Let's start when you enter the house. The living room used to be cream-over-burgundy with original windows and floors that badly needed to be refinished.
We took care of all that plus added some nice wood shades to help warm the place up. The coat rack, refinished door, and furniture helped, too.
As you come into the house, a sharp left used to take you into a small, galley kitchen with a bad tile floor (laid on top of the original linoleum one), a mishmash of appliances, too little cabinet or counter space, and an eat-in table.
This room got one of the biggest transformations with new cabinets (new doors and drawers twice!), a new white oak floor to match the rest of the house (with an intermediary maple floor), and a new layout that maximized the storage and countertop space.
If you'd continued past the kitchen you would have seen what used to be called the "tv room" (at least according to the circuit box). It had original (to the 80s) windows and door that let in too little light, a horrendous carpet, and a narrow doorway entrance.
We have transformed this into the primary art studio by expanding the opening, replacing the doors and windows, quadrupling the size of the back window, and building or customizing all the furniture to suit the room. It is an artist's heaven now.
While we're in this room, you could look out the doors and previously would have seen an old pressure treated pine deck that had long outlived its shelf life.
A lot of hammer, prybar, and saw work helped tear that ugly thing down, and in its place we put down lovely cypress boards. Now it's a favorite place to spend an afternoon.
Back inside, the main floor bathroom used to be...basically unusable. Just judge for yourselves.
This room also needed a complete overhaul (or two) with a new floor, cabinet, countertop, window, toilet, lights, and shower.
A little way further along and you get to the main bedroom. It used to be maybe a lilac color again with original windows and a stained, tired floor.
New and freshened up everything, along with some personal touches, and it's so much more livable.
Through the kitchen are the stairs down to the basement. Those went through several iterations but started from this low base.
In the end they became a nice chocolatey hue with white risers and the new shelf for our shoes.
The basement has been through a couple overhauls. It used to have wood paneling that we repainted but had to tear down when we discovered mold growing behind all the panels. The gaps in the tile floor are where interior walls used to set off a small (very dark and low ceilinged) room.
Now the whole space is useable and bright with warmer tile and all of our new lighting.
Toward the back of the last picture is the door to the bathroom. It used to be, if you can imagine, even worse than the upstairs bathroom--tiny, old, ugly, and with leaky pipes. And yes, that is a Smurf blue tub.
This room got lots of attention--a new shower, floor, etc.--but all within the same space. Then it got another new floor to replace the higher maintenance stone tile. Finally, we expanded it several feet to make it actually livable. This room in some ways marked our real dive into DIY because we operated without a net as we learned how to lay tile and even do the decorative backsplash along the counter to match the shower design.
Finally in the basement, we transformed one of the most used rooms in the house--the laundry--from a dingy, linoleum-covered, bad sink, and no storage spot...
Into one of the funkier rooms with colorful new tile, a brighter paint scheme, storage racks, and a rocking stainless steel sink!
To be continued here.
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