First Home – Our Fixer-Upper Story
In 2013 my husband and I bought our first home. It was a well-loved 5 bedroom home that has three floors and a basement. The family that lived in the house before we bought it, had lived here for over 30 years. It was full of potential but in need of some TLC. We had always known our first house would be a fixer-upper and that’s exactly what we bought.
As soon as we closed in the winter of 2013 we got to work on demo-ing. We knew we wanted to remodel the kitchen and the bathroom before we moved in. Some family and friends came and helped us for a couple of days pulling out floors and plaster walls to get ready for the construction crew that we hired to put it back together.
For the next few months, our new home was a construction zone. So much work had to be done. The plaster walls and ceilings had cracked with water damage and age, the floors were unlevel, outlets were moved and added, and the list goes on.
The Kitchen and Dining Room
In the kitchen, we took out a wall between the kitchen and the dining room to open up the space.
We reused the old cabinets from the kitchen, they were rehung in a much more sensible formation with a few new cabinets added to make it work. We scrubbed the old cabinets and prepared for them to be reinstalled. This saved us a lot of money, but it was a chore to hang older cabinets. New vinyl flooring was put it, appliances were rearranged, and a lot of new lighting and outlets were installed. We painted and put new hardware on the cabinets. That was the end of phase 1 of our remodel in our kitchen. Phase 2 did not happen for another 5 years. It was always in the plan but time and money kept us from completing the project. You can read more about phase 2 here in my How to Paint Kitchen Cabinets post.
Life Happens
Then our first son Luca was born in the spring of 2013 and all the work at the house came to a complete stop. We spent about 2 months thrown into new parenthood, unable to worry about much else.
But soon, we knew we needed to finish the house and make the move.
Staining our Floors
The last major project we knew we needed to do before moving in was completed about a week before our move-in date. Jarred and his dad refinished the wood floors in the entire downstairs of the house. When we bought the house several parts of the hardwood floors were roughly patched or the stain had come off. We had the floors patched with matching wood by a local handyman. Then Jarred and his dad got to work sanding, staining and sealing the wood. You can also check out our brick fireplace renovation that we did years later HERE.
Since the day we moved in in the summer of 2013 most of our free time has been spent working around the house. Now it is the summer of 2020 and we have FINALLY renovated every inch of this house. Below are a few of the other projects we took on.
The Living Room
Before:
After
The Boy’s Room
Before
After
The Basement
In the basement…
…oh what can I say about this basement. This was a JOB! Old floors, wood paneling, cinderblock that hadn’t been painted for years…it had seen better days. I never thought that this would be a functional space for our family let alone a useful space. But we did it! After A LOT of thinking, planning, building, painting, and hiring a plumber to remodel the bathroom of course. 🙂
Before
In the fall of 2016, we decided to take this project on. A family room, 2nd bathroom, and plenty of pantry storage plus a laundry area!
Now I love our basement. It’s so functional and the bathroom ended up being so NICE!! Check out this AFTER!
In progress…
After
The Third Floor
This part of our house is what made it so special for the price. 2 extra rooms on the third floor! They had seen better days, and when we first moved in we used them as storage. But in the spring of 2015, we renovated one of the rooms because we were expecting our 2nd little boy that coming summer. Jarred refinished the wood molding, patched and painted the walls, replaced the light fixtures
We also had someone come and cut that tiny door you can see on the wall and we put some plywood flooring down on the rafters. That opened up a ton of storage for us since the house didn’t originally have very much. It has been awesome!
On the landing, there was water damage all through the plaster wall and ceilings around the old chimney. We had to demo the wall, and we decided to expose some of the brick. When we had the extra storage door put in the playroom we also extended our laundry chute. It originally only went to the second floor, but we took it up to the third floor. It’s been great!
The Master Bedroom
We patched and painted the walls, ceiling, and trim. We also made the closet bigger and built custom shelving in 2013.
Then in the summer of 2019, we decided to paint the floors off-white. You can read more about the full transformation of this room HERE.
The Kitchen
Dining Room
The Garage
We scraped, and painted the whole garage in the summer of 2016. Then we bought an Amish built shed that we put next to the garage for extra storage. Best decision ever!
Before
After
The Front of our Home
Whew! If you made it this far, thanks for reading! I think this post is more like therapy for me than anything else. Anyone who has fully renovated a home knows that it is quite a journey with a lot of challenges and some really great moments along the way!