I am super excited to give you all a tour inside the Springfield house that Elsie has nicknamed the holiday house. 🙂 In case you missed our announcement post we’re calling it the holiday house because it’s the house Elsie and her family plan to stay at for the holidays when they come to Springfield. The rest of the year we plan to list the house as a short-term rental on Airbnb. We purchased the home in late December and have been slowly working on it since. It feels like we kept this a secret from you all, but truthfully what happened is the short-term rental laws changed in Springfield in January, and we were not sure if our original plan was still going to work. We needed to take the time to sort that out first before we felt we could really share much.
Which, by the way, would anyone be interested in a post from us about our experiences with short-term rentals? Like the laws (they vary a LOT and change often), using a management company, what things we’ve noticed folks tend to like or not like about certain homes, etc. Just curious if that would be interesting to you.
Now for a quick tour of what the house looked liked when we decided to buy it. We only looked at two houses in this neighborhood (we LOVE the neighborhood so much) and it was obvious right away that this house was special. And, a couple of quick notes on our renovations plans—Elsie and I have designed the home together and are aiming to keep the age of the home in mind. We love that this home was built in the 1920s and we’d love to keep it old, as well as new touches we add, feeling like that era or at least close. Second, it was obvious to us that the previous owners of this home really cared for it. It was in such great shape, and even though we do want to redesign and personalize some spaces to our own preferences, this isn’t a comment on their choices.
Here is the living room and a peek into an open study or extra bedroom space. We immediately liked that this home had a fireplace. Not only are they beautiful in pretty much any home, but it’s the perfect spot for Santa to make his entrance at Christmas. Ha.
We don’t plan to change much in either of these spaces other than paint walls, change out light fixtures, and possibly refinish the floors (throughout the entire house so they all more or less match). However, we do plan to construct doors for this archway as this extra room doesn’t offer much privacy for a bedroom without them. And although it could certainly be an office or playroom, and we may use it as such, it already has a closet, so adding doors just feels like a good choice for this space in the long run.
This is the dining room—it’s between the front living room and the kitchen. You can also see it connects to small hallway that goes to a bathroom and the master bedroom. It also connects to the stairs to the second floor. Mostly, we are just painting and changing the light fixture before furnishing. We have been considering adding some wallpaper, but we also might keep it simple as we may do wallpaper in the stairway. Still undecided!
The kitchen felt like the space that we would likely change the most. For one thing, nothing in the kitchen felt like the age of the home or very special. We pretty much planned to completely renovate this space and I am SUPER excited to show you the transformation once we’re done!!!!!
This is the second living room. It definitely seems like at some point this was an addition to the original home, or maybe it used to be a garage? It has super high ceilings and it’s really a very large space that would be great for entertaining. We plan to make this second living room the space that has a TV and is more of a relaxing, chill together space, while the front living room will be more formal (not necessarily fancy in design, just more of a sit and chat rather than sit and watch TV space).
The floors in this space are different and definitely newer than the rest of the home. We are hoping to refinish all the floors and get them to match a little more, but we’ll see. We also plan to remove the shelving unit and update the ceilings in addition to painting and furnishing.
Here is part of the master bedroom (still located on the main floor). Planning to paint, update the closet doors, and change out the fan.
The house has three full bathrooms—this is the first. We will likely paint the walls white, but other than that we thought this bathroom was adorable!
Here is the second (also downstairs) bathroom. To the right, you can just begin to see the closet doors that open to the laundry space. Similar to the kitchen, we knew right away this bathroom would need a lot of work to become a space that felt more like the rest of the home both in age and style. This room will also get a major facelift, so stay tuned!
Here are the stairs leading up to the second floor. Most of the second floor was carpeted, so we planned to remove that and hope for good wood floors—but if not, try to get something similar to the downstairs. We were in luck, and the original wood floors were under the carpet with only minor stains and age! We are also thinking we might replace the wallpaper in the stairwell.
I just love the little octagon window at the top of the stairs! Kind of feels like a ship to me. (Said the gal from landlocked Missouri.)
There are two bedrooms upstairs and they both pretty much looked like this when we bought the home. Again, mainly we are just removing carpet and refinishing the floors in addition to painting and updating the fans.
