Looks like a great house. You haven’t mentioned the most important thing: Location, location, location. Too near a hwy? Near a possible future commercial zone? In a good school district? Reasonably private? Those are, imho , the most important questions.

as for the rest, you can , quickly, consult a general contractor to get ballpark estimates for your area of the country. I would do the painting diy, but that’s me. Instead of the columns, they can probably be replaced with a steel beam. Might be $10K, $20k?? Maybe someone else will chime in. But you can put a faux beam, stained, up in that great room area. Not too expensive. Kitchen looks fine, you can live with it and save for a re-do. I like what I see. Is this a first house? You will have fun making it your own.

if the skylights haven’t leaked yet, Id assume they’re ok. Plus, you

will have an inspection.

I think your budget will drive this. IMO the biggest turnoff for me would be those columns since they are obviously for support they need to be dealt with and that could be a deal breaker IMO.The rest seems to me to be more cosmetic than structrual so could be done a bit at a time except you need to have an overall plan in place before beginning .You need to get the best home inspector you can find to go over this with a fine toothed comb as to all the things mentioned by Diana

Buy a house for space and location. Not for paint color and decoration.

Enough bedrooms and bathrooms. A good garage. A kitchen that works and isn’t going to break soon. The yard.

looks like a beautiful house to me. I honestly think you are being too specific in your wishes. Paint, counters, decorations are all changeable.

and P.S. they don’t have to change the first day. Making the house your dream home can be a fun, multi-year process.

To add to advice from Mrs. S, be sure to look around outside away from the house. Your looking for ugly electrical poles, cell towers, etc. noisy fire depts. neighboring homes in disrepair. Junk in yards. Many new buyers focus so much on the house they forget to take in the surroundings. After that, the columns are a bit weird. You could have a contingency on those to be checked for structural vs cosmetic.

Your only substantial objection is the columns. Get an estimate from a licensed contractor and structural engineer to add a beam. If the estimate is far beyond your budget, then you can decide. The other things are cosmetic (paint) or safety-related (hot tub can be removed).

Thanks , all! It’s a great location - in our kids same school district. The neighborhood is peaceful and quiet. Its an older neighborhood so lots of mature trees, homes aren’t on top of each other. The only negative about the neighborhood is there’s no sidewalks, which I’m not sure how I feel about. I’ve always had sidewalks. The neighborhood is also a pool community, and has tennis courts and a play area. All of the houses nearby are all very nice and comparably priced.

A couple other things my husband and I were talKing about today - there’s no real front porch (though it is a covered entry) and there’s not a huge green space in the backyard for the kids to play or to put a play set. Our kids love their play set and love swinging. I suppose down the road we could clear out some of the trees in the back and plant some grass seed. The front yard is very nice and big though.

oh and we got an estimate from a contractor on some of the work we want to have done - for the columns, we’d be looking at $3500-5000 to remove and put in a beam if they’re structural, and $1200-1500 to remove/retouch the floor/ceiling if they’re not structural. We’d be looking at $600-800 to paint all the trim, base boards, door frames etc and another $40 per door. The kitchen cabinets and countertops are still TBD but we could always just paint the cabinets white for now.

These estimates seem very low.

p.s. I don't think there's any way you can remove those columns and put in a structural beam for $5,000. You MUST have a structural engineer, so figure that in. If your contractor didn't mention that, you do not have a competent contractor.

Painting kitchen cabinets properly is $5K -$8K.

You haven't mentioned whether this is your first house, and my advice (esp if you have kids) is to live in the house for awhile.

There are a lot of "start-up" expenses if this is a first home. You will become veeeery familiar with Lowes/Home Depot. You seem very concerned about paint. I suggest you read through the Paint Forum here, and/or visit some diy blogs about painting. For those prices you are quoted, you might at least familiarize yourself with paint quality and painting quality. You still haven't mentioned where you are, but those painting numbers ought to be 3-4X those estimates. Your trim includes all the windows? I don't see how a contractor could make any money doing all that at those prices.

I don't see photos of the front of the house. Depending on location/orientation/weather, you may decide you don't want a long front porch. That decreases the amount of light coming in the windows, making for a darker portion of your home.

Those estimates seem way too low.

