How do you even start to catalog the changes you make on an old house? Here are a few of the big ones.
The garage door was supposedly driven through by the former owner’s daughter:
The garage after. So grown up.
The front yard had eleven arborvitae in the hell strip:
We tore them out (by hand!) and planted two Bloodgood maples:
The front was obscured by three rhododendron and an azalea, all planted too closely to the house. The house badly needed to be painted.
We tore the shrubs out, removed the lawn, and started landscaping in the spring of 2012. We painted the house! We have an orange door!
The basement had been drywalled, though not finished, and it was covered in mildewing carpet. It smelled bad and it gave off a vibe like someone had been tortured in there.
The basement after:
You can read about tearing out the carpet and vinyl tile, mudding and painting the drywall, painting the fireplace, and installing laminate flooring here.
It still needs baseboard, window trim, and a lot of other finishing details but it’s not a bad hangout spot.
The furnace before:
My friends helped me tear out the old furnace and Jacobs installed the new high-efficiency furnace:
The living room before:
Before:
And after:
The kitchen before:
I scrubbed the cabinets and replaced the hardware, replaced the flooring, painted, bought a stainless steel insert for the dishwasher, and installed a range hood.
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| Oh, and I bought appliances. |
The dining room before:
The dining room after:
The bathroom before:
All of the posts about the bathroom live here.
The bathroom after:
On the back of the garage was a rotting shed.
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| I have wonderful friends. |
We removed the rotting shed, tore out the concrete slab under it, and planted a rain garden in the space in front of it.
Little changes help. My sister almost broke her neck on this deck so we finally fixed it.
Across from the rotting shed was a cracked cement slab and a yard full of weeds.
We tore out the slab, built raised vegetable beds that double as seating, replaced the rotting fences, and planted, planted, planted.
More to come!