeks ago and I cannot wait to share all about it as we tackle projects, update it, and make it our own. We’ve got some work to do (we have big plans!), but man, it has good bones and character that you just don’t find in a newer home these days. We are hopeful this is our forever home, so we’re taking the long view and will take our time with its design, furnishings, and decorating.

Today I want to take you on an empty house tour of the first floor in our new-to-us home! I walked around and snapped a bunch of photos of it right as we were about to move in, so although it has a few things in it (namely, all my plants, ha), the rooms are pretty much empty. I’ll share a little about our plans for the spaces along the way as well. Ready to see it?

(Note: I’m not showing the exterior for privacy reasons, but just imagine classic Colonial Revival style architecture!)

Kicking things off in the foyer, you walk right into the center hall with a gorgeous staircase. The previous owners added the wallpaper and light fixture, which we’ll plan to keep - at least for moment! Just about everything is up for grabs in this house. ;)

See that tiny door under the stairs? It leads to a little hidden room, which my 5 year old quickly claimed as his own!

Off of the foyer, there’s a room to the left and one to the right. The room to the left with the fireplace will be our dining room for now, but one day will be a formal living space. I’m picturing something with a library feel. The room to the right will be our more formal, adult living room, and in the future will become the dining room. I’ll share more on the reason for the switcheroo in a bit.

The future dining room in our 1920s colonial revival home in Richmond, VA.

One of those charming old-home features is the folding french doors that lead into each of these rooms. You can see a peek of them in the dining room shot above. A lot of homes of this vintage in our area have huge pocket doors between rooms, but these are a bit more unusual. I just love them.

Here’s a straight-on view of the future living room. We need to make some adjustments to that light fixture since the previous owners used this room as a dining space and placed it off-center thanks to a piano that also lived here!

Beyond the living room is my office - it’s the room with the glass door and plants beyond. :) I think I won the jackpot here with this space! It’s surrounded by windows and gets wonderful light during the day. We’ll probably set up a little homework space in here too down the road for our kids. Our oldest will need a perch for schoolwork in the next couple of years!

Through the other door off the living room is the kitchen. It’s kind of a wide, galley style + breakfast nook, and it works for now (mostly). It has seen various updates through the years, but I am fairly sure that the cabinet boxes themselves are at least 50 years old, if not original to the house. They’re made of solid wood and they’re in shockingly good shape for their age. At some point they got refaced with shaker style doors.

The kitchen was probably the biggest hangup we had about this house. It’s not conducive to entertaining, which we do a lot of, and we would really like to have a kitchen that’s open to a great room for hosting. Since we’ve moved in, I’ve also found that the storage is really inefficient and doesn’t function very well overall. It’s workable for now, but it’s not sustainable longterm.

When we were looking at the house originally, we brought a contractor with us to talk about the feasibility of opening up some walls on the back half of the house and create that kind of open space. It sounds like it’s workable, but we need to do some more research and work with an architect on those plans before we know exactly what we can do! It will involve gutting the kitchen and absorbing a guest room and basement stairs, and maybe eliminating a full bathroom. We shall see…

Assuming that’s doable, once we tackle that project, the two front rooms will flip functions. The dining will become the living, and vice versa. It will be nice to have the dining room right off of the kitchen like it was originally intended, but having living space off the kitchen with young kids is essential for us.

Once you leave the kitchen through the back hallway, you’ll reach that small guest room I mentioned (the one that will be absorbed into the kitchen/great room project) with a jack-and-jill bath that’s connected to “green room” at the end of the house. I forgot to take a photo of the hallway when it was empty, so the one below is one I snapped while we were originally touring the house.

The green room will be a more casual family room where we’ll have a TV and kids’ toys, and likely where we’ll hang out in the evenings as a family. We’ll paint it another color soon, but that’s how we’ve been referring to it for now so I’m calling it that here too!

Finally, off the green room is a back staircase! It’s off through that doorway to the left of the photo above. This is another feature that’s common to larger, older homes - they’re definitely not pretty like the front stairs, but they’re quite functional. I’ve been surprised at how often I’ve used them already and I’m sure it’ll happen more often when we’re hanging out in the green room.

That wraps up the tour of the first floor! I’ll be back next week with a tour of the rest of the house. Thanks for coming along for the ride as we dig into this new home and the projects down the road!