Jean’s House on the Lake _ Episode One_ The Before.

Welcome to episode one of the remodel of our house on the lake, our new house on the lake. We are going to be doing a full series walking through the whole project step by step, but today I'm going to show you what it is as we received it, kind of like the before. So come along with me. Okay, the first thing you're probably going to notice is how dark it is in here and it's a big change for me from the Madison because like, okay, look, I mean, it's dark, but there are things about this that I think we can change and make better. Like, first of all, look at this rim lock. This is a very special colonial feature. I love the door. This, we can do something with decorating to make this lighter. There's a step up into the main part of the hall and this is just a sweet little room with the knotty pine walls and floor and it's, it's on the opposite side of the house from the lake. So I kind of feel like this would be a cozy kind of winter room or evening room. It's got a wood-burning fireplace in it and this is interesting because if this wall could tell a story, it's kind of funny because it started out in the original plans. I just see it as bookcases. At some point they organized it for one of those huge TVs that had a big tube, you know, so it needed a lot of depth. Then a flat screen TV and just generally it was kind of butchered. So this is going to be an area that needs a lot of attention, but kind of a sweet room, huh? Dark, dark. I have to, oh, here's a fun thing I want to show you. This is where the mail comes, oh no, this is storage, like hidden storage. And then this is where the mail, oh, there's a lot of mail actually. Oh, there's no bills here. Looks like a lot of direct mail, I would say. I'll sort through this. Oh, interesting. Check this out later. Then back in the hall, I meant to tell you there's a closet in here and then another closet here, but I think we might use this doorway to get into a space that we'll make over there. It's a really pretty stairway and here we are now in what was the dining room. It's about 10 by 14 and it has this beautiful huge picture window, but, which is fantastic from the inside. It's a little bit of a problem from the outside, I'll show you, but this room has a pivot door that takes us right into the kitchen. And again, a really nice window looking out at the lake over the sink. And, you know, this is the original kitchen. It's original footprint and it has a little breakfast nook attached to it that has two corner windows and it's just gonna be great. This is a good spot right here and I want to make sure we use it effectively. All right, now this is kind of like the service area of the house. This is the back door leading out to the breezeway. This is the door to the basement, door to a coat closet, door to a powder room, door to a closet, door to laundry room. So like this is our hall of doors. Okay, and the laundry room, which I think this is a great location for the laundry room. It's maybe not a great setup. And this right here is the, this right here is the wall that I was talking about that has the closet on the other side of it that's in the front hall, because I'm thinking maybe it would be nice to come into this space from the hall also. But I think we're gonna, we've got to deal with the hall of doors. Okay, now let's go to the other end of the house where the living room is. And this, of course, was reserved for the best views of the house. This is a pretty room, nice scale, beautiful fireplace with really classical detailing on it, some nice windows. And at one point this was a screen porch and there was an exterior wall with windows and doors here. And the owners that we bought the house from enclosed it, removed the wall, put a bunch of ductwork in the ceiling to service upstairs, and made this a year-round room with a low ceiling. So, but look at, look at the views out to the lake. So this is like prime part of the house. And I'm very excited to think about what might, how we might be able to use this. You can see, you can get into the dining room from here. So you can see it's a really nice flow. And so now let me take you upstairs. Okay, this is a great upstairs. There's a tiny little room here that is labeled on the original blueprints as the office. I appreciate so much in here. I love the wallpaper. This particular lamp is beautiful. We bought a few things from the estate sale, like this daybed frame and this antique dresser. So I think this could be such a fun little granddaughter's room. So pretty, tiny, but cool. Okay, in the hallway here it's, it's, it's, I feel like it's very gracious. And I want you to remember this window that is on the side of the house where the garage is. This is, I think, going to be really important for us to remember. This is the first of three lake facing bedrooms. The house is interesting because it has five bedrooms. The master bath is en suite. And then there's one hall bath that services four bedrooms, which I think nowadays is, is a little tough. So we're looking for ways to build more en suites and to put more bathrooms in bedrooms. And I, this is going to be a key bedroom because of the, the views of the lake. But since it has no bathroom, we're going to have to do something to get it, to figure that out. So that's one of my big obstacles or big puzzles that I have to figure out. All right. And then across the hall from the lakeside bedrooms is the only hall bath up here that services all these bedrooms. And whoops, this is original 1951. And what's kind of fun about this is that the house that we moved into in 1991, when we were a young family outside Chicago, had a bathroom that was built at, I mean, it had to be the same year or, you know, maybe two years. And it had the exact same tile, the exact same fixtures. I mean, faucet, sink, tub, everything. This tile was just peach in, in our old bathroom. And