In early July our dear friends over at AdventureBaby made us a crazy, wonderful, delightful, challenging and not-to-be-missed offer… (did I mention crazy?) ! Their family had this old house, no one living there any longer– did we want to move there and take it over? The rent would be a lot less than we were paying and the key thing was “We could do whatever we wanted to the house.” 

MHTC (better known as #myhusbandthechef) and I had always wanted to do this kind of thing. Save an old house from the wrecking ball. Redo something to suit us perfectly and have the fun of old-meets-new design. So though we loved our place in Nakameguro, we headed over to give the place a look. Not sure if we were even interested because we loved our current place and we were not looking to move. After all, the new house was sort of in the *gasp* suburbs!

Now, truth be told, I expected to not like the house. I expected the rooms to be dark, small and of bad design. I had been told the house was from the 80’s, not a great period in Japanese home building. I went, if a wee bit reluctantly. I was worried MHTC would love it and I would be the negative one…

And then the strangest thing happened. I fell instantly in love. The house was actually built in 1958 NOT in the 80’s — which we were to find out later. The rooms are full of sunlight, charming old glass sliding doors, lots of space and even the closets seem to have closets. Our new home will need a lot of love but the house is a classic from the mid century modern era. A favorite design period of mine!

So we are all in! The place needs a good bit of TLC and  work and we have about half a shoestring budget. So, the project is going to be a DIY labor of love.

By the way… in the dining room we have a window seat and out back, a little lovely garden. We are planning to put in a dog-elevator for Mr. Smoochers (more on that later).

back garden
Our darling, green garden– Photo by Lauren
1fwindowseat
First floor dining-living room area with the aforementioned window seat, photo by Lauren

This project is going to be quite an adventure. I’ll be blogging here. With details and all the ups and downs. We will share hints for those doing their own renovations and simply tell the tale of the journey.

Stay tuned.