Thursday, September 16, 2010

Learning to let go...









Left: Hallway after renovation

Right: Hallway before renovation

Well I guess if I'm going to really blog I need to enter more than one post. A lot has happened since my last post. We took our house hunting trip to Charleston which basically consisted of a few days of disheartening house hunting in which we realized we were going to have to spend way more to get a less attractive house in a so so neighborhood followed by a few wonderful days of discovering Summerville. The commute to Summerville is only about ten minutes longer to Dave's work and we can afford twice the house (for less). In addition it is an ADORABLE small town. More on Summerville later.

Fast forward to today: We own a house in Summerville and we have our Alabama house on the market...slightly stressful. For today I'll start posting photos of our Alabama house transformation and later we will move on to the South Carolina house.

Above are the photos of the hallway. Dave and I went through the house room by room (while living there) and took out the old plaster walls (which were very rough and in bad shape), replaced them with drywall, and painted. We took up the old floors that had been covered with carpet and replaced them with new hickory. The old floors had too many defects to be saved and the light color of the hickory really opened up the space and made it feel bigger. In addition, we got a really good deal by buying BLC pre-finished hardwoods. BLC is an established lumber company that recently began making pre-finished floors. Because their product is new to the market you can get it at a really good price. The hallway had a floor furnace (interesting to walk on with carpet covering it) which Dave removed. We found the oversized schoolhouse light at a local lighting store. The cross detail on the columns going into the kitchen and living room are something I saw in Cottage Living. We had our trim guy add new crown and baseboards. Dave installed new 5-panel doors (my favorite style) throughout and widened the doorways from the hall to the living room and kitchen and added arches. One I figure out a little better how to post photos on here I will post photos of the living room.