Day 80-90- From Stark to Stunning!!!!!!

Remember THIS house? The one I bought back on April 1st? It was cute. It had character. It was also rotting on one corner, had two layers of old siding, 3 layers of red roofs, a lack of gutters, a car port that was about to fall off by itself, ...and that was just the exterior problems! Yes, I will agree with most of you that I was insane. But I will also pat myself on the back and know that I did it. It is amazingly beautiful and I love every corner of it.

Especially my front door. :)

And all of you are welcome to come and knock on this amazing front door. You may be greeted by a big barking dog or two screaming children but I will show you house that I love and will explain the time and challenge that went into it (if you are interested) or we can just actually SIT on furniture and take a deep sigh that I did not invite you over to help me knock down a wall! :)

More Interior pictures to follow! (I promise)

Day ?-85- The 4 R's: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle & Retrofit

So I began with the first R- REDUCE the size of the 4th bedroom which increased the size of the kitchen and created a new hallway to the back yard. One of the reasons this house worked for me even though everyone thought I was insane was because it had a 4th bedroom...or as I saw it, an Office! In my previous house my office had always been open to the rest of the house- usually part of that second living/family room that no one uses for the proper purposes. Needless to say it is hard to get away from "work" when it is always staring at you. So essentially for this room I took at 12x14 bedroom and built within it a 9x9 office. It is small but cozy.

But with my change in plans to remove the side kitchen door and put in a new back door- kinda screwed up my office plans. It worked out great for my kitchen and I did have fun tearing down the wall...but now the shelf I was planning on using in there to hold all of my work library was now not going to fit...but I did have a great niche for built-ins...but that just meant more money being spent. boo.
My new office entrance is shown above (which eventually got a pocket door).
Here is the new built-in shelf niche below:
I wasn't sure how I was going to do the shelves but I had put my dad in charge of taking down the closet bi-fold doors in my bedroom and he had a brilliant REUSE idea...Can we reuse these bi-fold doors as shelves? And this is the reason I surround myself with smart people. And so we did!! We RECYCLED the doors as shelves and RETROFITTED them to fit within the niche.
They look pretty sweet and are now filled top to bottom with books...I even had to add more. And nobody can even tell they use to be doors, it is pretty sweet. Pictures to follow!