Good intentions

Daniel has given me a bit of a hard time about this blogging endeavor, as I have been saying for quite some time how great it would be to start a blog about what it's like to be a first-time homeowner with a taste for modern design while living in a city known for its southern heritage. Needless to say, with the craziness of finding a house, getting mortgage paperwork in order, making an offer on the house, waiting out the offer, packing up the apartment, moving into the house, and attempting to get everything in some type of order, I pushed the blog to the back burner. Nevertheless, now that we've been here for a month, here I sit and type.

I thought about immediately jumping into the many projects we tackled this past weekend but decided it might be better to explain how we ended up here in this house.

From the time we got married, we've lived in an apartment community. While there are some definitely plusses to apartment living (no landscaping, nice pool, repairmen on call for A/C or bug problems, etc.), we really wanted a place that would reflect our personalities, we could customize and one that didn't feel so cramped. We were open to just about anything when we started our search (condos, townhomes, single family homes) but quickly realized what we really wanted was an older (40s, 50s, or 60s) house that was in a neighborhood without being in a subdivisions (regime fees and homeowner by-laws are a bit confining). We happened upon the Park Circle area by a stroke of luck (well, actually our friends from church live in Park Circle and told us it was a really cool place). Needless to say, we were pretty much blown away by its charm. It's part of a revitalization project by the Noisette company, which hopes to turn Charleston's abandoned Navy Yard into a more artistic, live-work community, and it's off to a solid start. While Park Circle isn't technically part of the old Navy Yard, it is considered Olde North Charleston and is complete with its own downtown area. We were instantly attracted to the older houses with mature yards, and in a whirlwind time period found  a house that really reflected our tastes. And after touring it once, we knew it was "the one." It had ample room to grow (with over 1900 square feet), a big yard, hardwood floors, and it wasn't flipped, which means we could do our own improvements without dealing with inflated prices based on someone else's renovations.

 

So in a whirlwind, we ended up with a 1959 house that was well maintained but hadn't been renovated. It was perfect.