it's, it's mint color here, but I mean, same floor. It was like, wow, I felt like I was walking back in time. It took us 10 years to remodel that bathroom in that house. I saw it was going to be the first thing we did. Turned out to be 10 years later, but worth the wait because it turned out great. Okay, so finally, here's the last hall bedroom. And this is not lake facing, but you can see it gets a lot of great light. So there's always a trade-off. When we help people with homes that have like particular bedroom views that are better than others, we always try to make the rooms that don't have, say, a lake view or something like that, really special in some other way. And in this case, it's light. I just, I think this is super fun. This is from the 80s. Well, actually, there's a date here on the person that painted the floor. Yes, this was painted for the homeowner's daughter in December 1985. So they took cues from the fabric. And I have to hand it to these people, like they went all the way, like look at the matching shades, matching drapery. There's like this crown thing for the headboard of the bed, painted floor. So there's part of me is like, oh, I don't know. Do I dare remove this? It's just kind of cool. We'll see. I appreciate it, nonetheless. All right, now the last spot is the master suite. And this was remodeled in the early 90s to put a big walk-in closet here and a bathroom here that is like has, it's held up really well. Actually, you know, we've been kind of camping here this summer. And so I've been taking a lot of showers here. And every time I take a shower, I'm like, this is a really good shower. I don't know if I should change this. Okay, so this was built in maybe in the early 90s. And I just think they did a great job as a Corian counter, you know, and custom cabinetry and crema marfle marble. Those of you who have been around as long as I have know exactly what I'm talking about. All the bright brass fixtures that all work so well. And then of course, a jetted tub. You know, the grandkids think it's really awesome and think I should absolutely keep this just for their enjoyment. They probably have a point. And then this beautiful big bedroom that has huge windows that overlook the lake and a tiny little balcony. This is just sweet, you know, and I think there's a lot we can do with this. I so appreciate what the people who designed and built the home did and also what the subsequent homeowners did to adapt it to their own use. It's really a special house. Oh, we have to go to the basement. Let's go to the basement. Okay, welcome to the basement. The burlap wall covering and the patterned rug. This, we need to appreciate the boldness of the people that selected this. Yeah, it's not every day you get to see a combination like that. But also, look at this. This is kind of like, you know, alpine, a little bit of styling here for this bar. I was, I was peeking behind the burlap wall covering to the, you know, the plaster foundation wall. And maybe wall covering was not the best thing to use on a foundation wall, because there's a little bit of, I don't know, moisture and stuff that we're going to have to work on. But this room, I think, has so much potential, because I think, you know, like, there's all these bushes, you can't, you can't see the lake, but that's the lake right there. So I, I think we need to make this something where you, we have an indoor outdoor experience down here. Although they did think of this. And this is an exterior door. And word has it that a lot of the neighbors came here and sledded down the hill. And this was kind of like where they hung up all their snowsuits and dried their boots in this rack thing. Okay, this is a fun feature, huh? For family slide night, or family movie night. Little things you find in fun homes. All right, so let me take you outside. So you can see some of the things that we're kind of working with. I, there's an, well, let me explain this outside. Okay, this is, this house was built, as I said earlier, in 1951, which is a really interesting era for architecture in the United States of America. It's post-war. And what had always been an emphasis on architecture that people saw from the outside was starting to diminish a little bit as the form of the outside stopped being primary and the function of the inside started to take over. There was a big swing and it, it went to some places that are kind of unfortunate. I feel like it's coming back in some places. But at this era, 1951, it was just beginning to think about interior function over exterior form. And this house is a really good example of that because the exterior front and sides were done beautifully. The proportions, the scale, the, where the window placement was, the roof lines, the detailing, really, really well done. But when we came to the backside, now we're starting to see like, oh, function is taking over. This whole series of windows on the backside of the house doesn't have any relationship to each other. And so it's a visual problem. I get it why they did it on the inside, but we, this is one thing that I want very seriously to address is dealing with the inconsistencies of how things were treated on the outside, especially on the back of the house that faces the lake. My philosophy is you keep everything that is good to the best of your ability, embrace it, use it. Maybe you have to move it to a different place or repurpose it, but use it and then fix what's bad. And so that's our mission here, this beautiful house on the lake. We're going to take everything that's good and just fix what's bad. And I hope you join us for every step of the way. Thank you for coming along with on this first episode, the before of our new house at the lake. And I want you to see every episode because I think it's going to be such an interesting project. So like this video and then subscribe to our channel so that you don't miss a single episode.