On Monday, we flew into Raleigh to close on our new home there!
(If you missed why we’re moving, you can check out this post and why we chose Raleigh right here.)
The home is a beautiful, classic, red-brick Georgian-style colonial just outside of Raleigh. Right when we pulled up to it, we got that feeling. I grew up in a red brick house and seeing this one felt like home almost instantly. The exterior is charming and the landscaping is immaculate. After redoing the exterior of our modern cottage top to bottom over the last 18 months, we were looking for an exterior facade that came to us as a style that we could embrace and we feel like this house had everything on the outside that we loved. Brick arches, climbing vines, the prettiest brick and I even love the driveway material (it’s a kind of conglomerate pebble or something). The property is just over an acre–a little more manageable for us than our current 3.6–and it’s mostly mature trees and landscape with a great courtyard in the back. We do hope to add in a pool and expand the courtyard just a bit.
While the outside was near perfect, the inside needs some work–our specialty! The living room (above) has a good nod to our current living room–those arched windows!! I can’t wait to tackle the fireplace!!–and I love the gorgeous traditional trim work throughout the entire home.
It has a primary bedroom on the first floor (something we were actually looking for this time around) that includes his and her closets in pretty rough shape–you know we love a closet reno–and a bathroom with a huge window looking out into the garden with a giant seashell shaped tub.
Upstairs, there are three more bedrooms, one for each girl, with large windows in every room and a jack and jill bathroom in between Polly and Faye’s bedrooms. They’re going to love that!
At the end of the hall, there’s a large playroom for the girls with so much built-in potential I’m squealing over the thought.
The playroom is at the top of a back staircase that leads right down into the kitchen and today as we were going through the house, I yelled up the stairs, “time for dinner, girls!” and I could almost hear them barreling down.
The kitchen has so much potential along with its quirks and we’ve already started making some sketches on how we can improve the layout and footprint, but we love how it opens to a breakfast nook with large doors leading outside.
We looked at over 25 houses on our hunt and although we fell for this house pretty hard, it took looking at it twice (over two trips a few weeks apart!) for us to put in an offer. One of the things we loved most about this house was the guest house that’s set back from the rest of the house. It’s connected and accessed by a long hallway inside that leads to a large bonus space that we’ll be using as our offices for our employees!
It has a kitchen and bathroom and even a separate exterior entrance so our employees will no longer have to walk through our house to get to work. I think this will go a long way in helping us separate work and home better, too. The office space is over a mother in law apartment on the ground level with its own exterior entrance, too. It has a full kitchen and huge closet and bathroom in it so we’re ready to welcome our friends and family! Having these two large spaces completely separate from our living space actually helped put my mind at ease that although this house is similar in size to our current home, the way it is laid out and the separate nature of the spaces to work, host and live–feels astronomically better for us!
More than anything, we can’t wait to get our girls here. We won’t move in until late June, but the work on the house starts this week! (More on that in a future post). We have a video tour coming at you tomorrow so you can see how the house flows and a good look at the before. My mind is reeling at all the possibilities. This house has so so much potential! It’s all there, we’re just going to uncover it!
Magnificent most beautiful home.
What is the square footage of your home? What is the name of your neighborhood?
Very exciting! Welcome to Raleigh – we love it here!
Oh wow!! We are nearby neighbors! Welcome you will love NC
Please be sure to visit the Angus Barn restaurant… you won’t be disappointed ☺️
Gorgeous home. Love and envy the separate guest/work quarters. I think you have a driveway made of Chattahoochee . We live in the south and have had several driveways and or pool surrounds in that material. I deal with chronic health issues also and applaud your brave choice to move. We made a heartwretching move 4 yrs ago and it has gone a long way towards improving my symptoms. God bless you in your new life as the dust settles.