The Bungalow: Recap

I loved this little house and selling it was definitely bittersweet for me.  Regardless of my lack of employment keeping it had become impractical once I'd moved in with my then boyfriend, now husband.  Can you ever really go from living together to not?  Looking back at it now I appreciate just how precarious my situation was, but I don't think I really got it at the time.  Had things gone badly I could have very likely ended up in foreclosure and bankruptcy, another victim of the high unemployment rate.

Thankfully I got the house done, on the market and had a cash over asking offer in a little over 3 weeks.  I was able to replay the loan I'd taken to finish the work and then some.  I couldn't have hoped for a better outcome.  And for that, I will always be thankful.

The Bungalow: Exterior

We all hear so often how important curb appeal is when trying to sell your house.  How's this for curb appeal?  The roof had already been replaced in this photo with grey shingles assuming that when the re-siding took place it would make sense (glad the current owners took my color recommendation on their siding selection).

From a time and cost perspective there was no way I was undertaking the siding.  The current siding was fine, just ugly.  I did try to make the exterior as appealing as possible though by painting the brick columns and metal handrail, patching the cracked concrete and cleaning up the landscaping.

The current owners have had new siding in a pretty sage green color installed along with new doors and windows.

The Bungalow: Living, Dining & First Floor Bedrooms

The two bedrooms on the First Floor were pretty basic for the age of home.  Small rooms with small closets by current standards, but cute!

Ignore the people in the photo, this was the only before picture I could find for the living room.  I loved the coved ceiling and stained glass windows.

The majority of the original items in the house that remained were in pretty decent shape overall.

There wasn't much to be done with these rooms, fresh paint, new lighting and having the floors refinished.  I tried to choose budget friendly lighting that worked with the period of the house and was pretty happy  with them overall (again not what I'd have chosen if I was staying there though).  Had I been planning to live there I don't know if I could have refrained from painting all of that wood white but it's considered an offense of epic proportions in that neighborhood.

Would you have painted the woodwork white or left it?  That built in probably would have been my only hesitation, it kills me what those things go for at my favorite architectural salvage shops.

The Bungalow: Master Bath

I loved this little bathroom with it's slightly sloped ceiling and cute little window.  I had visions of a built-in for storage under that window.

I really do love the after of this bathroom.  This is where my love affair with Benjamin Moore's Quiet Moments began.  I think the only thing I'd have done differently in this bathroom if it were my own are the vanity and shower door, and adding the custom cabinet under the window of course!

Thru-body porcelain floor tile again, builder grade vanity with a granite top, and the shower tile was leftover from a previous project.  The mirror came from Home Goods and the lighting from a local source (loved this fixture).

This bathroom was a reader DIY featured by the lovely Matters of Style girls last year! 

The Bungalow: Master Suite

I looked at the Bungalow on the very first day I went house hunting.  I told my realtor that this house was the contender to beat when I gave her the MLS numbers for the homes I wanted to see that day.  I knew that this was the house I wanted just based on the exterior photos and description.

With two bedrooms and a full bath on the first floor and an partially finished attic with a 3/4 bath I was pretty much my idea space.  I planned for the entire 2nd floor to be a Master Suite.  The small bedroom in the back to be the closet, the large open room in the front the bedroom and the bathroom right in between the two.

You can see the stairs leading up to the attic through the open door in this picture.  The bathroom was opposite the top of those stairs and the small back bedroom adjacent.

    

Drywall and a lot of paint later

I went back and forth on whether or not to carpet the 2nd floor but ultimately had the existing pine flooring refinished.  The pine that was there really wasn't meant for finish flooring but my hardwood refinisher claimed that he had a lot of people in the area doing it with good results.  All the feedback I got on it was positive.  I totally would have painted that floor with some sort of pattern had this ended up being my bedroom!

The Bungalow: Main Bath

The state of the bathroom when I bought the house left me baffled at how a couple with small children had been living in the house.  It was dis.gust.ing.  It was the very first thing to be torn out.  What this picture doesn't show is the severely water damaged ceiling and wall right over and near the toilet.

Even though the after is a vast improvement, it doesn't excite me in anyway.  Is that terrible to admit?  All of the decisions were so budget driven.

The Bungalow: Kitchen

When I switched gears from thinking of the bungalow as my future home to strictly as an investment the vast majority of my finish selections changed as well.  In addition to trying to set aside my personal preferences I was also faced with the reality that for the first time in my life I had more time than money and was going to need to do whatever I could to limit my costs.

I didn't take a ton of photos during the in progress phases of a lot of these rooms so you'll have to use your imagination some.

A recap of what the kitchen looked like with it's yucky mouse poop filled cabinets.  Doing all the demo work in this kitchen was my first real DIY experience.  I had guys working in another part of the house and decided just to be done with it.

Recap of what it looked like to start

And after

The kitchen is TINY.  Like 10'x11' or something close to that.  I went really neutral and pretty bare bones on it.  Keeping my bottom line in sight as well as the price point and area didn't really leave me a ton of room.

The flooring was replaced with a thru-body porcelain tile.  I had maple cabinets with a few upgrades (solid wood boxes, glass front doors) installed.  Brand new appliances and granite countertops rounded everything out.  I know that kitchens are trending away from granite but it's still the preferred material in our area and the one that I could get the very best deal on.

I left off the cabinet hardware and backsplash intentionally, not only for cost purposes but also to allow the buyer some ability to personalize the space after the fact.

The Bungalow

A few years ago I bought what was pretty much my dream house at the time.  A cute little 1920's bungalow that needed a complete renovation, good mechanicals but the already outdated interior took a beating during the course of foreclosure.

Due to some life changing events at the time I never even ended up spending a night in the house, instead it became a race to get it renovated and sold.

Here are a few highlights of what it looked like when I closed on the house.....

Oddly enough, this bathroom was a HUGE selling point for me with this house.  It was on the 2nd floor which was mainly attic space at the time.

The lovely kitchen

Main bathroom

And a shot of that unfinished attic space

The living & dining rooms

I had pretty grand plans considering the limited amount of cash I had on hand following my divorce.  Updating the kitchen and bathrooms, refinish the main level hardwood, paint the wood floor in what would be the 2nd floor master suite (complete with a dream closet including washer and dryer).

The dumpster was delivered on the day of the close and the demo took off pretty quickly.  So quickly that when my company laid me off a few weeks later the house couldn't be lived in, rented out, or sold in it's current condition.

To give you the short version:

I let the house sit for a few months while I tried find a job before my savings ran out (because unemployment that was 25% of my take home pay was not going to pay the bills).  I eventually decided to take a personal loan from a friend, finish the work, and get the house sold.  Oh, and do this before winter set in so I wasn't stuck making the payments all the way through the winter.