About Us

We're Rick and Allie!

We're almost married! October 12th 2013 is the big day for us! Boy, do we have a lot to do, the wedding is in this old house of ours! 

This old house of ours was built around 1907, by a well known Kansas City architect named John W. McKecknie. McKecknie also designed the local Kansas City Miniture and Toy Museum, and installed structures at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. His work is known for it's reinforced concrete structures, so if you can imagine this house isn't going anywhere anytime soon and our cell phone signal does not exist inside. 

We live in the beautiful neighborhood Hyde Park nested right in the middle of mid-town Kansas City, Missouri. Hype Park was the premier neighborhood of it's time back in the early 1900's. Around the 1970's it took a pretty gnarly turn. Many of the homes were converted into multi-family/apartments, communes and group homes. 

Our home was not one of the lucky ones to survive the wave of change in the 1970's. Our home was bought and turned into a group home, later acquired by the city to house up to 25 people, at one time,  as a developmental disability group home. Thirty years later the government got tired of trying to keep the house maintained and up to code and decided it was time to sell it and move the people else where.

Then, I drove past the coolest looking house I'd ever seen in Kansas City with a for sale sign in the lawn, in my dream neighborhood. I jumped out of the car and started peeking into the windows and fell in love. I ran down the hill of the lawn to ask the neighbor out mowing his lawn if he knew how much the asking price was and gasped and asked, "what is wrong with the house?!". "Well the wood work has never been touched and it used to be a group home." Then I feverishly started texting Rick to tell him to get on the nearest computer and look up this house. I called, and called and texted the selling agent begging her to show us the house that night and she did. 

A few weeks later and two open houses, which we went to and pointed out ALL the expensive problems to prospective buyers, we had the keys in our hands. And A LOT on our hands. 

So far we have been blessed to be able to do all of the renovations ourselves. There are a few plumbing and electrical messes we will eventually have to find a handy-man or maybe This Old House will come help us out. 

We are in love with this house, even when we hit some bumps in the road like how, one thing always leading to another or learning to adjust to living in a neighborhood surrounded by crummy neighborhoods and people. 

I write this blog to help encourage us to keep working on the house when times get a little rough and remind us what a great thing we're doing for this awesome old home. I also write this blog in hopes to inspire anyone, to consider buying a house and taking the wonderful leap into investment, equity and pride! We also hope that all the current home owners out there reading this, know it's totally possible to fix up your house and do it all your self! The feeling your get at the end of the day seeing all the work you've done is incredible. 


We hope you enjoy checking in on us because we totally love it when you do! 

Also, if you have any in's with This Old House or any other home show kind of shows, tell them about us! We wouldn't mind some love and help from the famous ones out there in the world!


Love, 
    Rick and Allie