In early 2021, our family decided to sell the condo we owned in Chicago (where we used to live) and purchase a second home in a gorgeous area of Vermont, Wardsboro. It’s about 3 hours from our current home in Connecticut, in a beautiful spot halfway between two of our favorite ski destinations, Mt. Snow and Stratton.
But, turns out, simply deciding we wanted to buy a home in Vermont didn’t mean it was going to happen. If you’ve tried to buy a home in the last couple of years, you know this market is insane. And that even includes secluded areas of Vermont. We put offers in on houses and were outbid by cash buyers or people going tens of thousand of dollars over ask.
One weekend we went up to Vermont to tour a bunch of places with our realtor. I loved three of them, and hated one of them, but my husband liked the last one so we checked it out. Guess which one we ended up with?
The ugly duckling. When we saw it in person, I started to see its potential. It was solid — a log cabin, with only one owner who lived there full time, a rarity in this part of Vermont where many homes are second owners who aren’t there all the time to take care of the property. They’d done a lot of the ‘boring’ but important work on the place: put on a metal roof, added a backup battery system in case of power failure, winterproofed the home every year, and insulated it well.
We started to talk about the what-ifs, and decided it had plenty of potential. So, we put in an offer, and were the only ones to do so. The place was ugly, but it ended up working out in our favor.
Curious? Let’s take a tour!
The worst space was definitely the loft. It was just, so…odd. You can see below that it wasn’t just a bedroom, but a bathroom, too. It had a full-size jacuzzi tub, a stall shower, and a double vanity just floating along one wall of the room. Then, there was a toilet tucked in a little closet. I guess +1 for some sort of privacy …
The bathrooms also weren’t the best. They weren’t as bad as the loft bedroom, but really just needed to be freed of all the stuff that was cluttering them up, like the drapery and the art and the shelving. That was sort of the theme we found with this house. It just needed to be simplified.
The kitchen and living spaces were also right out of the 90s. The floral border on the walls, the pine cabinetry with exposed hinges, the Tuscan-style backsplash and counters, and the mismatched appliances, eek. They all needed to go.
The living area also just needed lots of updates and simplification. Less floral pattern, less pink carpet, less vines on the chandelier.
The rest of the house, two more bedrooms and another bathroom, were more of the same. Essentially, every room in the house needed at least a few small updates like paint and window treatments, and at most a total overhaul, like removal of a mauve tub.
We love a good project, though, and have rehabbed a number of houses before, so we’re excited to dig in to this one!