Mini home makeover - coming soon!

20 years ago

Hi - some friend of ours our coming to stay for a week and help us out with the house. He's a contractor, she's an interior designer. We have a budget of ~$5000. Mostly it is going to be necessary repairs, but I hope to get some cosmetic improvement out of it too. I'm in the process of taking "before" photos with my little toy camera (I hope they come out!) and I will post the befores and afters. I'm so excited! Here is a list of what we plan to have done:

Replace downstairs entry door (frame is broken and it is an interior door.)

Replace bathroom door (folding plastic) with bi-fold or pocket door with privacy lock.

Repair ceiling where water leaked.

Remove nonfunctioning wood stove (this is in the very middle of a large room - total waste of space.)

Possibly replace windows near laundry room with french doors (make it much easier to hang things on the line, and the currently unused space will make a great kid's entrance/mud room.)

Install large window in attic playroom.

Replace crummy old vinyl in kitchen with???

Come up with plan to make deck usable (too scorching hot & windy)

Replace/improve lighting.

Probably do quite a bit of painting.

I have this crazy idea to replace the sliders in the living room (which open to the deck from hell) with a fireplace. At least I'll see if it would be possible!

We also have a dining room with what seems to me an impossible layout - it is a pass through to the galley kitchen, and quite narrow, so now we have the table almost up against the wall, and we can't sit across from each other while eating. I find this very annoying. My friends are very creative and fast workers - they do a lot of quick remodels on houses prior to selling, and will build furniture to fit the space. We may also have some built in bookshelves put in the living room (heaven.)

I'll let you know how it turns out! We've worked with them before (they helped fix up our old house before selling) and it worked out great.

What would you do if you could makeover your home?

Sort by:Oldest

Comments (6)

joyy
20 years ago
lucky you! :) i hope everything turns out well.

if i could make over this place, i'd update the bathroom. everything else in the house looks pretty good but the bathroom is really old. the tub is the original one.. so about 50 years old.. and it comes clean enough but is scratchy to sit in and really requires a lot of scrubbing to look white. the walls and ceiling are tile.. again, really dated looking stuff.

i'll try posting a picture (but i'm not sure how to do it, really).

anyway.. that's what i'd do.

Here is a link that might be useful:
angelcub
20 years ago
Your makeover sounds so exciting. I hope it all turns out well for you and yours. And we'll all understand if we don't hear from you for awhile afterward - sore muscles and all that. : )

Don't forget to take lots of pics!!!

Diana
Related Professionals
Barnstable Architects & Building Designers · New Bedford Architects & Building Designers · Grand Rapids Architects & Building Designers · Fargo Architects & Building Designers · Laconia Architects & Building Designers · Montréal Architects & Building Designers · Bronx Architects & Building Designers · Quincy Interior Designers & Decorators · Austin Interior Designers & Decorators · Chillicothe Interior Designers & Decorators · Amherst Interior Designers & Decorators · Brainerd Interior Designers & Decorators · Rochester Interior Designers & Decorators · Elmira Interior Designers & Decorators · Stockton Interior Designers & Decorators
sunrochy
20 years ago
Keep us updated!!!! When you can.
johnmari
20 years ago
Lucky postum to have such good friends! Looking forward to hearing the "postmortem" ;-) of the project.

What would I do if I could make over my house?

1) rearrange the walls upstairs to get rid of the "bowling alley" bedroom - one bedroom has 2) remove the bay window from the living room and replace it with a pair of plain windows like on the other side of {{!gwi}} (yes, I know we are in dire need of landscaping, it's on the list, along with a new front door, lighting and tearing off that listing side deck), put board and batten shutters on both sets of windows
3) upstairs bath from {{!gwi}} to {{!gwi}}; this would technically be the children's bath (if the house were used by a larger family) so a partial wet room concept makes a lot of sense. Linen closet in hallway.
4) kitchen goes from {{gwi:1524261}} to {{!gwi}}.
5) complete rearrangement of utility/laundry/powder room off kitchen, from {{!gwi}} to {{!gwi}}.
6) Remove ALL interior trim and replace with oak like in MBR.
7) Pipe dream: reside house in gray shingles with charcoal and white trim and purple accents
cecilia_md7a
20 years ago
joyy, I feel your pain! My house's one, tiny bathroom is laid out exactly like yours - it even has the window above the bathtub, which I can't stand. The only thing WORSE about our layout is that there is a hot-water radiator to the right of our sink that prevents us from adding a vanity (which would give us some much-needed storage space).

We plan on removing the tile and replacing the area around the bathtub with a tub surround and a shower door (the tub is in ok shape). The problem is that darn window! DH will have to measure and cut the surround in order to accomodate it!
miso
20 years ago
Cecilia,

When I remodeled my bathroom, I went ahead and took out the window. Yes, there's less light, but I always felt a little weird anyway with that window, even with the translucent glass. I just put in more lighting. Here's an idea - which I kind of wish I had done before - how above a transom above the tile surround? Or a row of glass block? I saw the transom in a home after I had finished tiling the bathroom. It still lets in plenty of light while giving you privacy, and you don't have to worry about water rotting out the window. It does require reframing for the window, which is why I didn't go back and do it. But you could probably still do it.

Amy