As so often happens, we do not take advantage of these little nooks and crannies in a home.. but not this time.

You can see in the before picture that there was a homemade ladder to the attic. When we added the stairs, adding in this book shelf gave the room a little bit more character.

This was the first bathroom I had ever done completely on my own. There definitely was room for improvement but luckily the buyer was not aware of that. As much as we strive for perfection, sometimes we need to let what we did today be good enough.

This is one of those bathrooms that was so easy and only took a couple days to complete, but in the end was most visitors favorite. I think the bright, natural lighting combined with the contrasting black and white color motif appeals to the masses sense of cleanliness and organization.    Then I topped it off by accessorizing with a  pop of color. It just screams fresh as you walk in. 

I have a bad habit of not posting the house as it use to be. This is partly due to the fact that it was not so pretty and it makes my pretty pages look ugly. But that is not the only reason, when I look at the before picture I tend to groan inside at the amount of work that went into making these homes shine again. I know I should embrace the changes and forget about the heartache and headache, but in any project there will always be a bit of both of these.

This is a subject that no matter how many times I tell my GC that we are refinishing the ORIGINAL hardwood floors, he always tries to convince me otherwise. "It would be so much easier and cheaper to replace them with new flooring". Shaking my head. These are original 1946 white oak hardwood floors. This House had them downstairs AND upstairs. White oak is really hard to come by these days and NOT cheap. I love my high heels, never mind I am just shy of 6 feet tall, I still love fancy slip on heels. I do not have to worry about my heels making holes in these floors... because they are WHITE OAK! These floors have lasted all these years.  They have been exposed to the elements. This home was wide open to rain storms, hurricanes, and every animal out there. I'm keeping these floors. When there are boards that need to be replaced we carefully feather in a piece of red oak from the local hardware store.. with a talented floor guy, you would never know which ones were replaced.

Barn doors are all the rage these days. I love them in the right situation. In the home in the upper picture, I used the barn door as a pantry door. The door paint matches the island paint. The space under the stairs was the perfect amount of space needed for a large walk in pantry. Something you will rarely see in a home of this age.

In the lower picture I used a standard door on a sliding rail as a bathroom door in the master bedroom.

In one of my blogs I talked about a special home renovation purchase loan, well here is an example of one of the smaller versions. This is a Fannie Mae 203k streamline renovation loan. This was an entire 2200 square foot home that was given a facelift for $27,000. The lender added the cost of the facelift to the purchase price of the home, so there were no additional costs out of pocket.. The best part about this one was it was my little sister's home! I had so much fun planning it with her and seeing how happy she was with the final results. Sometimes when you have a certain area you really want to live in but your budget does not support the price of the pretty homes in that area, you have to get creative.. 

I have been asked what all is Included in the $27,000 that it required to completely change this home. So here is the list:

*Complete demolition of all tile, and carpet and counters in the entire home.

*Manufactured hand-carved wood floors(not laminate!) in the entire downstairs excluding the laundry room and half bath but... including the kitchen.

*Granite in the kitchen and 3 bathrooms.

*New tile in the 3 bathrooms and the laundry room.

*New carpet on the stairway and the entire upstairs (master bed, 2 secondary bedrooms and the game room).

*Stairway wall was removed and replaced with rails and baluster.

*office was converted to a bedroom, added a closet and framed in doorway, and added french doors.

*New sinks, faucets, and toilets in the entire home. (4 bathroom sinks (master is a double) and one kitchen sink).

*Refinished all the cabinets in the kitchen and two baths, replaced the cabinet in the half bath. 

*Painted interior of the entire home.

You like it? I made it. I needed a table in the dining room of this renovated farm home in order for buyers to see how big the dining room really is. I did not want to go out and buy a table just for staging, so I decided to make one. The legs are made from cast iron plumbing and the table top is pine boards that I distressed with a blow torch and nails and stain. Easy. Took me 2 hours to make and cheap. Now where am I going to store it when this house sells?? hmmm. 

This lovely young couple approached me one day as I was working on a remodel down the street from them. They had a toddler at home and one on the way and they needed to look at possibly selling their home and buying something bigger, as a 1300 sqft 2 bedroom home was not going to work anymore.  We did some looking around and could not find what they were looking for in their price range.  So I said to them, why don't we just add on to your current home, for less than you would spend on another home, and save you the cost of selling the one you have.  So that is what we did.  They moved out for 6 months, and we took the roof off of their existing home and we added an entire 2nd story on. The new addition gave them 1300 extra sqft and includes two bedrooms with walk in closets, one large bathroom, a laundry room, a family room and an open loft style study.