If Nick were writing this he would talk about the live wires dangling in the attic, or that one wire that never went dead even after cutting the electric to the house. He might talk about the sewer to the toilet venting in to the wall directly behind it or the sewer line that aimed up instead of down causing a blockage that broke the pipe and leaked all over the ground. He has a long list of whose its and what's its to go with this house because honestly, old houses... and especially old neglected houses are more than likely held together with previous owner's inexperience, corner cutting and a little duct tape. However, he isn't writing this and while I was there assisting with most of the fiascos (but thankfully not the day he was shoveling feces off the ground) these things were not my department. I was in charge of deciding to remove bulkheads not the actual removal and the fact that it hid copious amounts of rat feces meant little to me. I was the one that decided to paint and repair the knotty pine ceiling in what I decided would be the new master bedroom... the actual removal and patching of the ELEVEN outlets that were in the ceiling did not fall under my jurisdiction. So this is written from my perspective and about the issues that interest me and the why's to the decisions made. It will also discuss one of the things I am most interested in... buying second hand- starting with the house itself.
It is a post war Tudor Cottage built in 1940. Dilapidated and neglected, it was well on its way to becoming condemned. The house sat for over a year, crumbling in tiny Bonham, Texas. I decided to buy in Bonham because 1. Houses were very cheap there 2. They have more people than they do homes and 3. Correctly or incorrectly, they are preparing for a population boom.  My husband wanted a tiny house, maybe 2 bedrooms, no more that 1,200 square feet. This monstrosity is 2,451 square feet with 4 bedrooms and 2 baths. To me, it was oozing potential and possibility. To him, it's sole potentiality was to ooze money like a sieve.
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The house was a foreclosure and as such we took it as is. There was no negotiating on repairs and there was very little negotiation on price. We bought it for for under $50,000. Nick looked the entire place over making general notes of things that needed repair and updating. He didn't check the water meter, however, and that became our first lesson in self home inspections. So while he was doing his preliminary look around the house, before we bought it, he was blissfully unaware of the impending month long search that would result in a pipe being broken in the slab.
It took us two years to complete this house. In all fairness, Nick did suffer a labrum tear in his left shoulder from lifting a cast iron pipe out of the wall. (Which basically means that his shoulder was constantly dislocating.) This not only slowed his progress on the house but ultimately ended up in a surgery that required a couple of months of downtime. On top of that, I had a run in with a copperhead that brought things to a screeching halt again for a period. So, as my husband readily complains, I lack the ability to gauge how long any task will take to complete; be it hanging a picture or completely renovating a 2,451 square foot house. I remember telling him, right after purchasing it, that we had 3 months to get it done and get it on the market. I was serious. Of course, I didn't factor in injuries or the plumbing and electrical issues that were hidden in the walls and floors prior to making the statement or I may have been fairly spot on. Nick can't convince me otherwise.
BEFORE AND AFTER OF THE FRONT ENTRANCE:
There was a cute little wrought iron fence around the front porch that couldn't be seen because it was painted purple to match the house's trim. I painted that black and removed the mailbox that had been tied to the fencing on the right side of the door. We started with the front entrance for a myriad of reasons but the main reason was: every time I approached that worn down horrid entrance I questioned whether or not we made the right decision buying the house in the first place... and then I would start to hyperventilate and a day would be lost to me breathing in and out of a paper sack trying to find my happy space in a frozen cave with a penguin saying, "slide".
BEFORE AND AFTER OF THE LIVING ROOM:
The house suffered a lot of damage from the three Great Pyrenees that had lived there; the front door seemed to take the brunt of it. In the nearly 80 years since the house had been built it had never been sheetrocked. The walls were covered in thin fake wood paneling and the ceilings were covered in styrofoam tiles. Removing the ceiling tiles required that each one be pulled down and then the remaining 10 zillion staples that were left in the shiplap had to be hammered in before sheetrock could be hung. Thank goodness we have children.
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My personal home is over 100 years old. One day my daughter asked if the sheetrock on the ceiling was 100 years old too. I had the opportunity to explain, to my teenager who is not interested in historic homes at all, that the entire house was shiplap and that the ceilings would have just been shiplap. When she proclaimed that to be ugly I went on to inform her that people of that era would have thought so too so they would cover the entire ceiling, with wall paper. You can imagine my joy when just two days later, while removing the acoustic tiles I revealed old green wall paper. You can imagine the further joy I experienced when I got to explain about Scheele's Green. She was unimpressed.
