The first weekend we had the house legally in our possession we started demoing it out. Demo is so easy we started ripping into the house and almost forgot to start taking the before pictures. But like I've said before, it was one of our goals to take as many progress pics along the way so we could remember what it was like before. Now looking back at these, I can't believe how much has changed!
The house is a typical split level you'll find in this area. We were initially trying to avoid getting into a split because they are so ubiquitous, but we started to see the benefits of the lay out, like having completely separate family and living rooms. We also quickly realized that this was going to be the best bang for the buck in terms of dollars per square foot. The house is something like 2,800 square feet, 5 bedroom (now 4), and 2.5 bath. Ok, less talk and more pics with slight commentary.
Entry: Fortunately ours has nice wide stairs coming up.
Living Room: Notice the lovely "custom" curtains left behind. They looked better in the dumpster.
Dining Room: The dining room was carpeted as well, so it came out too.
Kitchen: In from the dining room is the kitchen. This is the first of many bright colors chosen by the previous owners. You'll see later that we sheet-rocked over the fluorescent light box to flatten out the ceiling for can lights.
This picture is of a pantry we decided to take out to make more space for a good size kitchen table. Fortunately we have room in the downstairs we can put it to use as a "Costco Run" storage pantry.
We also took down the lonely cabinet to the right of the window since it was kind of in a weird location and we figured we have plenty of other cabinet space.
Upstairs Hall Bath: This is the guest bath off of the upstairs hallway.
Bedroom: You can now see what the carpet was like in the upstairs. It wasn't really that bad or too old, but we decided if we were going to be replacing some of it, it all had to go. The living areas had some really bad stains.
Office: Hey! Pepto-Bismol! This is the smallest of the bedrooms in the upstairs so we're planning on using it for an office.
Master Bedroom: Here is another super fun/gross color. Primer was our friend.
Master Bathroom: Yuck. You'll see more on this later.
Master Bedroom Walk-in Closet: Yes, it was the 4th bedroom in the upstairs, but not to worry, there is another downstairs. Courtney and I were plenty happy with the overall size of the Master Bedroom and the fact that it had two normal sized closets, but we decided that with some minor modifications to the doors and walls we could have a MASTER Bedroom with a walk-in closet.
That concludes our upstairs portion of the tour. Moving to the downstairs.
Family Room: We're very happy to be able to get a very large separate family room from the living room as many homes we looked at that weren't splits didn't have this feature. Like the kitchenette? Too bad, it's gone!
And here is a look down the downstairs hallway. We called this the hallway of doors, until we took the one out at the end. It was truly useless.
Laundry Room: Pretty decent size. This is one of the few areas we aren't really touching yet. Facing opposite of the washer/dryer/water heater is a nice space we may put a folding table or some storage.
Bathroom: Like the laundry room we aren't doing much here for now so we'll be rocking the green and gold for a while.
Downstairs Bedroom: Beyond the useless door at the end of the hallway lies the 4th bedroom, formerly known as the 5th.
Mud Room: If you look at the picture above of the downstairs hallway, after the useless door you turn right through another door into what we're calling the mud room. Hopefully it doesn't get too muddy but it is another way outdoors from the back of the house.
Spa Room: This is the room you see through the door of the mud room. We inherited this great addition that previous owners added on to the back of the house, I'm guessing around 1992. I guess that because that is the manufacturer's date on the hot tub and I see no possible way of getting it inside that room without building around it. Not sure if it works yet, but it should be a fun space to use when/if it does!
Garage: Pretty standard 2-car garage, but it is a few feet deeper than most we saw and there is a nice cove to the left that you can see in this picture. Great spot for a garage fridge.
That concludes our downstairs portion of the tour. Moving to the outside.
The house has a lot of nice features outside. The front and back yards are level, there is a concrete walkway all the way around the house, the back yard has a nice big concrete pad and it backs up to a green belt.
The next post will cover more of the outside work we did. Thanks for reading!
