This Old House

All those rooms… and what to do?! Remember I was writing about our house-turned-home and all the destruction it took to get there? Well, here is installment #3! The office, hallways and basement.

So there’s that pesky hideous pink paint, and beige baseboards, and lots of TLC needed to give the spare room some love… make it an office and not a blank canvas. So… we splashed it up! Using bright yellow (inspiring color) and lots of shelving, the office houses about 1/2 of our book collection, as well as our space to play, surf and write at our His and Hers computer desks.

Dave hung some awesome shelves above my nook, to give me a place to showcase my favorite pictures and mementos, and above his is a board with even more of my favorite pictures 🙂 He’s so generous to share his space with my photography addiction. The key to our office space is giving both of us space of our own, as well as a place for our extra things- like books and pictures. This room is also easy to convert, which we are hoping to do in the next year for baby #2. (Keep following the house blogs to see the Breezeway, which is where the office will be relocated to.)

Next up? The hallways. When you first walk into someone’s home, you evaluate. You can see pictures of family, or a lit candle. Maybe evidence of kids or pets. When you first walked into our disaster house, it looked like the movie set to a B-rated horror movie. No really… check out these before and afters:

Wood paneling offers walls great texture, but the wood color is very dated. We chose to keep the paneling and paint it a modern neutral (Teepee from BEHR), and carry the color all the way throughout the halls in the upstairs, as well. As the pictures show, there were a lot of paint issues, so we chose to drywall over the existing stucco-mess ceilings and paint them the same color as the rest of our home’s ceilings and mouldings, Swiss Coffee. The modern but neutral colors, were a great combination to brighten up our little home and give it the warmth it was so desperately lacking.

We replaced all the wiring and plumbing in the house, so naturally all of the fixtures needed updating, as well. We added lighting with frosted glass in the halls, and gave the upstairs light a switch at the top and bottom of the stairs- a safety feature for late at night! All the hardwoods were refinished in the halls and stairs, as well, which reinstated their natural color and shine- truly giving life to our 1929 craftsman home.

Finally… we attacked the basement. It’s got a lot of functions now, but when we moved in, it was just a place that was once a litterbox (true story) and a place where dreams went to die. It was horrifying.

With a lot of work, Drylok, my father-in-law’s carpentry skills and lots of love and time and effort and maybe some tears and a few beers and some other adjectives and expletives that may or my not be appropriate for the internet… we had completed it. Of course, we ended up ripping up the flooring to use in our bedroom, but it’s still an awesome storage place with lots of closet space, a work place and my own laundry niche.

So there’s a few more slices to our home-ble pie… I hope you come back for more. And PLEASE: share your DIY home project tips or any questions you have about how we did anything! I love sharing how you can make your house a home without hiring outside help (although, I do believe in hiring help when it’s necessary!).

Happy renovations,