Meet Shania

Who is Shania, you ask? My husband's college roommate used to drive an old red pickup truck. He described the truck as, "A little older but still easy on the eyes." He named her Shania. He recently traded his Shania in for a newer, sleeker model. But when we fell in love with this adorable little ranch home during our house hunt, we just knew we had to name her Shania and we had to make her feel beautiful again! 

We are currently under contract on Miss Shania and should be ready to move in January 2012. She is a 3 bedroom 2 bath ranch home on a corner lot with 1,768 square feet (2,018 including our sun room). We have four main living areas: a formal living room, formal dining room, den, and sunroom. 

Here is the formal living room with the dining room off to the left. One of the little quirks that I love about this house is that we have two, yes two, front doors. How funny is that?

Here's our formal dining room off to the right of the living room. The pass through is a nice feature, isn't it?

We found fantastic terrazzo flooring underneath the builder basic carpet. If it's in good condition, we'd love to take up the carpet and polish the original flooring in the living room, dining room, and hall. Since the den is where we plan to let loose and get cozy, we'll probably keep the existing carpet (along with in the bedrooms). Even if the carpet isn't our taste, it is brand new after all. So we might as well live with it while we can!

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Here's a nice view of the kitchen through the pass through. Maybe one day we will open this up a little more, but for now it will work just fine. It's actually positioned high enough on the wall that my 6'2" tall husband can actually see through it (although not very well).  

Here is our "other" front door in the dining room. I think it's pretty special, and I'm looking forward to confusing guests and pizza delivery guys. 

I love the large open windows in the front of the house. The sidewalks are bustling all day long on our corner. It will definitely be fun to watch the world go by after being cooped up in an apartment for so long!

This picture gives you a better idea of just how long our living areas are. The dining room is in the foreground with the den in the background. Each room measures about 11' x 20!'

I know it looks dark and dreary now, but I'm smitten with the possibilities!

The paneling in the den looks more like it came from a manufactured home. But with just a couple coats of paint, it will look like we paid big money for some nice wainscoting. Lucky for us, that's trendy right now.

From the den you can access our carport, utility room, and the kitchen. This room is where we will drop a cable and set up shop with our t.v.

Here is our little utility room. It houses our hot water tank, ac system, and will also house a washer and dryer as soon as we can get our hands on a set. It's nice to have another way to get out to the back yard too.

This is our "bonus" room. For now, we will probably use it as an office space. Down the road we may even want to turn it into a fourth bedroom. This is the view from the kitchen looking out into the hallway.

This is the opposite view of the bonus room.

Here's the hallway that leads from the formal living room to the bedrooms. It would be fun to fill the wall space with family photos or use it as a gallery wall. I've already got the perfect thing in mind to cover up our breaker box.

Bedroom number one is the smallest of the three.

The second bedroom is slightly larger. It is on the front corner of the house.

Our guest bathroom has recently been updated. I can only imagine what this little bathroom looked like in 1967, but I'm sure this is a great improvement. It will still need a little bit of work to make it a little more functional and reflect our taste.

Thankfully, peach tile is easy to cover up with a nice shower curtain.

Here's a shot of our Master bedroom. It's actually not a bad size. The closet isn't very masterful, but with the right organizational tools and the addition of another dresser (or another run to goodwill so we won't need a second dresser), it will be just fine.

Our master bathroom is even less grand than our master closet. But I love that we have a shower and a nice little window in here for some natural light. Although, due to lack of counter space, I'll probably do my makeup and hair at our dresser. Nothing I haven't done before!

Our kitchen looks out onto our fabulous little sunroom. I love that we can access it so easily from every room in the house. Although its not quite our taste, everything is new in here. There definitely isn't enough cabinet space, especially since we don't have a pantry. So we have big plans to add more cabinetry later once we figure out our needs.  

Here's our little breakfast nook. We're thinking this would be a great place to add more cabinetry or a pantry. 

Our sunroom is right off of our kitchen and looks out onto our big back yard. It's not included in the square footage since it isn't heated or cooled. We could definitely add a window ac unit or space heater if we needed to, but Jacksonville weather is so fantastic, we'll probably just turn on the fans, open the windows, and enjoy the breeze.

Since we already have a formal living room and a den, we decided to use this as an informal dining area/ lounge/ future play space. It's large enough that we can accommodate a big group, but it could also be an intimate little place for family dinners.

This is what our sun room looks like from the back yard. I love that we have a great indoor/ outdoor space to watch Everett play while simultaneously entertaining.

Our backyard is a dream come true, especially for our pup. We plan to plant grass seed and do some other minor landscaping in the spring. We want to keep it low key since neither of our thumbs are very green.

Unfortunately, we are garage-less, but the house does have a great sized carport. We would have liked to have the additional storage space of a 2 car garage, but as soon as we realized that having a carport meant we could keep both cars cool and dry, we realized a carport isn't so bad after all (especially in Florida). Some sort of a storage shed for the lawn mower and such will definitely be in our future though.

The best part about this house, especially since it is 44 years-old, is that most of the hard work has been done for us! We have: a newer roof, new ac system, a recently installed security system, new flooring, new kitchen cabinets, 2 out of the 3 walls of our backyard fence have been replaced recently, we have new vanities and new tile in both bathrooms, and all the walls (except for the wood paneling) have been painted a nice neutral color.

So here she is in all of her glory: Our Shania. Just like our friend’s pickup truck, she’s also brick red in color (Of course, Shania Twain isn’t a red head, she’s a beautiful brunette). But she has just been waiting for us to come along and make her feel like a woman again. As soon as she’s had some good lovin she will shine in her sexy little red dress and have you singing “Man! I feel like a woman!” in no time. Hah!!!