Our First Big Dumb House
It’s finally time to introduce our current renovation project!
In December of 2018, my husband Peter and I purchased our home in a more suburban-like neighborhood of Philadelphia (think: driveways and trees). This is the first house Peter and I have owned together and it is special because it is also the home Peter grew up in—a home his parents owned for 43 years!
In 2018 Peter’s parents made the tough decision to downsize and sell their family home. The decision did not come easy as his parents have deep rooted ties to the neighborhood and the surrounding community. Peter began making little jokes here and there saying, “Maybe I should buy my parent’s house” but the more we joked and talked, the more serious the thought became! The house, though well loved by his parents, needed a lot of work. Knob and tube wiring throughout, asbestos in the basement, water damage, cracks in the plaster walls and ceilings, old windows, 100 year old heating system etc., etc. Like Peter’s parents, we saw the beauty in the home and despite all the obstacles, we decided to move forward!
This began our biggest home reno project to date! Tudor-style twin home, 3,500 sq feet, 6 bedrooms, 3 baths (one bathroom hasn’t had running water in 43+ years), unfinished basement, decent sized yard.
Like most people who have lived in the same house for 4 decades and raised three kids, Peter’s parents had accumulated a lot of stuff. We began to help them pack for their move to a 55+ housing community in October of 2018 and damn, was that just the tip of the iceberg! His parents packed up the items they wanted to take with them to their new house, and we agreed to get rid of everything they left behind. Talk about a commitment! It took us one year, one giant dumpster, and many trips to Goodwill and the dump to empty the entire house.
We found some amazing treasures along the way and it was certainly an interesting way for me to get to know their family history! I also found a hilarious trapper-keeper with love notes between Peter and his high school sweetheart that I LOVEEEEE busting out to embarrass him with.
When I started thinking about writing this blog post we asked Peter’s Dad to dig up some old photos of when they first purchased the home in March of 1975. We soon realized the beginning of his parent’s story with the home has uncanny similarities to ours. Before his parents moved in, the house had been unoccupied and was filled with a ton of stuff that his parents had to spend weeks emptying and cleaning out. They even have a picture of a huge pile of trash lined up on the curb outside of the house, just like us in 2018!
In 1975 the house required a lot of updates (PEEP THE FRIDGE BELOW) and even though the house feels outdated to us now (the kitchen looks like it's straight outta the 70’s), the amount of work his parents put in at that time was remarkable!
It’s so neat looking back at the old photos, seeing their progress, and thinking about our plans and future projects.
The craziest parallel we discovered were photos of when they first paved the driveway on July 6th 1994. We recently had the driveway repaved on July 8th 2020—almost 24 years to the day!
I love seeing these pictures side by side. HELLO MULLETS! 1994 on the left, 2020 on the right.
There’s a quote I like by Martin Luther King, “We are not makers of history. We are MADE by history”. Although a little corny, the sentiment really resonates when I consider this house and all the family history here. When Peter’s parents purchased the home in 1975, the garden was overrun with vines and you could barely see the house from the road. His parents polished it up and spent many wonderful years enjoying the home. I’d like to think we are honoring his parent’s legacy in the house by fixing it up and adding some of our personality along the way.
Below are some photos I took the first time it snowed since we had moved in. This also gives you a visual of what a “twin home” looks like, this style of house is very common in our neighborhood. The difference between a duplex and a twin home lies in the ownership of the lot: A twin home is two properties on two lots and a duplex is two properties on one lot. Our neighbor’s house is the mirror imagine of our home—it’s pretty wild to see your home in reverse!
That’s all for now folks! Over the coming months I will be sharing a ton of our big dumb house projects so I hope you’ll follow along <3
