Tallahassee Lassy

Now that we are back in Alexandria full-time and back in our condo its time to wrap up our Florida experience. I am going to share the full remodel of the Tallahassee house. We knew we wouldn’t be in the house long-term and we would have to do renovations to maximize our dollars when we sold. We tried to be as cost effective as possible but still keep the remodel classy.

We did a lot! We replaced all the flooring except in the kitchen and laundry room, did a full remodel on the master bath, a touch-up remodel on the guest bath, full kitchen renovation, painted the entire interior of house, fixed wood rot on the porch pillars, and replaced the pool pump.

Here are the before/after photos in the living room. All the carpet came up, wood-look herringbone tile floors were added, and walls were painted. I kept the ceiling fans which I would’ve replaced if we were staying in the house long-term. Most of the furniture and accessories I bought second-hand except the couch and rug.

My favorite feature of the house besides the pool was the open floor plan in the living areas. The living/dining area was huge. In the dining area we replaced the carpet and painted all the walls. We left the fireplace and shelf above untouched. Lighting is one of my favorite items to change in a house – that and curtains. But, when you sell a house you leave the lighting and curtains so we kept all the lighting that existed when we bought the house. It was not up to my standards. We bought a new dining table. chairs, and rug. And now it is sitting in a storage unit😂

The master bedroom/owners suite was my least favorite part of this house. Everything was just too small – the closet, bathroom, and bedroom itself. In the bedroom we replaced the carpet and added the herringbone tile floors, painted the walls, and replaced the bi-fold closet doors with regular doors. We kept the original ceiling fan.

In the master bathroom we did a complete gut. We ripped out the tub/shower combo and put in a walk-in shower, new tile floors, new toilet, new window, new vanity, widened the doorway, and painted the walls. If we were keeping this house long-term I would’ve added the frameless glass doors on the shower. Adam built the vanity and we purchased an affordable engineered stone countertop from Home Depot. I would’ve done the vanity differently if we were keeping the house but it still turned out nice. I am really happy with the tile we picked for the shower but I would go with a lighter grout next time (the grout would turn a different color when it got wet and it looked splotchy because all the grout doesn’t get wet at the same time). But, this room was a dramatic change!

Next up are the guest bedrooms. The herringbone tiling took forever in the rest of the house so when we got to the guest bedrooms we laid the floor tile in a stacked style, kind of like a subway tile pattern. We painted both rooms. The third bedroom was definitely on the small side. The original owners used the space as an office, we used the space as a dumping ground for Adam’s hunting supplies and my extra linens.

The secondary bathroom is probably my favorite change we made. Adam built the vanity, we widened the door, painted the walls, and replaced the tile floors. We kept the shower/tub combo and the toilet. I hated that toilet. I am very picky, I like Kohler toilets and we put them in all of our houses except this one. We did a Kohler toilet in the master bathroom but kept the original in this bathroom. I definitely need Adam to balance me out. I will focus on every little detail and get hung-up on perfection. I bought a really cool modern removable wallpaper that took the room up a notch. We took out the long countertop and decided to add extra storage. I am really happy with the change. I really liked the tile floors we added in this bathroom and it was affordable.

The biggest expense was the kitchen but it had to be done. I have posted about the remodel in another post. The only thing I would change if we kept the house is add more cabinets on the kitchen sink wall. I like the shelves we put up but in hindsight I think we needed two selves on each wall, instead of one. But, in the end we sold the house for the price we wanted so win-win.

We have no remodeling projects now ☹ Our condo is completely done. We have toyed with the idea of buying another house to flip because we have been really lucky in making a lot of profit on the last few houses we sold. We have also talked about building a house from the ground up. That would be quite the project! For now we have been taking advantage of all of our free time on the weekends and doing a bunch of drivable trips. We have gone to Richmond, Charlottesville, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington DC (yes, we stayed at a hotel in DC even though we are only 15 minutes away, don’t like having to drive and find parking).

My other love is travel and we have added a couple more trips to the second half of the year. We are going to Norway and Poland, then Grand Caymen Islands, then Virginia Beach (we have never been to the beaches in this area since we moved here 10 years ago), and finally bucket list Bali. I already have two trips booked for next year, Turkey and the Maldives. This is what keeps my sanity, always having a trip to look forward to. I definitely do my due diligence and use points, travel sites, and advance planning to book the best deals. I never stop looking for travel deals. Well, that’s all for now.