If there’s a way to show MLS photos that can’t reveal our address, I don’t know about it, but I wanted to show you a bit of the before vibe of our house. It had belonged to a family for a very long time and then fell into disrepair and neglect as it was rented out and later used as a halfway home. So I made a little inspiration board, if you will, to show you what we were dealing with.
What sold us on this house was the property (my husband) and the light (me). You probably can’t tell, but the house just had a good feeling about it, despite the cosmetic and other problems. From a decor standpoint, it had a bad 70’s look and was really dirty and outdated. It needed serious plumbing & heating work and the pool was an unknown entity since it was impossible to see the condition of the plaster due to the color of the water. But aside from these things, it felt spacious, had spectacular light and tons of possibility. I said yes to this new project, two years after redoing our previous house.
To start, we redid the hall bathroom, which was a narrow and cramped space with disgusting old fixtures. We had all of the walls and ceilings refinished to smooth and light fixtures replaced. We removed all the wood paneling and sorted out the mold, heating and plumbing issues. We had the pool drained and acid washed- thankfully there were no major issues. Here are a few pictures of parts of the house after we finished the first phase of our renovations:
With all of these changes, the house became a comfortable and light-filled family home and we turned our attention mostly to the outside for the next couple of years. We added solar and did very basic landscaping out front, mostly mulch to control the weeds. We got a bunch of pets and started a garden, and last year, began planning to redo the pool area and our bedroom and attached bathroom, which was pretty much unusable due to the shower floor leaking.