Guest House

You might remember that Kramer and I had it in our head to open a guest house here in town. We have a lovely event center where weddings, family get togethers and the like are held. We hosted Kalissa and Craig’s wedding there and were really impressed with it.

The event center is really busy…They have events most, if not all of the days. The problem, there is absolutely no place to stay overnight in town. No hotel, no Bed and Breakfast…Nothing. Many people who host a wedding get a shuttle service to shuttle the people to neighboring towns that have hotels which are around 20 miles away.

Kramer and I thought is would be awesome to try to make a Guest House in town to accommodate some of the visitors. We had looked at a house or two but they were small or the location wasn’t my favorite. There was one house in town that I loved the location. The person who lived there had passed away and I even ended up writing the family a note saying we’d possibly be interested in purchasing it but we never heard back from them and we kind of talked ourselves out of it.

The house is within walking distance of the bar, the convenience store, the bank, the library and the Event Center.

Well the house was put on the market about a month ago. Kalissa, Craig, Karl and I talked about it. I wasn’t doing anything on my own and honestly likely couldn’t afford the investment. Craig and Kalissa thought about it….and Karl thought about it for his own personal housing. So we looked.

This is an old picture of the house when it was actually taken care of. It’s a three bedroom house. It’s located right off the main intersection of town so it’s the perfect location for a guest house.

It looks more like this now….

The outside of the house looks like it’s brick but it isn’t. It’s shingles.

YES…SHINGLES.

Here’s a picture of the back of the house. It’s so overgrown.

It would take a day or two just to get the house into shape on the outside. I looked at all and all I could think of was that Kramer would so love getting a skid loader in there with a chainsaw and fix it up. Seeing that I knew that I really couldn’t do anything as far as making this into a guest house on my own.

It was super hot inside so we took Gannon out of his seat and took turns holding him. I took my turn when the rest of the crew went to check out the basement.

The inside of the house needed help but nothing that couldn’t actually be done. Here’s the dining room. You come into in from the front porch.

Isn’t the staircase wonderful? (Okay think no wallpaper). Behind the mirror is nice little closet.

The door into the dining room was pretty too.

Once in the dining room turn and you’ll see this. The room to the left is the living room. To the right is the kitchen.

Kalissa forgot to take a picture of the kitchen cabinets. They were okay. A little cleaning and they wouldn’t have to be replaced.

There was this spot to eat in the kitchen. Personally I’d remove this. The countertops and appliances needed an update….likely the drawer pulls and such too.
What we didn’t like…this….The bathroom is just off the kitchen. The bathroom needed help. The ceiling was coming down. It’s pretty small for a guest house…especially when there was only one bathroom.

If someone “used” the bathroom while someone else was in the kitchen meal prepping you would totally hear EVERYTHING.

Also off the kitchen was a utility room. Washer and dryer supposed to go here. The kitchen cabinets matched these.

Out the door in the above picture was a garage. We thought we’d make that a “man cave” kind of spot.

Up the stairs were three bedrooms. They were okay sized for a guest house. Not much more is needed than a bed, night stand and a dresser. There were nice sized closets. Sadly the woodwork upstairs was painted. BUT…look at that cute rounded door.

There was a lot of wallpaper…or paneling. UGH. Doable…but WORK.

This beauty was in the hallway. It would have been perfect for linens for the beds.

Ah…We all ended up deciding that we don’t want to do the work or take the financial risk. I really think a guest house would be a good business. I think it could make money once the house was paid for.

Another family was looking at it after we did.

We heard someone put in a lower offer than the asking price. I don’t remember what that was… $32,000 maybe. Anyway, we heard the owners didn’t take the offer. We’d have had to get the house at a cheaper price so it’s likely a good thing we didn’t have our heart set on it.

I have to say…I still LOVE looking at houses. I still love thinking about it even though I miss my remodeling partner, Kramer, terribly when I go. Oh my, he was such a good remodeling partner…as for me, I still have plenty to tackle here.

I hope someone handy gets the house and restores it to the way it looked in the first picture.