I'm not a building expert, but instead of replacing the columns with a beam I would think about walling in the entire space with the needed support hidden in walls. I'd add double French doors that open to the entry area. This solves the problem of hiding the toys and the supports needed. In the future it can serve as an office or quiet space.

Adding a faux beam to the vaulted family room space will probably be one of the least expensive fixes. A good trim carpenter can craft one out of long boards.

In one picture of the hot tub area the top of the pergola looks very low. The other picture looks to be a normal height. If you don't want the hot tub, I'd use that area for a small out door eating space.

For the built-in bar area-adding a couple of doors to the outside of it is one option. It could be used to store games, puzzles, etc. It's hard to tell from the picture if it includes a sink. If you really hate it I'd also consider having it removed and replaced with built-in book shelves or walled off.

Hi jlynn! I just wanted to add - just as a caution, or impetus to get another estimate or two - to those who've indicated that they think your painting estimate seems low. My house is about 3200 sf, and I had all the trim and interior doors painted when we bought the house; I'm sure we paid a few thousand dollars, and that was 20 years ago, in Columbus, OH. Good luck with the house - looks (and sounds) good to me!

Here’s a photo of the outside abs you can see the 4 car garage. Abs here’s the link to the listing! Our realtor told us homes are going 12-15% over and said she suggests we go in at list with an escalation clause up to $430k! 😳

https://www.realtor.com/realestateandhomes-detail/840-Old-Mill-Dr_Loveland_OH_45140_M35533-31691

Here’s a photo of the outside abs you can see the 4 car garage. Abs here’s the link to the listing! Our realtor told us homes are going 12-15% over and said she suggests we go in at list with an escalation clause up to $430k! 😳

https://www.realtor.com/realestateandhomes-detail/840-Old-Mill-Dr_Loveland_OH_45140_M35533-31691

This is not our first home. We’ve lived in our “starter home” since 2014 and now we are looking to move into our forever home. We like to entertain a lot (post covid) so we want a house with a nice flow and nice entertaining features/outdoor area.

we have three kids, ages 5, 3 and 1. They’re very active and have a LOT of toys so if the family room (column room) becomes the kids playroom, we’d need to have lots of storage to hide everything. I’d love any suggestions! (I also really like the idea of walling off the family room and adding French doors!!!)

the wet bar does have a sink. I like the idea of making it into a game closet! Not sure if the water line would complicate that.

I would think seriously about how you will feel once you move in and start looking at all of those things you don't like. Listen to your gut.

It's a beautiful home with beautiful grounds. You are excited, however, I'd stop trying to figure out what I'm going to do with each space and put in an offer.

Thanks, @sunfeather! I feel like once the trim, baseboards and doors are painted white, it will be a game changer. That oak EVERYTHING + the columns are the main things tripping me up right now.

Once the columns are gone, and the trim is painted, it will look much better. The breakfast/four seasons room would make a great playroom area, near the back of the house and open to the kitchen. I don't think it makes sense to wall off the living room near the entryway. As your kids get older, it's nice to have two living spaces. It's easy to cap off the water on the wet bar. It could be enclosed storage but you could also make it a combination desk/storage area that the kids could use for homework. You can make changes to the kitchen after you've lived there for several years and know what works and what doesn't.

You won't know how this home functions for you until you live in it. Before talking paint, even the oak, upgrade the lighting. Updated fixtures with 3,500K - 4,000K LED's and also LED's under the upper cabinets in the kitchen, will assure that you are picking good colors for the home. Move in and live there for a year before you mess with it very much. Unless your expert inspector finds major issues for which you don't have the budget, this is probably as close as you'll get to a forever home to raise your family.

when I buy houses I get every contractor there is out to inspect the critical elements, someone mentioned above HVAC, roof, septic if applicable - to cover the big stuff... if I think aesthetic work needs doing I get a contractor out (usually your realtor knows at least one) and get an idea for costs from them. I then use that info to decide whether I think the aesthetic updates make sense vs the purchase price or you if they're even in my budget at all. if not then I either have to live with things or work around them or walk away. If this is going to be your forever home you can do it over time but plan on big bucks for the columns and the kitchen. professional painters are big bucks too.