Our First Flip....Or so we thought!

The finished house! I was beginning to think we would never get to this point! We bought this house almost 5 years ago now; the idea was to fix it up and sell it....little did we know what we had gotten ourselves into! My husband is a carpenter by trade, and I am a painter, so no problem right? Except that at the time we bought our house, he was working away in Alberta 3 weeks out of the month, and only home for 6 days at a time!  For the first few months he worked his tail off every free second at home; but everyone knows there is no way that can last forever! The other downfall was that we had NO money saved for the renovations! Small problems right? hahaha So the reno that he had hoped would take a year took.....just over 4! $40,000 later and a LOT of sweat equity, we were finally finished! It felt SO GOOD to accomplish such a gigantic task! In the meantime, he quit working away and started a flooring installation business...which grew big enough that he needed help...enter me! So now I am a flooring installer AND painter.....and also learned how to tile in the process! We put our house on the HOT Vancouver Island housing market in April, and within 12 hours it was SOLD! How crazy is that?? So now we are on our second fixer upper....initially was going to be another flip but we are not quite sure yet how long we will stay here.  I love our new home....but that's another story....or blog post! I have been meaning to start this blog for a very long time, and so happy I finally got the push I needed! So on to the before and afters!


This is our master bathroom before....HORRIBLE colour on the walls, gross green counter, weird backsplash...oh and let's not forget about the wallpaper border in the middle of the room...with people on it....OH my it was a weird room! Not very big to begin with, and then the dark colour just made it even smaller! So we brightened it up with paint, new counter, tile and floor...added new taps, light fixture and mirror, new window and trim....not a total gut but a lot of work for a small space.  I don't love the backsplash we went with, but hey it's not my house anymore! So here are some of the befores...

 And the after! 100% better! Still a small bathroom for a master, and no shower or room to add one; but still a HUGE improvement!

I don't have any good pictures of the master bedroom before, but here is the after. Very simple but elegant.  Lots of light and double closet, and room for a king bed! We thought lots of room too.....(til we saw the room in our new place)

The front yard was a messy pile of dirt and not much else when we moved in....

We did actually pay someone to do the landscape at the front of the house as we aren't landscapers, and were running out of time!

The backyard was even more of a mess....way too many trees, overgrown bushes, and a pile of concrete! Lots of sweat and hours went into making it into a lovely oasis in the middle of the city! We were super lucky to have a huge yard that backed onto green space so very private!

The living room in the house was closed off from the kitchen initially, and had really dated laminate floors, a huge old window and hideous painted fireplace with tiny mantle way too high up! Hubby made a mantle for it and I knocked a couple rows of brick off to make it a better height....we installed a new window with trim and new floors....and painted of course!

 

Still not quite sure why orange brick.....and the insert looks really ugly and dated here doesn't it? We were going to change it, but after painting the brick we found it looked fine! Crazy what some paint will do!

The living room ended up open to the kitchen...thankfully! When we bought the house (and for 3 years of living in it) the kitchen was totally closed off from everything! Doorways on either side opening to the dining and living made it so small and dark....and dated!

Unfortunately it doesn't seem that I have any more pictures before we started tearing down walls! But you can still see how ugly and old the cabinets were in this pic:

AND how little counter space I was working with! These next few are in the process of demo....

AND the finished product....many months later when everything was finally done!

I still can't believe that was my house! What a difference!! The other spot that really changed was the basement....the back room had concrete floors with a washer and dryer....and that was basically it!

We added vinyl plank on the floor, installed a couple really cool fence board walls, did a cubby/shelf/bench against the wall for storage and great back entry space....it ended up being a great laundry/back entry!

Ok last few pictures...the rest of the basement.  There was paneling, gross carpet, weird drywall jobs, strange things on the ceilings they were using for sound proofing....just a gross basement initially....ended up a lovely 4th bedroom, office and family room!

Whew! Ok that took longer than I thought to get finished....but my first blog post is finally done! Sorry if it's a little long winded...I am just really proud of the job we did! Almost all on our own....hired a landscaper and had Ty's brother install the potlights in the kitchen (only cause he didn't want to crawl around in the attic lol). I hope you enjoyed it, and I will be posting again soon! Stay tuned!

Stephanie