Home Renovation | It's Great To Be Home

Replacing the Front Door

April 9, 2012 By Liz - It's Great To Be Home 14 Comments

Remember when I gave you a sneak peek a few weeks ago of a fun update that we were finally making to the front of our house?

Well it’s time to show you the final result – here’s our new front door!! I’m smitten.

When we first bought our home in the fall of 2008, we were less than thrilled with the peachy-pink paint and frilly iron bars on our front door, and the sheen on the interior of the door was almost as blinding as the gold, shiny flocked wallpaper.

It improved dramatically during the renovations that we did to the house – the peach paint was scraped and sanded off and the door was stained a rich brown, and the inside of the door was painted a crisp white.

The door looked a whole lot better, but it still wasn’t great. We didn’t love the dated, curvy lines of the door, and it wasn’t in very great shape – it let in air through little gaps in the wood and it was really starting to deteriorate.

We like to try to do an update to our home every time that we do a flip – the trades are a little more flexible with their pricing when we already have them booked to do work on the flip. Last time we replaced the windows, another time we made some changes to the lighting, and this time we swapped out the front door!

I’ve really been looking forward to this update – the front door was one of the few “grandma” things that we still had going on in our house, and I couldn’t wait for something new!

Obviously, the first thing the door guys did was remove the old door – it came out in sections, with the door being taken out first and then the sidelites.

Things looked much worse before they started looking better. I was a little concerned that the big notch in the wood floors wouldn’t be covered by the new threshold. Luckily, it was. :)

It was a rough day, supervising the job while I enjoyed the sunshine flooding in and worked from the couch!

The door guys picked up the door that we had selected from Seconds & Surplus – that’s where we’ve gotten the front doors for all of our flips, and we’ve loved all of them. We originally fell in love with another door there but after we waited a few days checking measurements it had been sold (that’s the risk of a surplus store – they’ve only got what they’ve got, and no more). We wound up finding the exact same door there, but it was in a higher grade of wood (solid walnut versus mahogany) and had upgraded glass – it was pricier than our original choice, but we really love it!

The new door is slightly taller and skinnier than our old door, so they had to make some slight modifications to both the door and the opening in the house. We had checked everything out with the door guys before we bought the door, so they were prepared for the changes that needed to be made and they got right to work. From what I gathered, they made the door slightly shorter, added some additional framing and casing around the door, and removed some unnecessary trim above the door opening to make the new door fit like a glove.

I knew I was really going to dig the door as soon as they started installing it.

It sat there, installed yet unstained and very unfinished, until our painting crew started work on the flip – then they took a turn at our house (over the course of 3 days!) to painstakingly stain the door and paint the new, wider casing.

Even the unstained front door looked better than the old one, and we got some compliments from the neighbors.

But once it was stained? True love.

We stuck with our tried and true Dark Walnut stain by Minwax, with polyurethane in a satin finish.

We like that the door has an updated, more streamlined look as compared to our original, frilly door, but that it still looks traditional and fits in on our little ranch-style house.

We also really love the slightly obscured glass, and the fact that all of the glass is up high at the top of the door – the couch that we sit on all the time is in direct view of the front door, so we like having some privacy from the post man and everyone else that comes to the front door.

It doesn’t hurt that we’ve had buckets and buckets of rain lately (perhaps you heard about the tornadoes?), so the lawn and flowers are really popping out and helping our new front door make the house look snazzy.

Have you made any long-awaited changes to your house lately? I can’t tell you how happy I am to finally be able to check “new front door” off the list!!

The Flip: The Master Bathroom, Then & Now

January 20, 2011 By Liz - It's Great To Be Home 26 Comments

We’re nearing the end of our tour of the flip! I must admit, I’m a little sad. :)

So far we’ve seen the great room (staging sources here), the dining room (staging sources here), the jack ‘n jill bathroom, the laundry room and the master bedroom (staging sources here) – so of course it’s time for the master bathroom!!

