My house and my other house

[mrsukyankee]

My H and I bought our first house together in London, just a few months after getting married.  It was exciting to actually own a property and in LONDON! (I'm an American who moved over here for a job and met him, got married and now I'm staying).  Recently, my FIL died and my MIL is an Indian woman who has never had to manage much...so she's going to gift us her house as long as we're willing to move in with her until she, well, departs from this world.

Our house is what one would call a semi-detached house.  We share a wall with a neighbour and a drive with another.  It was built in 1931 during a huge period of house building in England (post-WW I).  It originally had 3 bedrooms, a living room, a bathroom, a dining room and a VERY small galley kitchen.  It had been changed a bit to add more space to the back of the house (adding an extra room and a shower) as well as the attic which became a bedroom (though they lost the small bedroom, so still a 3 bedroom home).  

When we bought it, it needed a TON of work.  We tore down walls, tore out all the horrid layers of wall paper, put in a new bathroom set, built a small half-bath, and redid the entire kitchen.  We now have an open plan space with a much bigger kitchen which flows into the dining area and living room.  

We are going to be re-doing the attic conversion (here called a loft conversion) so that we get back the small bedroom and can add a further bathroom (which will have a wetroom versus a bathtub).  We'll have a 4 bedroom, 2-1/2 bath house when it's finished.  We will eventually be renting this house out.

We are currently moving into my MIL's house and doing work on that, bit by bit.  I've painted and put in new carpeting and we're in the midst of building furniture for storage.  Eventually we're going to have to rip out the bathroom, kitchen, half-bath, carpet, new windows in the front of the house and get all the walls stripped and painted.  We've already added a new front door (as the old one wasn't closing properly).  Yup, lots of work.  

I've added my blog to the blogroll above so you can see the work that was done to my house and the work we're doing on both houses.