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BEFORE AND AFTER OF THE DINING ROOM:
The original gold chandelier was completely made of plastic. There was also a heinous ceiling medallion above it that boasted an image of several frolicking cherubs. I replaced it with a vintage brass and crystal fixture that I found at a garage sale for $10. I am not a fan of brass so I spray painted it an antique silver. It has since been explained to me that brass is back in fashion. I don't care. I hate brass.
The dining room is not off of the kitchen and it really bothered me that I couldn't fix that fact. It also bothered me that the room seemed to just fade into nothingness being situated there. In order to resolve that issue, in my eyes, it needed to have a presence. So my solution was board and batten. It ended up costing about $100 and one huge argument/ fight with Nick over lines and placement but I feel it was all very much worth it. On top of that, we closed up a doorway that led into bedroom #2 and added french doors that I bought off of Facebook Marketplace for $35.
BEFORE AND AFTER OF THE KITCHEN:
The gas stove was bought off of Craigslist for $150. The microwave came from Habitat for Humanity ReStore for $50 and the dishwasher I talked a really nice Jamaican man, named Brian, down to $40 at his garage sale. The fridge came off of FB marketplace for $150. I would have rather paid more and cleaned less with it though. I chose to do everything in white because the kitchen was white and stainless seemed like it would be too garish. Plus, it was cheaper. The countertops are concrete. This was Nick's first attempt to ever do them and they came out perfectly and only cost $300 total compared to $1000+ for granite. So, shout out to YouTube videos. The flooring came to about $700 with grout and adhesive but the kitchen is really, really big and we had enough to do the laundry room, sunroom, and master closet as well. The 16"x16" tiles came from ReStore and were only $1.50 a square foot so they were still pretty cheap but gave a huge impact especially with the brick pattern. Lastly the sink is a super deep farmhouse type sink. We stopped by a salvage yard in Dallas and got it and a light I used in the hall bath for $100.
Structurally, we opened up the stairs and closed off a doorway that led into what was to be the new master bedroom. (I am not certain what the room was used for before but clearly some sort of command center because there were 11 wall type outlets in the ceiling.) I was forced to leave the area where the sink counter meets the wall because it had a electrical junction box attached to it and I was informed, by my nay saying husband, that it would be a lot of work to move it. I did a fair amount of exasperated sighing over that but in the end I decided it would make a nice walk in pantry.
BEFORE AND AFTER OF THE STAIRWAY:
The house had a really bad flow. The main problem being, if you look at that very first picture of the kitchen, that doorway entered into what was to be the master bedroom. Now, if you look at the first picture of the stairs you can see that there is a solid wall to the right of the stairway. In the second picture we opened that wall up to make a new master entrance that aligned with all of the other bedroom doors. It wasn't an easy task because the bedroom is actually another few feet to the right of that door.
I knew when we bought the house that the stairway was an issue. The steps were extremely narrow and that feeling was exacerbated by it being completely closed in, including an odd door to the entrance. With that said, the door stood only 5 feet high. While I know you are probably hung up on a door being in the middle of the stairs math this out- with a 5 foot clearing how far do you think you need to duck down to not bump your head while going down the stairs? We had no choice but to remove that door and raise the ceiling height. It was solved by slanting the ceiling up at the steps and then I took that door and put it on the utility closet next to it.
We also chose to lower the entire ceiling to match the bulkhead in the hallway that hid the duct work.
This is the inspiration photo I used for the stairs. It was difficult for me to grasp where to start and stop the lines so Pinterest became my best friend. I think we NAILED IT.
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BEFORE AND AFTER OF BEDROOM #1 (FORMER MASTER):
The closet in this picture became the entrance to the new master bedroom. We walled both it and the bathroom up to make a master suite. We built a new closet in the room and moved a set of shelves from the laundry room into the bedroom to look like built ins that had always been there. I use the word we a lot there... we in most cases means I thought up the idea and Nick implemented it.
And here is a picture of Nick sanding the floor in this room for good measure. I did the edges and most of the staining and poly. My accomplishment here pales to the fact that Nick sanded the floor while he was still suffering from the labrum tear.
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BEFORE AND AFTER OF BEDROOM 2:
This room lost a doorway that entered from the dining room. Oddly, the only lightswitch to this room wasn't with the hall doorway but with that dining room entrance. I also stole the original two panel closet door from this room and put it in the dining room. The house didn't have many doors left in it when we bought it and so I had to replace most with new Home Depot doors. It was nice to be able to at the least keep the dining looking age appropriate.
This is also the room that I found this in:
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It's one of those things that you try not to think too much about. You just cover it with sheetrock and promise yourself to perform an exorcism before attempting to sell the place.
Along those same lines, when we (Nick) were digging holes to put the fence posts in we dug up this:
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I was convinced it was a baby and I owned a house of horrors. Nick was for just reburying it and calling it done but I insisted that we open it up. We started at the legs...
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BEFORE AND AFTER OF THE SUNROOM:
The only thing we did not touch in this entire house was the ceiling in this room. It is beadboard and the white paint looked fresh. I did reuse a dated ceiling fan from another room in here. I spray painted the shiny bright brass and horrid faux wood blades in a flat white and replaced the 70s tan glass globes with new frosted ones for 50 cents each.
BEFORE AND AFTER OF THE MASTER SUITE:
This is a little confusing to explain. I had to make an entry into this room from the hallway. Its previous entrance was in the kitchen. I rerouted it to go through a closet in bedroom #1 and part of a bathroom. So the new entrance requires you to take two steps in to a new hallway then to turn right two steps. It feels natural and like part of the original house but you can definitely still tell that it is an add on.
MASTER BATH:
Your eyes are not playing tricks on you. That toilet was directly against the wall.
It literally took 2 days to decide on the placement of that floor tile. Firstly, nothing in old houses is "level or plumb". Secondly, I knew I wanted the tiles to look seamless going into the shower and over the threshold. It took a little bit to get it all dry fit to our liking. I used stacked square white tiles with white grout in the shower because I wanted as little contrast with that busy floor as possible.
This was a jack and jill bathroom. It had a doors going straight across. One came from Bedroom #1 (old master) and another from the new master (old command center). We sealed up both of those doors and reworked it so you entered from the new master hall. I took the sink out and repurposed it at my house as a working sink in my yard.
I reused the knotty pine from the new master bedroom to panel this bathroom just because I didn't want to throw out the wood and I hoped it added a little character to an otherwise tiny box. The light fixture came from a garage sale for a couple of dollars and the glass for the fixture came from Goodwill for 50 cents each. The mirror was another salvaged item and it rang in at $3.
NEW MASTER BEDROOM:
The door to the right is a laundry room with its own private entrance. The door on the left is a large master walk in closet. The closet was originally in the laundry room so we sealed up that door and cut in a new one inside the master. In the before picture you can also see part of the door that led in to the kitchen originally.
We tore out all of the knotty pine on the walls and reused it to patch the ceiling (from all of the electrical outlets) and put paneling in the bathroom. It took SEVEN coats of primer and paint to cover that wood; that is just how evil 1970s varnish is.
Nick also made this, for our house, out of the knotty pine crown moulding from that room and left over shiplap:
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Door to the left, leading in to the kitchen was sealed up and the door on the right, which led into the bathroom, was moved over about a foot because we turned that space into a private master hallway.
MASTER FLOORING:
That picture shows off my cheap flooring idea. Because I didn't want to spend the money to lay new hardwood and because I loathe both laminate and carpet fairly equally, I came up with the idea of cutting plywood sheets in to two by two foot squares and we used the wood grain to make a checkerboard pattern. I loved the end result.
BEFORE AND AFTER OF THE LAUNDRY ROOM:
We removed the disgusting water damaged and rotting closet that held the water heater. To explain how horrible the inside of that closet was- one morning we came into a mud covered interior. Every window was coated in muddy paw smeared smudges.
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My only assumption would be that a raccoon fell through the ceiling above the water heater. I have no clue how he got out but like I said, that was early in the renovation so I am fairly certain I would have run across it at some point if it were still trapped in the house.
BEFORE AND AFTER OF THE MASTER CLOSET:
It originally opened into the laundry room so there was a doorway on the right. The other three sides had the shelving units. With much work we managed to salvage the shelves we took out to put in the new doorway and rebuilt them in bedroom #1. Another clothes bar or a top shelf could be added on the right but I didn't see the point of spending any more money in this area.
BEFORE AND AFTER OF THE GUEST BATH:
The plastic tub surround and bulkhead were ripped out which allowed the full frame of the window to show. I spent four hours scraping and sanding peeling paint off of that window. We used square tiles for the new bath in a brick pattern with dark gray grout. The square tiles are cheaper than the rectangles and give a similar subway tile appearance.
We reused all of the slats of wood from the paneling to make birdhouses.
I know you will have the desire to call that sitting area in the cove a vanity but it's a desk at best.
I replaced it with a dresser that I held on to after I closed my resale shop. The best part of owning a resale shop is that people will bring things TO YOU to buy. A couple was cleaning out a garage and sold me this antique piece for $15. The handles came from another piece I refurbished and the mirror was $4 from a garage sale. All the towel/ toilet paper accessories for the house came from an online auction for $7. Behind the sink I left the shiplap exposed. I love shiplap but I am not a huge fan of designing a house around current trends. The idea of having a house full of exposed shiplap will pass and people will be wanting to cover it up eventually. This wall was a small space with an inside wall (so I didn't worry about insulation issues) so when a friend begged me to leave some exposed in this house, I felt safe doing it there.
BEFORE AND AFTER OF THE UPSTAIRS HALLWAY:
Let me just go ahead and say this, "yes, yes, that is styrofoam on the walls."
BEFORE AND AFTER OF BEDROOM 3:Â
A teenage boy had this room at some point, without doubt. With every ceiling tile I tore off 10 BBs would rain down on me. There were so many that with my final sweep of the upstairs, before putting the house on the market, I still managed to find some of the ball bearings.
BEFORE AND AFTER OF THE BONUS ROOM:
All those platforms on the floor are enclosing the duct work. With a door space that was approximately three feet tall only hobbits were capable of entering it. Ironically, the lightswitch was located in the ceiling so if you were small enough to squeeze into the room you were too short to turn on the light. Thankfully, we managed to squeeze out space for a full size door.
Raccoons were not the only creatures coming into the house. I insisted that we leave the the fascia boards unrepaired for a long time because there were bird nests and squirrels and I didn't want to chance sealing them into the attic. I learned my lesson though when I went to check the drawers in this room and a squirrel leaped at my face. I screamed, Nick opened a window, and the squirrel jumped from the second story to the ground. When I looked in the drawer again I found these (she did eventually come back for them and we sealed up all the holes a few months later).
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BEFORE AND AFTER OF THE EXTERIOR:
The outside of the house was rotting. We replaced much of the wood and many broken windows. We scraped paint and trimmed up trees. The only things we hired out were the roof and an electrician to pull permits and check over Nick's work. This house was truly a labor of love and when I would walk in it felt like home.
For all of the interior paint choices I used "oops" paint that I purchased at both Lowes or Home Depot. Buying the mis-tints saves a lot of money and I would buy gallons of similar colors and then just mix them together in a five gallon bucket. The exterior paint was different though. I knew I wanted a color that showed as both a tan and a gray. I feel I succeed with Silver Birch by Glidden. My daughter hates the fact that I painted the brick (It is only a chimney facade, the house doesn't have a fireplace) but I don't see how there was any other choice. I left the small area around the front door painted white. It is a barely noticeable difference but I wanted all the help possible in drawing the eye to that amazing front door.
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To sell it, we decided to tackle that project on our own as well. About a month prior to completion I had a soft opening for the property. I put a sign in the yard with a tube of flyers.
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I also listed it on Zillow. After about a month we had shown it about 30 times and had great praise and feedback from 30 sets of people. One of which was the original listing agent for the home. She mentioned having sold this house 3 times before and said, "this is how the house should have alway been." After no firm offers came in, I found a realtor willing to charge a one time fee to list it on the MLS. We had a contract 2 weeks later.
Looking back on the pictures I am amazed at both all of the work we put in and the bravery we showed in taking on such a massive first project. Nick does home repair for a living and together we have renovated rooms but a renovation of this scale was a first for us both. I am fortunate to have someone that I get along with so well and most of our arguments centered around my interchanging the word "straight" for both the words plumb and level. Since remodeling uses those words every other sentence I feel he had plenty of opportunities to adjust his definition and was being stubborn. When I complained that I didn't feel the fence line from the house to the corner was "straight" we bickered over all lines being straight and I needed to learn the correct terminology but he understood well enough to whip out some sort of Pythagorean Theorem madness.