When we bought the house we could tell that the master bathroom had lots of potential since it was pretty large, but the layout was terrible and incredibly choppy. The space was split into 6 rooms!!

You can see the original layout of the master bathroom in the floor plan below – 3 closets, a “wet room” with the shower/tub and toilet, a room with the sinks, and another room with a makeup vanity. Talk about choppy!

To take full advantage of the footprint of the master bathroom, all of the walls had to come out (except the shell of the 2 connected closets, which were combined into 1). The makeup vanity turned into another closet, and the original third closet turned into a huge walk-in shower! (See how we came up with the new layout here).

Take a look for yourself at how it all turned out.

After the great room, I’m most envious of this bathroom (in particular the jetted tub). What are your favorite features?

The Flip: Ch-Ch-Changes

December 15, 2010 By Liz - It's Great To Be Home 41 Comments

You guys, things are happening!! I can hardly even recognize the flip anymore there’s been so many changes in the past few days. It actually looks like a real house that someone might actually want to buy – heart be still.

Okay, this is pretty much how things looked the last time we talked, right?

The bamboo floors are all dirty and nasty in these pictures, but today the flip was cleaned from top to bottom so they look oodles better (sorry, no pic of a clean flip yet!).

Lighting has been installed . . . loving how this sleek pendant looks in the dining room! We originally ordered a pendant with a drum shade but I fell in love with this linear version – no worries, the drum shade went into the master bedroom. :)

The patio is in the process of being scored and stained – hence the caution tape.

Can we pause for a moment and talk about how awesome my mom is? Look at these leaded glass panels she made for the kitchen cabinets!!! We asked for the same style as the panels she made for our house, and we think they really add something special to this kitchen.

Oooh, and the pendants were hung in the kitchen! Remember the debate over how many pendants to have, and our saga when each different pendant we fell in love with was back-ordered? Well, all that drama is behind us now and we’re super psyched over these pendants. As you can see, we went with four of them and they’re basically a mercury glass look (more so when the pendants are on). They bring a splash of black/dark gray to the kitchen that breaks up all of that white – something I didn’t realize it needed, but it looks great!

We discovered a little seam in the drywall on the ceiling near the fireplace, so the drywall guy whipped up this little plastic cocoon while he fixed it.

Here’s the drum shade in the master bedroom! Personally, I like to sleep with a fan on in the bedroom, but I like the elegance the chandelier brings to the room – hopefully buyers will, too!

The master bath is finally finished!

I’m debating whether I like the shower or the tub better - the shower is actually huge, which you can’t really see in this picture, but it extends about two feet further to the left behind the closet.

Mmmm, I think I would like every wall to be tiled in this marble/onyx mosaic tile.

Ooh, and the chevron patterned tile in the jack ‘n jill bath!! Every time I see it I swoon a little bit more. Each piece of tile was hand cut! It boggles my mind. In addition to every wall being tiled in that mosaic tile, I want every floor tiled in this chevron pattern. Pretty please. :)

And dual flush toilets!! We’re feeling so very eco-friendly. :) Oh yes, and we plan on doing this, too.

The front door!! I’m so glad we went ahead and replaced the old one.

This is the door after its first coat of stain – I’ll have to show you a picture later of how it looks now that it’s totally stained and sealed – soooo gorgeous!!

Oh, side note. The new front door handle has now been installed. I know this because we went by the flip late last night to turn on the alarm and we couldn’t get in. Why would that be? Because the guys installed the handle and then locked the keys inside. Oh yes, good fun for all. We thoroughly enjoyed the two hours we spent with the locksmith at 10:30 at night.

Anyhoo, we got new shutters, too!! Even though it’s not even remotely architecturally correct, I decided to add shutters on either side of the bay window. The nerve! I think it looks better, but hopefully we won’t have any architecture buffs scoping out our little rancher. :)

So that’s the latest update!! How’s it looking to you?