The beginning

Alok and I set out to find a house in Quincy in March 2010. After one (or two) days of looking, we decided on the old Kaufman House Bed and Breakfast. We loved the fact that it was a HUGE house with a lot of potential, and that while it needed updating, it had live-able space..... or so we thought (more about that later). I thought this blog would be cool way to share our progress with those around us and to get ideas from anyone. Trust me, all ideas are welcome! If you have one, please share and don't worry about offending us!!!

Here are pictures we took when we first decided to put an offer on the house:


This is the front/west side view of the top. You can see the lovely shingles they added on. We found out later that this house has 6 (yes 6) layers of shingles in places. The roofer also did such a great job that you can even see his work in the inside of the house (more about that later)




This is also the front/west side view of the apartment



Front/west side view of the house



Front of house... it does have some very awesome trees in front


The front door. And a deck that needs a LOT of work


The view of the front door and the lovely peach carpet


The stairs. Don't you love how they painted part of the wood white ;-)


When you walk in and turn right, and make another right, this is the parlor or library. There is a wood burning fireplace that you can't see here and some interesting wallpaper with sheep and little men on it. Guess what? Alok LOVES that's wallpaper. Crazy person ;-)



Here is the fireplace in that room.


This is the view from a room that is off the parlor. Apparently I missed that room when I was talking pictures. Notice the continuation of the lovely carpet and the gold walls. The walls have grass wallpaper on them that they painted.


This is part of that missed room. A random heater that doesn't appear to be attached to anything...hmmmm.....



This is the view of the kitchen. Obviously, it needs updating. The wood cabinets are actually really nice and we will save those when we update the kitchen. On the other side of this kitchen wall is another very small kitchen that they used as part of an apartment. This will all eventually be one big kitchen.


The back part of the kitchen. Straight ahead is the dining area and to the right of this picture is the entrance into the second kitchen/apartment


Built-in in the back of the kitchen. This door goes to the back yard.


This is the small, split off kitchen. You are looking into the apartment area.



This is the "apartment" area to the west side of the kitchen. They split this off and rented it out. This will likely be our bedroom while the rest of the house it being fixed up.


This is the bathroom in the apartment, which is behind the yellow wall in the picture above.



The rest of the apartment


More of the apartment. On the left in this picture is a very small hallway leading to the creepy basement.



The stairs leading to the basement




What the heck is on the walls?


A workshop area


One of the rooms (I didn't take pictures of them all). Yes, those are children's toys in the background (you can't see the asbestos on the ceiling above them!)



If you came up from the basement and turned right and went through the door you see on the right of this picture, you would come back to the front entry of the house. This is a bathroom under those stairs going upstairs. I'm 5'5.5".... very short door!



This is that very lovely bathroom under the stairs. To the right of the toilet in this picture there is a fairly large, but creepy, closet.



Here are the stairs going up (again). You can see that open door on the right, which is the bathroom.


When you get up the stairs, this is the closet on your right.



This is the bathroom upstairs next to that closet. It may be part of the master bedroom.




This is the room that will likely be the master bedroom. These are south facing windows and there is a small closet to the right.


Uh oh! Some lovely water damage above the east window of the master bedroom.


This is the area below the window where there is damage.



This is the room to the north of the master bedroom. That room connects to the master and those windows you see in the back are the master bedroom windows facing south to Hampshire.



My mom was wondering what was going on with the window unit, and the tree trying to poke through the area. This is the room next to the master bedroom.

Random hall closet (there are a lot of them...most of which we don't have pictures of).


This is a hallway bathroom upstairs. There is a very nice clawfoot tub hiding behind the shower curtain.



This room is at the end of the hall. There is a first room and then you have to walk through it to get to the second room.


Here is that room again



The second room that apparently was missed in this photo op has a small balcony, seen here



This is the bathroom that is in the room next to the balcony. There is a shower that is behind the door.



This room is down the hallway and will be the laundry room. This is an east facing picture. On the north side of this picture, there is a laundry room and we will have a washer/dryer on the second floor.




Across from the laundry room, there is an entrance to the attic, seen here. Yes, that is a fully made bed up here in the attic.... too bad you can't see the bat in the rafters.


Going back down to the second floor from the attic is the last bedroom. Notice the very small sink on the left side of the picture. Through that door is the smallest bathroom ever!

Here is that bathroom



Closets in the bedroom. That window that you can see a hint of on the left side actually leads out to a spiral staircase that they were forced to put in in case of fires (it was a bed and breakfast).

So, while we missed a few areas, this is what the house looked like when we entered into contract in March 2010. It has a lot of potential, but needs a ton of work. It will be interesting to see where this takes us.....

Stay tuned!!

Jessie