And here is the upstairs bathroom. It’s pretty unique. Ha. You can’t really see, but there is a small bathtub tucked in the room as well. We did love that there is a bathroom upstairs (for when you wake up in the middle of the night and need one), but the ceilings are SO low that it’s pretty unusable for many adults. I’m 5’4″ and the top of my head nearly touches the ceiling. If I have a top bun it will get filled with the popcorn ceiling, so that’s less than ideal. But honestly, with two full bathrooms downstairs and a not-exactly-unlimited budget we likely will just smooth the ceilings and call it a day on this space. 🙂
Hope you enjoyed this little tour! Can’t wait to show you the house after we update things. xo. Emma (+Elsie)
Hi, Ladies! Love this house! My guy and I are looking to buy a house somewhere near or in Springfield to turn into our third airbnb. My question: Do you have a list of people from which we might find a really good airbnb manager? Someone who can handle everything for us? We don’t want to be called unless there’s a fire or worse. We live out of state at the moment, but will be moving to a suburb of Springfield, MO within the next year. We plan to buy the airbnb house soon, though. Please let me know about a manager when you get a chance.
Thank you.
Mary
I love what you have to done to this house! I have read all the articles for this bit still couldn’t find can’t what you did to the floors. Love them and would like to do something similar. Resources please! Thank you!
I have a short term vacation rental and our goal is to find winter renters (snow birds) for the winter. I’ve struggled with the renters not understanding the fees, paying and then backing out within a day or two. They are all older. The younger are easy but I can’t figure out a solution. Also finding a cleaning company that will leave it ready for guests.
Have you looked into the history of this house? It looks like a Sears home to me. I have friends in Butte Montana that has homes with similar ages and the layout is practically identical to their home, which is a Sears home. Fun tidbit if you can figure out if it is!
Interesting. I’ve never heard of a “Sears home” before. I’ll have to see if I can learn more about that.
What a gorgeous place! I love a good renovation and can’t wait to see how this one progresses. Good luck with the reno and please share lots as you go x
Wow – I have a friend that lives in the same neighborhood and that is a carbon copy of her floor plan minus the bonus room in the back and she doesn’t have a second floor. I can’t wait to see what you do with it!
kids will love that upstairs bathroom!!
Would love to hear your experience with airbnb – ive been wanti g to do something but cant seem to get the numbers to work out when you add in managent costs etc
Hi there! Candice, from Chicago here! I’m currently working on decorating and opening an Airbnb in the Asheville, NC area. Do you have any tips on creating a welcome guide for guests? I’m really struggling in this area, and have guests arriving beginning May 1st. Any insight would be greatly appreciated!
This house has so much potential! Love the wooden floors and that beautiful little bathroom!
https://www.makeandmess.com/
I grew up in a 1920’s house. My parents bought it in the 70s and still live there. It has the same tall baseboards, window and door trims, and the big arch between rooms. So cool to see so many similarities since my childhood house is in NY.
What a lovely home! I always wanted a fireplace.
I can’t wait to see the transformation!!!! (And to be neighbors?!?!) SO excited for you guys.
1. Please, tell me all the things about short term rentals. We just bought a house on the Oregon Coast that will be our part time second residence/rental! I want to hear and see all the things.
2. So stoked about this project! I have wished you would do this ever since you moved to Nashville. Hahaha…. It will be so great to stay here when I come back home for visits. The hotels in SPFD are meh and the few air bnbs that I have stayed in there have been similarly meh. It’s going to be so nice to be near friends and downtown!!
This is so cute! It has so much potential for cute decorating. I cannot wait to see how you decorate it. Also, I love the name! Thanks for sharing, hope you are having a great day.
-Kate
https://daysofkate.com
Hi! Love the house! Could you share the living room gray paint reference number? It’s super cute! Thanks!
We are actually going to paint over it. It is cute though, just not what we are going for. It was the previous owner’s choice so I don’t know the name or reference number.
Yes definitely interested in hearing about the business side of owning short term rentals! Do guests like that the place is already furnished? How long are your leases?
Can’t wait to see what you guys do with this place! Looks like it has really good bones.
Please say you’ll keep the curved arch between the fireplace living room and the bedroom/den option! I think arched doors would be awesome!
Check our Stories (probably in highlights now as I posted it yesterday) … I think you’ll be happy.
🙂
Yes, please write the behind the scenes post! Also, how do you determine if there is a market for a short-term rental? Springfield, MO doesn’t seem like a huge destination spot to me (although I’ll admit that I know practically nothing about Missouri); how do you determine if it makes sense to convert a property into a short-term rental rather than long-term?
We are def nervous about that too. Our main goal was a place for Elsie and her family to stay when they visit (which is often) so that’s really why we chose this market. I am very curious to see how often it rents out… it’s honestly pretty nerve-wrecking in a way. A long term rental would be a much safer investment option in some ways. But we’ll see!