So we bought a house. If you know anything about Seattle, you know that is no easy feat. The housing market has blown up in recent years due to the growth of tech companies like Amazon and Google. It’s not quite as bad as the Bay Area but it’s getting close. We put in three offers before we found our current home, which is low compared to many people. In all three of those situations, the houses ended up going for 20-30% over the list price! We stumbled across our now home while checking out an open house for another property in the area. I actually had to coerce my other half to go inside because he was very lukewarm about the exterior of the property. We love craftsman houses, so the brick, somewhat ambiguous style of this home wasn’t selling him. At first pass the interior wasn’t an immediate charmer either – the kitchen doesn’t look like it’s been touched since the ’50s, and the main bathroom has to  years old. But the bones were good, it had more space and a better floor plan than a lot of the homes we’d seen, and it was in our price range. Also, most surprisingly for older homes in Seattle, it has a two-car garage (detached) and a large backyard. So we saw the potential and decided to go for it.

As it often happens, we’ve fallen more in love with the house as each day goes by, and especially as we’ve learned more about its history. The house was built in 1930, and as the inspector reminded us, this was the beginning of the Great Depression. This is significant for two reasons. First, not a lot of homes were built during this time period, so that is why our house’s style is hard to define. It’s kind of a cross between two architectural movements: Craftsman, which defined a lot of homes built in the Northwest from the 1900s to 1920s, and Tudor, which became popular during the 1930s. You can see a little of both styles in our house – the small covered porch with heavy support columns are typical of Craftsman, whereas the brick siding, coved ceilings and leaded glass are classically Tudor. The second side effect of being built during the depression is that high-quality labor was very cheap and easy to come by. So homes built during this time often have a superior level of craftsmanship, which explains why despite being almost 90 years old, our house has stood the test of time better than many of the older homes we’ve seen.

Another fun fact we learned from a neighbor is that we are only the third owner of the home. The family we purchased the home from purchased it from the original owner around 15 years ago, so the original owners had lived in the house for over 70 years! According to this very chatty neighbor, the original family owned much of the land around the house, slowly selling off to become the homes of our neighbors. I’ve yet to fact check this information, but love the story nonetheless.

And that’s a little background on our brick bungalow. We’ve got grand plans for bringing new life into the home while preserving some of the original character, and I can’t wait to share them with you!