I know this post has been a long time coming...like almost 3 months coming. To recap back in September we looked at a house on a whim and we fell hard for it. Its a 40 year old brick colonial-just our style. We had a must have list for moving and this house had everything on our list but a 3 car garage or the great master bathroom we wanted. But it does have 4 big bedrooms, 5 bathrooms, a screened in porch, a large flat driveway with a side entrance garage, huge deck, a playroom, finished basement and a big kitchen. We more than doubled our square feet which we desperately needed. But it needed work-lots of work. It didn't have the original kitchen or bathrooms but they were/are a good 30+ years old. And the wallpaper oh the wallpaper. We joke that we are surprised the previous owners didn't wallpaper the closets. I mean every square inch except the family room has wallpaper or painted over wallpaper. I think the count is 19 different wallpaper designs were in the house on the day we closed. I can happily say we are down to 5 wallpaper designs as of today. The owner gave us the house about 10 days before we actually closed which was great. So we got to come in and start cleaning, stripping wallpaper, painting and moving stuff in. We looked at our budget and decided what our absolute must haves were and the kitchen was top of the list. It had a tiny 25" double oven from the 70's, a nasty dishwasher that I refused to use and really old electric cook top. Not to mention the floral wallpaper, hideous light fixtures, lack of a microwave, awful nasty dirty shelf liner and formica counter tops. Here are the pictures from the listing-I failed at taking a lot of before pictures in the craziness of buying, selling and renovating all in under 33 days.
So we started in the kitchen...
The good news about the kitchen was that the custom cabinets were in good shape and painted the color of the trim. I've never been a fan of white cabinets but there is a huge difference to me in painted white (more off white in this case) cabinets versus "Home Depot" white cabinets. This leaves endless options for them as the years pass. Our contractor had to build a whole new cabinet to house our new 27" oven and second oven/microwave (yes its both-who knew they made these!). He did an amazing job and our new appliances look awesome! We lucked out and got to start using our awesome fridge from our house in Pittsburgh that had been our beer fridge in the garage on Delmar (it wouldn't fit in the kitchen on Delmar). We picked a gray/tan exotic granite which I love that I can use cool or warm colors as years go by. We extended the granite so we could have a breakfast bar. I wanted to be able to have the kids sitting there while we cooked meals for convince sake. We switched out the lighting and painted the pantry & walls a warm gray. Got a new sink, faucet and water filtration system (so we don't need the brita for bottles anymore!).
Once we started the kitchen we started looking at the half bath off the kitchen and realized it needed a face lift too. It was original and needed a new sink & toilet. The wallpaper also needed to be stripped. While it looked kind of keltic to me which this Irish girl loves it made the room so dark. So we added that to the to do list too.
As I started stripping the walls we ran into the same problem we had in the kitchen-when the house was built most of the walls were never prepped or painted they were just wallpapered over the raw drywall so they all had to be skimmed professionally before I could even think about painting them. This bathroom also has a very bazaar feature...a huge build in cabinet. I have no idea who thought that was a great idea instead of making that dead space into a linen closet. So weird. I'm still struggling at what to fill those shelves with! It's amazing what paint, a new toilet, sink & mirror can so for a room!
I will leave it at that for now but will post many more makeover pictures soon! We've been busy making this house our home and have lots more to share!
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