Down to the basement!

There are 3 entrances to the basement.  One from the back staircase inside the house, one from the front of the house in that bunker area, and the other one at the back of the house.  The back entrance will probably be our main entrance because we will have our garage back there.  But for this tour, we will start at the back staircase inside and head down.

 Here is the floor plan for the basement.  I think my picture taking skills are getting worse, but what you are looking at is the front of the house to the right.  Then a family room with fireplace in the lower right corner, then if you pass through the door towards the back of the house you come to what was the original kitchen.  The if you continue around you will come to the back entrance.  The open space beside the stairway in the back of the house now has a full bathroom in it. Then what is labeled "furnace room" at the top of the plans has since been divided into 2 equal rooms, and there is a door between the two rooms and also a door was added to the wall that would bring you back around to the foyer area where the stairs come down that is labeled "hall".

 Here is the foyer with the double door entrance from the bunker area in the front of the house.  This is the room at the bottom of the stairs.  Unfortunately due to the major structural work that needs to be done on this level and the condition of the wood floors(they are sitting directly on dirt!!) we won't be able to save them.  We will be tiling all of the wood floor surfaces on this floor.

 If you turn right you will be looking into the living room area.  This fireplace will be repaired to working order.  As you can see on the right side of the picture, the foundation has sloped significantly.  The ceiling has a big gap in it from the wall and the cabinets are sloping really bad.  This is one of the major structural issues we will address first before any other work can be done in the house.  It isn't to the point of falling down yet (I mean, it's been standing for over 140 years and hasn't fallen) but it is definitely not going to last another 100 years if the problem isn't fixed.  And we all might start to walk with a slight lean!  It is that noticeable!

From that same spot looking into the living room if you turn around you will see the bottom of the stairs, and the door leading into the bedroom. 

Turning back around into the living room you can see a doorway on the right.  This leads into what use to be the kitchen.

This room will be gutted and will be used as a home gym.  The closet in the corner use to be the pantry and we will relocate the door to the end of the closet and use it for storage, mostly for extra kitchen stuff(food, appliances that aren't used often, and seasonal items) from our new kitchen upstairs since we don't have a full pantry there.  The flooring in this room will not be tile but will consist of something durable and sensible for a home gym.

 From there we will head through a door in the back of the room to the back entrance.  This will become our mudroom.  This entrance is level with the back yard patio.  This room will have tile flooring.

Turning around directly from that last picture you will be looking into the bathroom.  Prepare yourself! 

 

 This room will be gutted and completely redone(although my husband thinks the tub isn't really pink and that once we get all of the other pink out it will be more tan colored and that we can use it without removing it!!  We shall see!)  I know you might be sad about us removing the Hawaiian tiled scene on the wall but it doesn't really go with our new color scheme. ;-)

This is the view of the mudroom/back entrance from the bathroom.  Got to love that pink tile and wallpaper! 

 From the mudroom you can continue around the other side of the house and enter into one of the 2 bedrooms that will be in the basement.  This room was labeled "furnace room" on the original plan.  Because of the lack of storage throughout the entire house(especially in the bedrooms) we will be refacing the current wall cabinets and shelves and putting some doors on the closet section to create some hanging space.  This whole side of the house has a concrete floor so we will be carpeting these two rooms.  The concrete, although structurally sound, isn't perfectly level so putting hardwood or tile down would be a nightmare for our flooring guys so we just went with carpet.

This is another view of that room looking towards the back of the house windows.  Each room has 2 large windows and they let in a lot light.  This is great because the house does not have any windows, on any floor, on the East and West sides of the house.  Just in the front and rear.  But it doesn't seem dark at all.

 Coming from that bedroom into the next one, which is a little smaller, it has the same wall cabinets and we will be doing the same thing as in the other room.  

We found a sign that use to be in front of the house in this room and we might possibly clean it up and put it out front when we are done.  We will definitely have to remove the line that states "Reservations Year Round"! Haha. 

Through a very small door as seen in the middle of this picture you are back in the main hall area at the base of the stairs.  That's the basement!  Now we can head back up!

 

Let's go upstairs!

Going up the stairs from the main level you will come to a landing.  The upstairs is laid out very similar to the main level with a main hall down the middle and 4 almost equal bedrooms.  In the plan you will see that in the hallway at the front of the house(which is to the right in the plan) there is nothing there but a bathroom has been added to that space.

