May Blog Challenge

Monday, October 21, 2013

My weekend at the parade

This past weekend, my husband and I went to the opening weekend of the Parade of Homes.  I was on cloud 9.  I got to feed my passion for architecture and floor plans and ideas galore.  If you are not familiar with the Parade of Homes (I know different states have them) it is a bunch of builders that put brand new homes for show.  It usually shows where trends are going and up and coming neighborhoods.  Our parade is broken into 4 different sections of the city.  I was so excited when I opened my book last week and saw downtown OKC condos that I am in love with, on the list.  Yay, finally I was going to get to see the insides of these things.  The parade started Saturday and ends next Sunday.  We went to 10 or 12 houses on Saturday (Elexis joined us that day) and we went to 5 or 6 on Sunday.  The price ranges for these houses are $200K to $1.75 million.  There were two houses I fell in love with.  One was $600K and the other $475K.  Both wayyyy outside of our price range (but we are not looking to buy).  We saw a lot of really good ideas that we could do to our own house (which coincidentally is back in style again...finally after 38 years...haha).

My favorite houses had the cathedral ceilings with wood beams (my house has that), beautiful wood work (I want some), they were old world, classic, traditional charm.  I am not a sleek and modern person.  I want unique, quirky, different.  I love the new trend of barn doors.  We have a lot of ideas if we ever decide to build a house.  We know what we want and definitely what we don't want.  It was really nice to see my husband get just as excited as I already was about seeing houses.  He was just going to go Saturday, but after having so much fun he decided to go Sunday as well.

The condos downtown were awesome.  The first one, the master bedroom (which was the size of my daughter's room...not big) had a fantastic view of the our downtown skyline from the bed.  It was 3 stories and the kitchen living area was on the second floor and the two bedrooms were on the third floor.  The first floor was a foyer and garage.  The condo was bigger than our house square footage wise, but I think they count the garage in the square footage.  The second was supposed to be the size of our house, but it was small.  It did have a cute kitchen/living space, but the 2nd bedroom was on the ground floor right by the front door.  Not cool!  The third condo was FANTASTIC!  It had a two car garage, 4 floors, 4 bedrooms, a theater/game room, two living areas and a huge kitchen.  It also had it's own private elevator.  The view was of the three intersecting interstates and from the balcony you could see the downtown skyline.  It also overlooked Bricktown and our riverwalk.  It also came with the price tag of $830K.  Yikes.  It was sure fun to look though.

Here are a few pictures I took with my iphone (so ignore the quality).
I want a laundry room, unfortunately I have a laundry closet, but I could do these awesome barn doors instead of my swing out doors and save space.

My ceiling is like this now, but it's all brown.  I would love to do this treatment to mine.

Looking downstairs from the 4th floor of the condo.  The white frames on the right is the windows to see out of the elevator.

My favorite entry.  I love the brick pattern.  I have no idea what my kid is doing.

The $1.75 million dollar house.  

I would love to have these lighting fixtures in my house.  Oh, and more barn doors down below. 

I can't wait to go and see more homes tomorrow.  

5 comments:

  1. I'm like you, I don't enjoy modern...it's cold and not very inviting to my way of thinking. Love wood, it's warm. Wouldn't like all the stairs with those multi-level, not with my arthritis. Nice your hubby enjoyed it too.

    They Call it Mellow Yellow

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    1. I personally don't want a multi-level house. I am too clumsy for stairs. My husband and daughter would love it though. We toured a few one story houses, but the majority was two story.

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  2. I am in love with the new barn door look too. We have sliding glass doors in our bedroom that lead out to the patio. I hate them so I have them covered in drapes and the bed sits in front of them. Wouldn't those barn doors look awesome as a backdrop for my bed......Richard and I used to stalk homes at the Home Parade. Oh, I miss those days. Thanks for letting me tag along on yours

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    1. We also have sliding glass doors in our bedroom. I hate them too. Ours are covered with a thick quilt (from back in the day Elexis slept in our room). We like a super dark room so we kept the quilt up. I have my sewing machine and laundry baskets in front of it. I love the idea of putting barn doors up and using it as a backdrop for your bed!! What a great idea. One of these days, Paula, we will go on the parade together. :)

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  3. Real estate has to be one of those professions that just bugs me. Cookie cutter houses selling for WAY more then they really should. Don't even get me started on HOAs. I think I started hating it watching Flip This House. When $50 of crown molding adds $2k to the value? That's a racket.

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