I Love Orla Kiely: The House on Oak Street

Now for the house that I really liked. This house is currently owned by an 80-year-old woman, who also owns 9 other houses in the Riverside area. She is also a hoarder. And each of those houses that she owns is filled with stuff. Some of it nice (like the antiques you’ll see later on in this post) and some of it, well…crap. So all the random furniture and miscellaneous items you see in the pictures below are her idea of “staging.”

This house is definitely a good candidate for Curb Appeal.

Driveway leading to the back of the house.

This was a bonus in the backyard. The realtor says we could use it as storage or even a little guest house (there's actually a bathroom in there!) BUT the owner (hoarder) apparently lost the key so we could not see the inside.

Check out that front door. What's up with that? We'll definitely have to get that replaced. It looks like you're entering a store. I think the realtor tried to distract us when we entered, but of course we noticed it.

Fireplace in the living room. That door to the left was bolted shut. But we were able to get a peek inside through the glass panes, and that entire room was filled with dolls. A bit creepy.

The dining room. That's actually a painting of the owner in her younger days.

See what I mean by random stuff? What's that doll doing there? Shouldn't she be with the rest of the dolls in the locked room?

Bathroom downstairs. Definitely needs some renovation. There were old bottles of Nivea lotion on the sink. Again, the realtor says this is her "staging."

The kitchen.

The kitchen again. The hookups for the washer/dryer were actually in this room. Not sure how I feel about that. I would prefer a separate laundry room.

Now on to the 2nd floor!

The only bathroom upstairs. This will definitely pose a problem once we start to have kids.

Another view of the bathroom. I actually didn't think the yellow color was the worst thing in the world. John thought it was hideous.

I guess you could call this the "sitting area" of the master bedroom. And to the right of that is the tiniest closet ever. Definitely not enough space to hold all my clothes, but we found a solution for that...

See that door to the left of the fireplace? Well, it's currently FILLED with stuff from old clothes to toys to books. We were thinking we could turn this into a walk-in closet.

See what I mean? It's full of stuff, and this is only just a tiny portion of the closet. No doubt there's some really valuable items in there. If you look closely, you can see an old toy Hess truck. My realtor really wanted that (apparently it's worth a lot of money). I was tempted to tell her to just take it - the owner/hoarder won't even know it's missing. But of course, I have a conscience, so instead I told her that if we put an offer on the house, we'll ask the owner to throw in the truck and we'll just give it to her.

Now down the hall to what would be our future kid's bedrooms.

The 2nd bedroom.

Another tiny closet.

Yeah, that's another kitchen on the 2nd floor. The house used to be a duplex. It will be interesting trying to convert this room back into a bedroom.

Another fireplace in the kitchen/bedroom (if you're keeping count, that's four fireplaces!)

I honestly don't even remember where this was in the house.

Remember I said she had some really cool antiques? These were a couple of my favorites. The realtor suggested that if we put an offer on the house, to also ask the owner to throw in the antiques.

I know this looks kinda creepy (especially with the old doll poking out of it), but I really love these old prams. If I could somehow restore it, I would totally use it for my future children.