Once you are at the top of the stairs and turn around, you will see the hallway, the bedrooms to the right and left, the bathroom straight ahead, and the stair/ladder leading up to the roof, which has a "Widow's Walk" up there like a look out.  You can see for miles from up there, or at least the pictures from up there show that!  I'm not going up there any time soon! Haha!

Directly at the top the stairs is what we will use as the master bedroom.  We will take the bedroom next to it on that same side of the house, and turn it into a master bathroom and also a laundry room.  The laundry room will be accessed from the original doorway in the hall, and the master bath will only be accessible from the bedroom.

This is the master bedroom and that corner will have the door to the new master bath.

 The is the room that is going to be split up into the master bath and the laundry room. Those windows look out to the front of the house. The current entry to this room is right by the bathroom, next to the ladder to the roof.  This door will soon be the entrance to the laundry room.

 The corner to the left of the picture will be where the new door is placed between the master bedroom and the bath.  This closet which now has a small amount of storage and the stove pipe from the kitchen on the main level will be expanded and used as a master bedroom closet.

A look into the closet.  At the back of this closet a portion of it will be closed off to house the heating and ac unit for the main level.  The access panel will be in the laundry room.  The heating/ac unit for this floor will be placed in the attic.

Across the hall there are 2 rooms that are the same size and are joined by a door in between.   These will be used as bedrooms.  We will also take a corner in each room and have a closet built in.

Once you are back int he hallway you come to the bathroom.  It will be gutted and updated using new, but old period finishes.

Once out of the bathroom and back in the hall we are ready to head back down!

Pictures!! Main Level

I have a ton of pictures of the interior and will try to explain what you are looking at in each shot.  I have included the layout of the main level so you can get an idea of how it flows in relation to the pictures you are viewing. 

 This is what the front of the house looks like now.  The porch was removed and the metal decorative columns were added along with a small metal porch.

 If you walk up to the top of the metal porch and look right or left over the railing you will see down into the "bunker" area that leads to the front entrance of the basement.

This is the view from the side of the house of that bunker area.

Upon entering the house from this main entrance you will come into a great hall.  This is the original floor plan with the main entrance on the right of the picture.

Sorry if it's kind of hard to see but basically the floor has a main hall down the center and then 4 almost equal rooms, 2 on each side.

 

When you enter the front door you will be in that main hall.  You will see the main staircase up, the staircase that leads down to the basement, under the main staircase, the back doors that lead out to the back porch, and the 4 doors, 2 on each side that lead into the 4 rooms.

 

 If you turn left once entering into the main hall you will be in what is labeled as the Billiard Room.  This will be our dining room.  

 

Connected to the dining room is the kitchen.  It is labeled on the plans as a bedroom.  We will remove all of the current kitchen along with the wood stove and create a new layout while careful not to take away from the beautiful woodwork in the room. 

This is a view back into the dining room from the kitchen, looking out the front of the house.

At the back of the kitchen there is a door leading us back to the main hall and we are now at the back of the house looking towards the front door and also down the stairs to the basement.

 The next room you will come to is the room labeled bedroom on the plans.  It is in the back of the house and will be our very own billiards room, for our pool table.  There are 2 closets in this room.  They are 2 of the only 3 storage spaces in the entire house!!!  There are these 2 closets and then a pantry in the basement that we'll get to later.  And notice how it isn't even deep enough for a hanger to fit in there properly!  I guess the soldiers weren't big on keeping things wrinkle free back in the day!

 These large doors lead from that bedroom to the living room in the front of the house.  It will also serve as our family room.  The floors in both of these rooms will be refinished to match the others that have been done in the house. 

 This fireplace is one of 3 we will be repairing to working order in the house.  There are several fireplaces, many that are closed up, but we have only decided to repair this one, the one in the dining room, and then one in the basement.  As you see from the second picture we are looking back into that back "bedroom" aka our game room and then the main hall is there on the left.

That is the tour of the main floor.  The ceilings on this floor are almost 16ft high and if you can see in the pictures there is wood trim about 3ft down from the ceiling in all of the rooms.  This is about the height the new ceiling will be after the renovation.  To include heating/ac, electrical, and new plumbing for the upstairs, we needed some space, so the only way to gain that space is to lower the ceiling.  Although it does slightly alter the appearance of the original look of the house, we will still have roughly 13ft high ceilings, which is still really high.  Also, we have to take into consideration while working on this project that this will be our home in the end.  We want to try and keep as much of the house as it was and restore what we can but we also must make it livable for our family and heating and ac are a must in Oklahoma!