Check
out our yard. You too can now see the infamous "Dirt Patch" and
the massive Snowball. Also see the home improvement pictures below.M and J's Home
Check
out our yard. You too can now see the infamous "Dirt Patch" and
the massive Snowball. Also see the home improvement pictures below.
After spending our first year here in an apartment, we jumped in the hot hot housing market of Rhode Island. We did all the tons of paperwork and M annoyed the closing lawyer by insisting on reading all the documents before we signed them. The keys to our first house were finally ours on August 30, 2001. Guess you know what we did over that Labor Day weekend. Three bedrooms and 1 1/2 baths fit in its 1470 sq ft space. The lot is large but not overwhelming and it has some beautiful old trees.
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Our house with the huge pine trees in back.
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The trees make the backyard a bit dark.
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The house is in one of the few housing developments we've seen in Rhode Island, called Garden City. As the population was moving out of Providence after WWII, it was designed as a whole community with schools, churches and shopping all within walking distance. The Garden City shopping center is a nice outdoor kind of mall and is still one of the fancier places to shop in the state. All of the houses are ranches, capes or colonials though some have definitely evolved over 50 years. Its generally nice and quiet even though we are literally one block from a school. Here is a composite view from our front door step.
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It has celebrating its 50th birthday but it has aged gracefully. Besides its looks young compared to most of the houses in Rhode Island. The former owners performed maintenance on it dutifully but the decor hasn't been touched since the 70s or even the 50s. The rust carpet in the upstairs hallway and the green shag stuff in one of the bedrooms had to go. Thankfully there are hardwood floors under all ugly stuff and our first planned project was to refinish or just polish them.
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| The bedroom before - lots of scratches and generally dull surface. |
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The bedroom after - a much richer color and shiny surface. |
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| The kitchen - before | Jim beginning the priming process | The cupboards painted - now on to the doors and drawers. |
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| What was some former owner thinking with that hot pink wall! When we bought the house, the black wall paper with little flowers was pretty awful. Here it is half way through the white redo. |
Views of some of the rooms from when we did our pre-purchase house inspections.
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