The Robles Family: Our New, Old Place!

With the addition of Lily to our family our current house has quickly become too small for us. It was the perfect house for us when we were childless, and we love our neighborhood so we were determined to find a newer and bigger place in Temple Terrace. The only problem is the NEWEST neighborhood in Temple Terrace is about 20 years old! We already renovated our current, 60 year old house and I swore I'd never do it again. -Well, I guess I should have specified, I would never again LIVE in a home that I'm renovating! Basically, if we wanted to stay in Temple Terrace, and wanted a "newer style home," we were going to have to renovate. I am actually excited to embark on this journey once again -from the comfort of our current house.

We ended up finding a new house about 8 blocks away from where we live now. So, instead of being exactly 2 miles from my parents, (being close to them was a must), we are now about 1.5 miles away, and about 1 mile from my brother. We found a really interesting house, it looks kind of European and was beautifully decorated in perfect "old lady 70's decor," complete with overly cluttered walls and every kind of collectible imaginable on display! We bought the house from a nice old widow, who was kind enough to leave a few of her collectible items behind! ;)

We are now the proud owners of a 4 bedroom, 3 bathroom house plus a bonus room...but even more exciting not only do we have a 2 car garage this time around, we have an 800 square ft. workshop/storage/building in our 2/3 of an acre backyard! -And TONS of closet space. Coming from a house built in 1950 with minuscule closets and bathrooms and NO garage, we are thrilled to finally have an abundance of storage space!!!! From 1,875 sq. ft. to 2,875 sq ft. to be exact! (Plus the extra building out back).

Of course it wasn't even 2 hours after we officially took ownership of our new home, that Oscar already had an entire wall knocked out, down to bare studs and cinder blocks! Among the extensive updating, one of the major changes was to open the kitchen up to the family room and create a great room. It is a very roomy, traditional style home, and I am so excited about the renovation, and even more eager for it to be complete and to be living in, filling up all of that storage and square footage!!

I will post updates on our renovations. For now here are some pics of the house as we purchased it. If you are not a visual person, don't panic! -You won't recognize this place when we're done renovating it! We don't anticipate moving in until early October at the earliest so I will keep everyone up to date on our move and address change once we are officially moved in.

front of house (second story is blocked by the tree)