Old House Farewell Tour

We’re just about to officially say goodbye to the first house we purchased in Richmond, VA. Selling a house is a major deal. It takes SO much to get it ready to put it on the market, and then…you wait for the right buyers to come along. It’s a process and it takes a lot out of you! We feel very fortunate that our house is under contract with some new buyers who I hope will love it as much as we did for the 5+ years we were there.

Before we officially say goodbye, I thought it would be fun to take you on a little “farewell tour” of our 1920s American Foursquare house in Richmond, Virginia while it was staged to sell. Since we (and our agent) loved how it looked with our furniture in it, we used what we had and did a little shuffling so that we could bring the essentials with us, but leave enough behind so it felt staged. We joke that we’ve been “camping” in our new house until we made the final move this past week!

I’ll also say that it’s a really odd feeling to walk into your house staged with your furniture, but none of your stuff. We lived so much life here and seeing it like this made it feel a little empty. I mean, it is pretty empty compared to how it looked when we lived in it since we simplified it so much. It made me realize that it’s the people that makes a house a home, you know what I mean? It did show beautifully in the listing photos though, so that made it all worthwhile. :)

In case you want to take a deep dive into the house, I’ll also include links to other blog posts I’ve shared about some of these spaces so you can see what they looked like before we put our house on the market.

Let’s jump in on the first floor! This is all one open space from front to back, so you’ll see bits of adjacent spaces peeking out from the corners of the photos.

Entryway and Living Room

You jump right into our home from the front door - the foyer opens right up to the adjacent living space. We lovingly dubbed the living room the “parlor” since it felt like the more formal of the two seating areas on our first floor. It was where we entertained most of the time and I absolutely loved how airy and welcoming it felt.

Dining Room

Interestingly, when we purchased this home, there was nothing in this area. The living room was at the front of the house and then the dining area was all the way in the back where we have our family room. We joked that it felt like there was a skating rink in the middle of the house! I immediately knew this would be where we’d put our dining table, so we had a chandelier wired up and installed right in the middle of this space, and I love how it divides the parlor from the family room.

Family Room

Of all the staged rooms, this one looks the least like how we lived in it! Apart from the cabinet under the TV, we took all of our family room furniture with us, so we pulled a hodgepodge of pieces together from different parts of our house to recreate a living room. For example, the rug was in my daughter’s nursery/guest room, the sofa was in the basement, and the chair was in my office! I think it turned out just fine though, don’t you think?

This was kid-central on our main floor, so it’s fun to see it cleaned up and decluttered for staging.

Kitchen

This was my absolute favorite update we did in this house. You can see the “before” and the big reveal posts below. Let’s just say the before was very…brown. We gave this kitchen a serious facelift by painting cabinets, replacing countertops and backsplash, adding v-groove paneling to the island, and more. The perimeter cabinets are painted Benjamin Moore Pale Oak and the island is Sherwin-Williams Breezy. I miss this modern coastal kitchen!

Primary Bedroom + Bathroom

Our bedroom was always a cozy refuge for us when we lived here. We gave up a window in order to do our office addition, so we lost a little natural light, but I have no regrets because we loved that space. To stage this room, we combined some pieces from our primary and guest rooms, and I quite like how it turned out. One thing I never got around to changing was that ceiling fan - it was the very last ceiling fixtures that needed to go in this house and it always bothered me. Oh well! It’ll be a fun project for the next owners to tackle.

We had an attached bathroom here as well, which you’ll see a little further down. It was originally the fourth bedroom and was converted into a bathroom when the house was flipped. It felt so luxurious when we bought the house in 2019. We were coming from a row house with a single hall bath in Philadelphia at the time, so it was a dream to have our own large bathroom.

His + Hers Offices

Back in 2020, we put a small addition on the back of our house off of the primary bedroom to create two office spaces. This space was a huge deck that had a leak from the day we moved in, so it needed to be remedied anyway. Closing it in was the best decision.

Both my husband and I work from home and this space was a game changer. We loved it. It got the best light in the house and we each had our own spot to work. The first room you see was my office (the one with the desk and cabinet) and the other room was my husband’s - we staged it as a workout room for showings!

Hall Bathroom

This was a space we never touched apart from putting up some hooks and a mirror above the vanity. It was our kids’ shared bathroom and it did the trick - it had everything we needed! I always wished we had put in some small shelves in the nook behind the bathtub, but maybe the new owners will do it down the road.

Girl’s Room/Guest Room

We wanted to preserve a guest room when we had our daughter, so we created a hybrid room that held both her nursery and a queen bed. The crib was on the wallpaper wall, the bed sat under the windows, and the dresser was along the wall by the door. Everything just fit in here.

We ended up leaving this room empty since we needed the furniture from in here for the new house, but the wallpaper remained! I put that up for my daughter while I was pregnant - it’s the sweetest floral pattern. We took her newborn photos in here and I’m so glad we did - we didn’t know we’d be moving just after she turned 1!

Son’s Room

Last, but not least! This tiny room was originally a trunk room in our 1920s home. It served my son well for the 5 years we lived here though - all the way from nursery to big boy room. I painted it this beautiful Sherwin Williams color called Delft when we transitioned him to a big boy bed and it’s definitely one I’ll be using again somewhere. It’s the perfect moody blue-green that changes with the light.

We made the room a little more gender neutral here for staging - no trucks and diggers on the walls! You can see his nursery and big boy rooms using the buttons below.

That wraps up the farewell tour! What a gift this home was to us - I really hope the new owners love and appreciate it as much as we did. Now we’re off to make our new house our own. You can take an empty house tour of it using the buttons below if you’d like to see what we’re working with now!