We had been admiring it for awhile from drive-bys, walk-bys, and pictures, and just were able to actually tour it the other day. We were super excited about the potential this had to be our next project and our "forever" house.
As I mentioned, it had a PERFECT location, an amazing yard, beautiful curb appeal (painted brick = so right up my alley!), 4 beds and 4 baths, an attached oversized two car garage, fireplace, jack-and-jill bath in the kids rooms, a huge linen closet, and a den.
The only ingredient this house needed was to have the ability to open up the floorplan on the first floor in a similar manner we did in our current home.
Guess what one thing the house was missing?
The whole first floor was separated into very distinct rooms and actually felt significantly smaller than our current home, even though square footage wise it is technically bigger. Each room was bright and cheery and spacious on its own, but they weren't exactly adjacent to one another so you couldn't open up walls and make it an open floorplan (or even a semi-open floorplan!), which was an absolute must for us. The only wall you could easily open was between the kitchen and the dining room, but even then you were still pretty isolated from the rest of the living areas in the first floor. Also, the kitchen was about half the size of our current kitchen and this is one area in which I really did not want to decrease in size. There were also lots of spaces with 1 or 2 steps up and down to different rooms, and it made the house feel choppy. Just not ideal. Not for a "forever" house!
Here is my super rough sketch of the current floorplan: