Feature Friday: Playing Sublimely

There’s nothing I love better than a beautiful remodel with great Before and After pics and when I saw what my new friend, Amy, with Playing Sublimely has been up to in her refurbished 1960′s home, I just had to share with all of you too.

I’m going to start a new series called Feature Friday and periodically bring a renovation or makeover to you, when I find some outstanding work out there in the blogosphere, so I hope you’ll enjoy these features. It may not be every Friday, but that will be my timeframe for highlighting something special.

I’ll let Amy tell you all about her story:

We were finally settled. My husband (the cute carpenter) and I had just completed renovating a darling ranch when we came across this house.

BEFORE:

It was intriguing to us right away because of its location. The owners should have been asking a lot more money for the house than they were, so we gave into our curiosity and scheduled a walk through. Within the week, we were making a very low offer on a house that was already priced low, just to see what would happen. We remember our realtor saying that it was insulting to offer so low, but we talked her into it and that same night she called to say they had accepted our offer. Wow! Starting over was what we were about to do.

This renovation has taken us over three years to complete. We did much of the work ourselves and we shopped prices long before we made purchases. We were not afraid to tear out walls and we were willing to live in chaos… and there was a lot of chaos. There were times when we were climbing ladders to get to our second story, there were times I had 15 different decorative finishes on a wall in a room where I was experimenting, there was always drywall dust settling onto some surface in our home, and there were times when my seven month pregnant self was carrying to a dump truck chunks of concrete and tile that my husband was jack hammering out of the foyer. Yep, there were times of chaos, a lot of blood, sweat and tears. But we saved a lot of money doing it ourselves and we learned a lot about what can be accomplished, and of course what should simply never be attempted again.

Here are a few of our favorite transformations. I hope you find something that will inspire you!

The outside of this house was a challenge. My husband had vision, I had my doubts, but when it came down to it, it was essentially a brick box. He said “we can work with a brick box”. And so over the next few years, we slowly started making changes. First we bricked in the paneling between all the windows, took the roof off half the house to go up with a playroom addition, and then we added dormers. Next we painted the entire thing (when in doubt, paint the brick) huge difference! The big window needed to go and new eBay bought doors were installed (we paid less than cost for the doors). We heart eBay.

AFTER:

A home seems more charming to me with some kind of a porch. The cute carpenter designed this portico from one that he had seen and liked in a magazine. We had leftover hardwoods from the inside of the house that he installed on the ceiling of the portico.

It wasn’t enough material to do anything else with and we didn’t want it to go to waste. Though the house was a thousand times more attractive on the outside, it needed a little more. It was screaming for some shutters. Have you ever checked the cost of wood shutters? They are outrageous, so we built our own. The finishing touch were window boxes that my man built with his own two hands, and let me just tell you they are good looking hands…I mean window boxes.

Oh to remodel a kitchen!  It is a hard room to live without, especially when you have kids.

These before and after pictures speak for themselves and there are so many details in here that I love!

We gutted this kitchen ourselves, and we did so 5 months before moving into the new one.  It was a long 5 months!

The master bathroom was the last room we remodeled.  We knew it would be one of the more expensive projects and we also knew we could live without it for awhile.  But let me just say it was so worth the wait!

My cute carpenter spent hour after hour on www.floorplanner.com planning the layout of this bathroom.

It is a relatively small space, and we had a lot that we wanted to squeeze in.  Though it is not overly spacious, it has everything we need (and some things that we just did not need) in this bathroom.

My husband put a lot of thought into the strategic placing of that TV you see in there.

Seriously, was that really necessary?!?  The bathroom is a beautiful space and we are really enjoying it.

On to my little girls’ room, though the wallpaper was clearly dated, I actually kind of liked it. It had charm. It wasn’t charming enough for me not to rip down, but it did have some personality.

This room has 2 closets, and that was great because I have two girls.

The cute carpenter built me cornice boards for over their bed and thus birthed this small bit of little girl heaven.

The cute carpenter made a few more cornice boards for me, I glazed them with gold paint, and hung my green silk panels inside. I like this picture because you see none of the imperfections that these window treatments are made of.

Just because I couldn’t stand to leave this one out, here’s Amy’s refurbished foyer and stairway.  Can you believe the difference in this??

You will have to read the entire story behind this remodel to believe it.  Amy and her cute carpenter hubby have done wonders with this house, don’t you agree? 

Did you find some inspiration?  There are a lot more rooms in my tour.  If you would like to come and see them, I would be honored by your visit.  Come visit me at Playing Sublimely and click on My House Tour in the left hand column to see the whole thing.

Amy, thank you SO much for joining my Feature Friday today.  I know all of my readers enjoyed the tour and your house just deserves to be shown off.  Please go over and visit Amy and get acquainted with her too.  What a journey she has been a part of these last few years.

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