House #3: Designed to Sell?

Last summer, my father-in-law, husband, and I bought a cute house in bad need of a little TLC, with the hopes of fixing it up and making it someone's new home.

We had a good (and occasionally challenging) time fixing up this house, and it was fun to have a little bigger budget than Billy and I had on the houses we've fixed up and actually lived in. This meant we were able to put in replacement windows, gut the kitchen, and have someone else paint the house (we started painting but quickly turned that over to a few local handymen :)).

Here are some before, during, and after pics of various parts of the house...

Front of house before...looks ok but upon closer inspection, needs a new roof, new exterior doors, and more!

All done!! New doors, windows, roof, and more!!

Rear of House Before

Rear of House During (we were in the process of ripping out the laminate wood floors)

Rear of House After!

Backyard Before

Backyard After

We had the yard fenced in and replaced the old shed. Love the big backyard!! Jefferson loved it too, as he got to go play while we were at the house :)

Living/Dining Room Before

Floors looked ok but had some pretty noticeable imperfections, so we decided to go with carpet to freshen up the room. Also wanted to brighten up the space with a slightly lighter paint color on the walls.

Living/Dining Room During

Painting is almost done! New front door was installed, as the old one had broken glass and wasn't' going to hold up.

Living/Dining Room After

We chose Lowe's Seaside Retreat Light Khaki for the walls to brighten the space, paired with a light brown wall-to-wall carpet.

Kitchen Before

This definitely needed a little updating, plus I felt bad about trying to sell this house when the kitchen had basically no counterspace and very little cabinet space. So, after many meetings with the folks at Lowe's, we settled on a kitchen design to give the buyers a much more workable kitchen!

Kitchen During

Post-gutting!! We did keep the ceramic kitchen floor that was in surprisingly good condition.

Kitchen After

Closeup of wainscotting backsplash

We chose Lowe's Seaside Retreat Dockside Haze to give the kitchen a soothing yet cheery feel, and it complements the white cabinets and Mystic Moonlight laminate countertops very nicely!

Bath Before

Love the black and white tile...not so much the broken pedestal sink and the fact that the previous owner painted over the pink tile (which was, at this point, peeling off in several spots).

Bath During

Attempt to scrape what turned out to be several coats of nasty, probably lead-based paint off the walls.

Bath After

We used Dockside Haze for this room as well, which I love with the black and white tile. Also, replaced the pedestal sink with a new vanity for extra storage and reluctantly had the tiles all painted white (it should hold up well, but we like for things to be done right the first time - which should have been to remove the tiles or keep the previous pink tile without painting over it).

Master Bedroom Before

Dark brown color just made this room seem smaller when it's actually a decent sized room. Plus, the carpet full of unidentified stains had to go!

Master Bedroom During

We chose Lowe's Seaside Retreat Seagull Gray color for all three bedrooms. The lighter color immediately opened the room up and also made the modern, higher quality fan/light fixture stand out more!

Master Bedroom After

Painting is done and carpet installed - looks like a totally new room!! Jefferson's a fan of the new look!

Back Bedroom Before

One word...scary!

Back Bedroom After

Because the door was an unusual size (20" instead of the standard 24" or 32"), we would have had to get a custom door cut for this space. Not worth it in a house we planned to flip, so instead, I used this white curtain panel from Walmart...easy fix for under $20!!


Just for fun...

Window Before (4 out of the 11 windows looked like this, plus the glass in the exterior doors)

So that's it for our third (but most extensive) renovation project. And, with the real estate market taking a turn for the worse soon after our purchase, it turns out this wasn't the best time to buy an investment property (at least one to fix up and sell), so we decided to rent the house out after going several months without any bites. Now we at least have some income on the property and can hopefully find a buyer once the market turns!

Projects

Neither of us work in particularly creative fields, so we like to get out our creative sides in projects around the house. Most people may not know it, but Billy is a very good painter and has great artistic ability. I also love doing creative projects, most of which have involved photography or furniture as of late.

Here is a little sampling of our most recent projects...



We bought this cooler from a great little store in Driver, Virginia called Rio Grande Traders. They have all kinds of eccletic decorative items and furniture, so we love any excuse to go there! The store owner actually makes these coolers by hand! We noticed some of these coolers painted with Corona designs, but we wanted ours to have good ole American Budweiser on the front. So, we stopped by Michaels on our way home for some paint supplies and Billy went to work on his masterpiece, which I think turned out quite nicely. Now we just need some warm weather and cold drinks to put this baby to use!


I love nice furniture, especially when it's a good deal. My generous aunt passed our dining room furniture along to Billy and me when she moved and wanted to change the look of her new house, so we lucked out big time! We love the furniture, but the chair cushions were a little dark for the cheery look of our dining room. I had some leftover fabric from these two cute chairs I had made cushions for (with the help of my very artistic mother-in-law), so I decided to give the chairs a little makeover. With a screwdriver, staple gun, pair of scissors, and a couple yards of fabric, I was able to recover 6 of our 8 dining chairs. The other two are still in the darker color, which goes better in our living room (their current home). Maybe it's a faux pas to not have all matching chairs, but how often do we have 8 people eating in our dining room??



Here's a view of the chairs in the completed dining room...

My first chair project was with the bamboo chair below, which my mom bought for $23 in C-ville. At the time, it was a glossy, 70s-esque chair complete with white pleather and lots of grime I had to scrub off. To get the chair to its present state, I started by ripping off the cushion, stripping the existing finish, cleaning the chair, and then staining it dark brown (all in my apartment, which probably wasn't the best move for ventilation purposes). Then, the chair was ready for a new cushion. I selected a fabric with a bit of an Asian look to it that compliments the bamboo chair very nicely. I had the seamstress who had done my wedding dress alterations make cushions for the seat and back of the chair, and it was as good as new!!

