Evansville House

So much has changed since I posted on here last June! My family moved to Indiana from Ohio at the end of July and I began my dream job in August. It's hard to believe I've already been here for an entire semester. The spring semester started a couple weeks ago and I just spent a week recovering from the flu. Since I had a bit of down time, I thought I'd finally share a bit about our journey to Evansville and our new home (and many friends and family members have been asking to see photos of the new place!).

Justin and I have always wanted to live downtown; we love local businesses, the people, and being able to have so much within walking distance. This wasn't really an option for us in Toledo because everything was so expensive downtown. Last May, we came to Evansville (the third largest city in Indiana) to find a place to live. We had been looking for places online and had set up several appointments to see homes, but nothing was working out - someone else would get to the place before us, appointments would fall through, or the place would not be what we were looking for.

On our first day in town, we had a rough day and decided to take another look at some properties on Zillow. We stopped at a restaurant downtown and our waiter saw we had Zillow open on my laptop. He started telling us about how he had lived downtown for years and loved it and that we should look into it. We said we wanted to, but weren't finding any places that were a good fit for us. He gave us the contact information for a friend of his and said she had several properties downtown that we might be interested in. Justin texted her and she said she only had one property available, but that it was undergoing renovations and wouldn't be available until July (which is when we were moving). Without even knowing what the place looked like, we set up an appointment to see the property the next day.

The house felt like home as soon as we pulled up. It was right downtown, very close to so many awesome local businesses and restaurants, and was in a gorgeous historic neighborhood near the Ohio River. We toured the place and, while it was a mess because of the renovations, Justin and I knew it was the place for us. We moved in on July 28th and have been in love with our house and our neighborhood ever since. (And Ruby loves it, too!).

We're so happy here. We love our city, our neighborhood, our jobs. We've met so many new people and it's been great to feel settled after so many years of moving and being in grad school. So, I thought I'd share our new home with you!

We were lucky enough to participate in the Old Evansville Historic Association home tour back in December and around 400 people from the community toured our home (and six other homes in the downtown historic district). Through the home tour, we were able to learn more about our house. Some quick facts: The house is known locally as the Theodore Venemann House as it was built for Theodore and Britania Venemann in 1869 (crazy, right!?). Venemann was trained as an attorney but eventually took over his father's business (which was listed in the local directory as "Foreign Exchange, Steamship, and Railroad Agents"). The house is a simplified example of Italianate style.

As a side note: If you click on the photos, it enlarges them and you can scroll through them like a slideshow.

The entryway/front hallway and stairs leading up to the bedrooms/office.

    

We call this our Harry Potter bathroom because it's under the stairs. There's a toilet back there but you can't see it in the photos. 

The dining room. 

We don't have a garage, so the dining room is the only convenient place to store our bikes (we bike a lot living downtown).

The kitchen. 

We actually have four doors that lead in/out of the house, but we only use the front door - the other doors are either sealed or always locked. 

This bathroom is brand new and was part of the renovations this past summer. We love the clawfoot tub and exposed brick!

The living room.

Justin keeps his tools in this random closet. 

Now we're at the top of the stairs. This hallway leads to the master bedroom.

Our bedroom.

We sold our old bedroom furniture before we left Toledo and ordered new furniture from Wayfair (which included a king-sized bed)!

And we have a wonderful walk-in closet (and another smaller closet) in our room!

My home office/Justin's music room.

More exposed brick.

We technically have three bedrooms, but we use this one (just off the office) as a storage room.

The spare bedroom.

That's an antique postage box that I use as a nightstand (found it on Facebook marketplace!).

That antique Schwinn was once a Toledo police bike!

The hallway outside the spare bedroom.

This leads to the attic stairs.

The attic is...gross. So we don't go up there. (We did once and found lots of weird stuff, including an old rocking horse, some holiday decorations, and lots of paintings of nude women). 

The laundry room!

Our upstairs bathroom.