This week we're going to deviate just a bit from the norm on our Open Housing posts. Until now, we've primarily covered homes for sale in Old Town that Wendy and I have gone through on our weekly Sunday open house trips. This past weekend, we had a unique opportunity to tour a house for sale that wasn't officially listed yet and won't actually have a true open house.

How did we score this first look? Did Wendy get a real estate license or something to help fuel our obsession? Nope. The home actually belongs to a good friend of ours. And you're correct if you recognize it from posts we did back in December on installing Sonos Whole House Audio and creating outdoor holiday decor.

This friend is a wonderful supporter of us and of this blog. She's also a fan of our Open Housing posts, so she invited us to take a tour of her home as if we were touring it as an open house. She also knows how much we absolutely love her house and that we would enjoy the opportunity. We happily accepted her invitation and stopped by last Sunday afternoon to have a look around. (We did it on Sunday to at least make it feel a bit like an open house. Besides, the weather was beautiful.)

This home is a wonderful example of some of the more generously sized homes in and around Old Town. Situated on a "double lot" (which just means it wasn't subdivided and sold over the years) with ample private outdoor living space, the home's curb appeal is both attractive and inviting.

The structure of the home is quite typical of early 19th century masonry construction. A rear two story flounder building was constructed much earlier, probably around 1790, and the front three story section of the house was added around 1850.

From this 1930s photo, you can see that little has changed with respect to the home's exterior, save for some masonry repair, shutters, and paint stripping. Even the fire plug in front of the home is the same as it ever was.

The home's history is a winding and interesting one. Though it was built as a single family home, it's proximity to the old Alexandria hospital that stood nearby until the late 1970s made it an ideal spot for a nursing school during the early to mid 1900s. The school was one that conducted itself from within the building and also had its students living there as a dormitory. Many people in the area remember it as this school because they either attended while becoming a nurse, or were somehow tied to someone who was enrolled. Oddly enough, the current owner even had a friend come to the house who had a photo of himself as a newborn in a bassinet in a room in the house.