A couple of years ago, our family purchased this 1920 historic craftsman bungalow in small town Missouri. Our family spends a large portion of time in south Florida for my husband’s job, but we consider our actual HOME base to be this historic home. I am headed to Missouri for the foreseeable future so that I can get a lot of projects done on both the interior and exterior of this home, and I thought I’d share what we are doing as we go along.

Here is a list of exterior projects: Siding (I’m doing wide Hardy craftsman on the bottom and shake on the top + a new roof + all new windows and doors + (all the same on the carriage house in the back, which is the size of a 2 car garage) + New porch to wrap around and cement/brick work on front porch) + all new gutters + repair and renovation of the Juliet porch on the back + new concrete pad on back patio + completely seal and enclose carriage house to make it a craft cottage/ apartment for guests + All new privacy fence in back + English cottage garden fence and landscaping in the front

Interior projects: Basement re-seal + basement sheetrock + basement flooring + close in the bathroom in the basement + new stairs/more depth + complete 3rd floor bathroom renovation + all new paint (everything is white right now, and I want to bring in some warmth with paint and some wallpaper) + new cabinets/storage in kitchen + open up new large French doors from main bedroom to the back patio) + tile repair in 2nd floor bathroom + add wood burning fireplace in living room + curtains + plaster ceiling repair + new kitchen floor + brick on the old fireplace wall in kitchen + tear out walls in every bedroom on third floor that were built as “insulation spaces,” which would give each room more square footage by a lot + new railing on third floor +attic re-insulation

This house is much larger than this picture shows. It is about 1200 square feet on each floor, and the basement is also that big and is finished and livable. so all together around 3600 sq ft. The carriage house is the size of a large two car garage, but it also has very tall ceilings so a loft apartment can be put in above the craft room.

This home doesn’t have too much of a yard. I can have a few garden beds and a nice shed, but not much more. The city allows chickens, but I only have room for a very small coop with about 4 chickens. Our goal is to live here while also having a good bit of land just a few miles on the outskirts of town to keep our farm animals, RVs, outdoor toys, and a big garden. Eventually my husband and I will build out there and give this home to one of the kids because it has too many stairs for when we become elderly.

I’m excited to show y’all projects as we go along! In the next blog I’ll show what it looked like before we moved in as we did a lot of work at that time as well to get it like we wanted it at first. Thanks for reading! 🙂