Wow. Tim and I are coming up on the one year anniversary of purchasing our first house and starting our first ever, gut renovation. I cannot believe how fast time flies! I would've never imagined that I'd take this long to share photos. But, to be quite honest, the whole home purchase, renovation thing has been sort of a roller-coaster for us. I mean, don't get me wrong, I'm really happy that we were in a position to be able to do this, but I don't think we could have done a better job at under-estimating the amount of money, work and time it actually takes to not just own a house, but also design, plan, manage and implement a gut renovation (while also living there, eek!). It's pretty much insane, especially when we both work full time, 9-5 office jobs and have huge personal career ambitions and business plans.
I'm being totally honest here, because I think it's important to share that these things aren't just a piece of cake, and they DON'T happen overnight. It's a major commitment that requires a lot of work and oversight. Our one year mark is May 22nd, and we're about 70% done with the entire renovation. You wouldn't believe how happy I am to finally be at the point where I can share "after" photos. Huge sigh of relief!
As you can probably tell by the photos, this house needed A LOT of work. Like a lot, a lot. It was built in 1972 as a very small 2/2 and then renovated in the early 90's to reconfigure the bedrooms, install a new roof, add a couple skylights and open up the kitchen. Other than that, nothing else had been touched since the late 70's. So, we decided to completely re-do all the electric, plumbing, flooring, lighting, ceilings (they were popcorn!), replace the kitchen and both bathrooms, and move the laundry room from inside the guest room into a large, vacant closet - all within a $30,000 budget... Crazy, I know.
We took out an FHA 203k mortgage, instead of a traditional one, so we could have money up front to do the repairs. It was a very interesting process, but it worked out pretty well. Once we had the mortgage squared away, we started construction planning. The kitchen was extremely dated, the appliances weren't all working properly and there was mold growing under the sink, so we knew the whole thing would have to go. Plus, we wanted to re-configure the layout to have better counter space and fit a normal sized sink and dishwasher.
The Dinning Room, Living Room and Kitchen are all open to each other, in one major space. They basically each have their own quadrant. When we moved in, there was no light in the dinning area and there was a very gross trench/hole in the back of the closet (more on that later).
The living room was no where near as rough as some of the other rooms. So we didn't have much to fix there, just paint, lighting, ceiling fan, trim and flooring
Since the house was built a long time ago, and has seen another renovation, there is a giant, awkward room in the middle, on the other side of the kitchen wall. Apparently, at one point, it was the master bedroom, but we decided that we would make it in to an office/library/den space. It was covered in gnarly, 1970's faux paneling, so we had to remove all that, re-do the electric, and have new walls put in. There was also a huge, random, empty closet that we decided to turn into our laundry room.
Out of all the rooms in the house, I think the guest bath was my least favorite. Like the den, it was covered in faux paneling and had such a horrible layout that you could barley fit one person in there at a time. We made a lot of changes to this room. It was completely gutted, all the way down to the dirt!
When you walk from the kitchen, through the den, you end up in a little mudroom with a door that leads out to the driveway and garage. Off that mudroom, is the guest bedroom. The guest room was pretty simple, but also had some weird things going on. First, you entered the room through bi-folding closet doors (?!). Then once you were in there, for some other weird reason, which I will never understand, the washer and dryer were there!
In a random closet!! So odd. We knew that we had to change that too, so we decided to move it to the giant, empty den closet.
There is a small hallway off the Dinning/Living room area that leads to the master bedroom and bathroom. When we moved in, the bathroom was only accessible from this hallway, so we decided to make it a real master bath by closing off that entrance, and making a new one from inside our room. We made a bunch of other changes too. We basically re-built the entire thing after gutting it down to the dirt, like the other bathroom and kitchen.
Thank goodness the Master Bedroom was the nicest room in the house pre-renovation, because it became our haven. We split the interior renovation into two stages, so when the otherside of the house was being gutted and re-built, this was our hideaway. And, although it is so much nicer and cleaner now, compared to everything else, it wasn't so bad for a few months.
The house is very long and narrow (like the lot!), so we basically have no backyard, just a 5 foot ally behind the house. The front yard and side yard are pretty big though. To the left of the house is a cute little, one car garage. We also have 3 patios! One screened in off the den, one with a pergola off the Master Bedroom and one, uncovered off the Living Room. The exterior is what we're working on right now (the other 30% of the reno!) and we have some very exciting plans!
I'm going to post our interior "after" photos on here over the next 8 weeks or so, along with some exterior shots as we finish the outside.
Sorry for all the ugly photos and lengthy commentary! But this is what my life has been for the past year and it's only fitting that I share it on here, with anyone else that still reads this blog... haha.
You can follow me on instagram for more photos of the process, and on pinterest to see my 'Mayfield House' inspiration!
Thanks for reading! I can't wait to post more pictures!
- Mary
May 13, 2013 