This is Jefferson's favorite chair in the house too!

House #2 (Part 2)

Here's a little continuation of the tour of our renovations, with the upper level and basement improvements...

Hallway

The hallway started out in yet another poorly-applied, outdated wallpaper but has some nice features like the antique bell chandelier, high ceiling, and pretty moulding.

For the walls, we went with the same color scheme as our living room - Light Khaki above the chair rail and Garden Urn below (both from Lowe's Seaside Retreat collection).

Master Bedroom

We love our large master bedroom, especially since it can fit my best furniture purchase (Lexington/Bob Timberlake entertainment armoire which I got for a complete steal!) with plenty of room to spare. This started out entirely blue...that means light blue walls, robins egg blue trim, and blue shag carpet. So we went with our favorite neutral color for this house - Light Khaki - for the walls with white trim. It also had some way outdated drapes, which we replaced with faux wood blinds. And the biggest change was for us to rip out the nasty carpet, which left untouched hardwood floors!

The room now has a peaceful feel with great light and simplicity. If we were going to be in it longer, I would probably replace the single closet door with double doors to make the space more accessible (the closet is basically the width of the wall, so I currently have to climb into it to reach some of my clothes). We also bought some nice-looking linen curtains from Wal-Mart (very comparable look to these for half the cost!) but still need to hang those.

Guest Room

Our guest room had the same finishes as the master bedroom, and we went with the same color scheme there as well, just to keep with the simple nature of our style. After a year and a half in the house, we have finished this room, much to Billy's relief, with the addition of pictures from our trip to Europe and finally putting the bed up on a frame.

Bath #1 - The Blue Lagoon

So apparently when our house was built, it was a big deal to have not only colored tile walls and flooring but also colored sinks, toilets, and tubs. We love having two baths in this house, but that also meant having two different colored (but equally bright) bathrooms. It was also in style to have coordinating wallpaper and window treatments (which we were fortunate to have in both baths and the kitchen). We're on a limited budget, so we opted not to gut the bathroom and instead embraced the color in each bathroom. We did strip the wallpaper and painted the walls Seashore (also from the Lowe's Seaside Retreat collection) and the trim white. We tossed the window treatment as well, replacing it with faux wood blinds. This is our beachy bathroom, so we have beach-themed art, a bamboo bath mat, and a woven basket for our towels.

We have something in our house that is rare in our area...a basement! We love this part of our house...it's the best insulated area of our house, has a full bath and a second kitchen, and has a fireplace that we use regularly as soon as there is a nip in the air. The "man room" or den didn't need a whole lot of work...just new window treatments. It has beautiful pine paneling and is the coziest room of the house (although I'm sure Billy wouldn't want that to be part of his "man room" description :)). We have recently finished the improvements on the rest of the basement...our last major work on our house.

Den a.k.a. Man Room

Before

After

(minus the slipcover on the sofa, which we have resorted to removing because of Jefferson's digging habits with our furniture)

Basement Kitchen/Laundry Room

It's great having a second kitchen, which Billy has deemed "his kitchen" since it's near the man room. To this day, I'm not sure he has ever cooked in our main kitchen unless he's helping me with something. This kitchen was in fine shape but just needed a little cosmetic work in the form of painting the cabinets white and the walls ??? It's now much more inviting and feels more lived-in. This kitchen doubles as our laundry room, which is a little strange, but we still love the extra cooking area as well as the generous cabinet space it offers (since many older homes also do not have pantries).

Bath #2 - The Green Monster

Before

After

Blue is both of our favorite color, so we're more ok having the blue bathroom as our primary one. I like green just fine too, but I'm not sure this deep sea green was ever meant to grace the interior of a home (and in such great quantity). We've made it work, though, by removing the outdated wallpaper and window treatment (this was the best - and probably only good - wallpaper job in the house...we ripped most of it off barehanded all in the excitement of seeing how easily it came off!). Billy selected Park Bench, a deep green color, for the walls. I was very skeptical of this color, as I always thought darker/richer colors close up a space and make it seem small. But I was wrong...it's a very nice compliment to the sea green walls, floor, sink, toilet, and tub. When we painted the trim white, everything came together! Now, we have a very man room appropriate bath and have made the most of both of our cosmetically challenged bathrooms!

Yard

We have made some decent improvements in the backyard, although our limited budget won't let us do everything we'd like (i.e., adding a patio and furniture in the backyard) for now. Last fall, my construction-savvy brother began constructing a fence in the back of our yard to give us a little more privacy from the neighbors. Almost a year later, we finally had the fence completed, helping us worry less about letting Jefferson out and also giving us a more defined space in our backyard. We've also cleaned up the beds, added some pavers at the top of the stairs (no more digging for Jefferson there!), and added a few plantings (favorite is the red hibiscus outside the garage). In the front yard, we've done some minor improvements, including removing a couple of sad looking boxwoods and an island in the middle of the yard, changing around the planting bed by the sidewalk, and adding planters to fill with seasonal flowers at the front of the house. It would look great to add shutters and replace the existing boxwoods with something else (I have a planting plan from a local nursery that would look great!), but for now, we're trying to limit costs since it won't be a long-term house for us, so the improvements we'll do in the near future will be to move the mailbox (strangely placed on the side of the front yard - see picture) and paint the front door.