And just like that…DONE!

We have been working frantically (more on that at a later date) to finish remodeling Spotswood House and I am happy to say she is done!!! We should have her listed for sale tomorrow.  This has been a labor of love and such a good learning experience. And I am happy to say this is not the end of our remodeling road. We have the bug now. As soon as we go under contract it is on to the next house.

I’m going to go through as many before and after shots as I can. First up, the exterior. We didn’t do too much here; pressure washed, painted the front door a really fun color, painted the porch, painted the shutters, and removed the car port. The reason why we removed the carport is because it wasn’t up to code and it was easier to just demolish the dang thing.  We had bees and wasps living in it, a total hot mess.

I think my favorite change is the front door. I wanted a red/orange/pink color and as soon as I walked into Home Depot I found “Drama Queen.” It’s more on the red/pink spectrum but I love it. So fun! Unfortunately you can’t see my welcome mat but it goes perfectly with the door. Something else we did was paint the outdoor light a really modern gold color instead of basic black. It turned out fantastic. It’s so funny how the little things get me the most excited.

Probably the biggest change of all is the kitchen. You all know the saying, “kitchen and baths sell the house.” I’m going to show you three pictures here; the before, the first after, and the second after. After we remodeled the kitchen and decided to sell the house, I changed the color and lighting so it will appeal to more buyers.

Now our kitchen is light and bright with a soft blue/green/gray color on the wall and a new light fixture (I got it for free from Facebook. A couple of the glass panes were cracked so I took them to Home Depot and had new ones made. That is a really nice light now!!!) It is so much brighter since we took the carport down too. I’ll throw in a couple more pics of the new, new kitchen.

I’ll be so sad to sell Spotswood…well kinda. The one thing I don’t like about the house is it sits off a busy county highway and the road noise is legit. Tractor trailers are the worst!

Ok, I’m back on track now. Time to move into the living room. The biggest changes we made here were painting the room, painting the baseboards, painting the ceiling, updating the bay window with removable wallpaper, and removing a corner cabinet. I was gonna say we didn’t do too much but after reading what I just wrote, we have done a shitload here!!!

I recycled some of my furniture (couch, leather chair, dining table and chairs) from my house in Alexandria but I bought alot of new stuff for Spotswood too. Probably my favorite thing in the living room is a picture on the wall from IKEA. It looks like a mid century modern house in Palm Springs. That, and my ceramic parrot. I bought it for $2 or $3 at a Goodwill.

On to the dining room. I guess it is officially the living room but we swapped them since the area next to the kitchen was larger.

Probably the most notable change here is the front door is white now instead of its original wood color. There is a creepy portrait in the background of an older lady I bought on impulse. I gotta be honest, this is my least favorite room in the house.

We’ll move to the bedrooms now. In the first bedroom we used the same furniture we had in our Alexandria house. We painted the walls, replaced the ceiling fan, painted the trim around the windows, and added curtains. That is my thing, curtains and lighting. Besides paint, you can have the biggest impact by changing curtains and lighting. This is the only room in the house where we liked the color on the wall but we still repainted. Sigh.

Next up, the back bedroom. I call this my mid century modern room. Prior to that, it was painted red and had a massively heavy, hideous built-in.

You may have noticed I broke my curtain rule in this room. I always hang the curtains from the ceiling but I needed curtains quick for this room and found standard size ones on Facebook for $10. Their actually pretty nice but I don’t like the 84″ length.

The final bedroom. This little dozy  had a futon bed and a weight lifting bar in here when we first laid eyes on her. Of course we repainted, replaced the door, added closet doors, and we had to patch drywall where there were holes…yikes.

After looking at the before photo, I just remembered we completely reconfigured the closet. For the bi-fold closet doors in this room Adam found them on Facebook for $25, including the track, knobs, and hardware. What a steal! I’m so proud of how resourceful we have been with some of the items in the house.

Now for the other moneymaker, the bathroom. We took this down to the studs. It is itty, bitty but we made smart design decisions to make it seem much larger. We hung the shower curtain from the ceiling and Adam built a custom vanity so we had more space for the toilet (hey, some people need to spread out).

Another major change we made to the house was ripping off the leaking, moldy, rotting sunroom. In case you were wondering, it wasn’t done to code either. Once we took off the sunroom we found a deck, one of the few pleasant surprises in this house. The people before us literally built a sunroom on top of a deck.

Ok, let me explain. If you look at the 4th photo above that is the before shot of the mudroom. Notice there is a hole in the ceiling. Adam found a spare key where the hole opening was, LOL. I guess that is one way to hide your spare key. We completely remodeled the mudroom. We moved the door to the back of the house, took out an old window, added a new window, hung bead board on the walls and ceiling, painted the beadboard, and just for good measure Adam made the bench above using leftover wood we ripped off the house. Yeah, he’s crazy! We actually kept the light but Adam painted it gold and it is so pretty now.

Honestly, the biggest transformation of them all may be the laundry room. The before picture literally looks like a glamour shot compared to how it looked in-person. It had tons of holes in the walls, water spots on the walls and ceiling, and cheap vinyl floor tiles. It literally looked like a murder scene. It looks so much better now. We painted the walls and ceiling, added a a new window, ripped up the vinyl and added some shelving and a cabinet door. I had plans to do a stencil on the floor in the laundry and mudroom but we just ran out of time.

We ended up getting really lucky earlier in the week when some guys from the power company came by and offered to remove three of our trees in the front yard for free!! They were growing in the power lines which made them dangerous so they offered to remove them and we said, “YES!!!!!!” The before and after is stunning.

Needless to say, we’ve been busy the past few weeks. I did find time to stream a new show on Amazon, Upload. Has anyone else seen it? It’s from the writer of The Office so that definitely intrigued me. But, it’s definitely not like The Office. It’s about a guy who dies and instead of going to heaven or hell he goes to an artificial afterlife where he can still communicate (and have sex) with living people. It’s really good.

I’ll be back soon when our listing goes live and I’ll explain what we decided to do differently when selling this house.