My girlfriend and I just purchased a move-in ready one bath, three bedroom ranch for $127,500. The kitchen has new appliances and a great sink, everything (windows, roof, back porch, furnace, water heater, etc.), is less than five years old, etc. It's really in top shape and all we plan on doing when we move in (next weekend!) is to put in new carpet on the first floor, paint the cabinets white, paint one of the bedrooms, and paint the basement.
I'm excited, so here's some pics:
The only issue is that it's 1100 square feet. All three bedrooms upstairs are also relatively small, and one is comically small.
But, as shown above, the basement is about 1/2 finished. Behind the wall with those storage bins is a pretty big bedroom. To the left of the chairs is an unfinished laundry and storage that goes the length of the house. Importantly, it also has a toilet and showerhead in there, just completely unfinished.
So the plan is to turn that back room in the basement into a master bedroom and connect the master and a new bathroom. I'd also like to finish more of the unfinished side of the basement to make more efficient storage and increase living space.
Pretty much everyone we know says, "You'll grow out of it," but we really feel like we can make this house work. And we both know that if this is the only house we buy, we will not only save a lot of money, but we will be forced to be "minimalists" and not hoard and buy stuff for the sake of filling rooms.
All that said, any tips for making a small house work?
Edit for clarity: (1) The listed square footage does not include the basement. So the total square footage of the house is 2,132 square feet with the basement. I too agree that this is a very comfortable amount of space, but I was more hoping for creative ideas to help make the space feel bigger.
(2) Obviously this is a ton of space for just the two of us--but I was talking about the house being small for when we have kids (we plan to have two). Pretty much everyone says we will move out as soon as we have a second kid because they will run all over the place and take up way more space than we could imagine.