For many years it’s been my father-in-law’s plan to retire from architecture at 70, move here from Florida, and buy a historic building downtown to renovate and live in with us (David and I are immensely blessed and thankful for the incredible generosity and love of his father). This space would house our bookstore as well–store downstairs, apartments upstairs. After years of searching for a building and having multiple options fall through, it was decided that for now a better plan would be to buy a house instead. This, of course, is an incredible gift, but it’s not just for us! The house needed to either have an existing apartment or the capacity to add one relatively easily. After much searching we finally settled on one we all loved and perfectly fit our needs (I could go on and on about how thankful we are that David’s dad included us in the buying process and cared about our desires). It’s in our favorite historic neighborhood, where we all already live now and knew we could never leave. The two story house was originally built in 1936. At some point, the upstairs was converted into an apartment with its own outside stair access. The previous owners kept the spaces flowing as one, using the upstairs for extra bedrooms. For our purposes, the upstairs will be closed off as an apartment for David’s dad and the downstairs is the perfect size for our needs. It’s been more than a year since my father-in-law bought the house, and after some difficulty getting the contractor situation figured out, renovation has finally begun. Hopefully everything will be completed before the holidays. What a wonderful way to end the year, celebrating in our new home.

Before the contractors started, David’s dad went ahead and did some demolition on his own (71 and still working hard), so these photos (of the downstairs only) aren’t exactly how the house looked when he bought it, but you get the idea. There’s a nice fenced in backyard, but I’ll get to that another time. I’ll also post before photos of the upstairs apartment in a few weeks, once renovations start on that portion. Click through below to view more photos.