Renovation | It's Great To Be Home

Kitchen Cabinets at the Flip

March 14, 2012 By Liz - It's Great To Be Home 16 Comments

Woohoo!! Since this flip is shorter on space than our past flips we’ve made a few changes to the layout to make it more functional. You can see the original floor plan that we started out with . . .

. . . and below you can see how we made some big changes to the full bath, 1/2 bath (now the master bath), a bunch of closets, and some interior walls.

But the area that might have seen the biggest changes of all is probably the kitchen. Some of the improvements are obvious from the diagram above, but some are a little more subtle so I thought I’d lay them out for you here. So far, we have:

made use of a seriously weird space at the end of the kitchen to create a laundry room
moved the washer and dryer hookups out of the kitchen and into the laundry room
moved the water heater out of the kitchen and into the attic
closed up a doorway between the kitchen and what is now the home office (allowing us to add more cabinet space)
widened the doorway between the kitchen and the den
created a peninsula for casual dining
moved the fridge so that we had room for the peninsula
reconfigured and reused 90% of the existing cabinetry
had our cabinet guy make a fridge box (reusing existing doors), an undercounter box for the microwave with a drawer beneath, a peninsula, small shelves for cookbooks, and floating shelves for either side of the range hood

But enough chatting. Ready to actually see the changes?

This is now the view from the front door:

Much better than the solid wall you used to see:

And this is the view from the den looking into the kitchen:

As you can see from this photo from the listing, the kitchen used to be totally cut off from the rest of the house:

And remember how I said we closed up that door between the kitchen and office (and also removed the furrdown)?

That was so we could make that wall of the kitchen look like this!! The range and range hood will go right in the middle, and that empty box to the left of the range is for the microwave.

Here’s another angle for your viewing pleasure. All of that cabinetry on the wall with the window (and the lower cabinetry in the inside corner) was already there when we bought the house. Score! This is the first time we’ve ever had kitchen cabinetry that was worth saving.

All of these cabinets were there, too. However, we did rearrange them a bit by removing a box for an above-counter microwave and a cabinet above that (if I’m not making sense you can see what it looked like in this post) and then scooting those last 3 cabinets to the left to close up the gap.

Here’s a view from the kitchen into the new laundry room (which has a pocket door):

This house totally needed that laundry room. The makeshift laundry area that was previously in the kitchen was beyond whack. See what I mean?

And with the water heater, washer and dryer all moved out of the kitchen, we were able to relocate the fridge and add this peninsula:

I thought it was important (although maybe a little unorthodox) to have the space for the bar stools on the kitchen side of the peninsula. You see, the den is on the small side and I didn’t want a counter top overhang and then bar stools stealing even more floor space from the den. Since the kitchen is plenty wide it just made sense to put the knee space on that side!

I’m really happy with the way the kitchen is shaping up, counter top drama aside. What do you think of the new layout in there – do you think it will work for future buyers?

Decisions, Decisions

February 13, 2012 By Liz - It's Great To Be Home 10 Comments

I can’t believe it’s already been almost two weeks since we bought our fourth flip! It turns out that time flies when you’re running around like a crazy person.

Did I tell you that Jason skipped town for 5 days right after we bought it? Those few days flying solo were a little interesting, but a lot of important decisions were made.

Want to see what’s been decided in the span of just 13 short days? Here’s a peek at the original floor plan to give you a frame of reference:

Here we go!

We’re switching up the layout a bit – the formal living room is becoming the formal dining room, and the formal dining room is turning into an office. Capice?
We’re opening up a really wide opening between the new dining room and the den.

We’re also taking out most of the wall between the hallway and the new dining room (on the left-hand side of the photo below) – otherwise you walk through the front door and smack dab into a wall. No bueno.

We were trying to avoid moving the furnace to the attic, but space constraints in this 1,400 square foot house made it obvious that it has to go. That is a few thousand dollars that we didn’t anticipate having to spend, but at least we get a new furnace and about 24 extra square feet of space for the master bathroom.

What master bathroom? Ah, yes. We’re turning the 1/2 bath that is currently attached to the master bedroom into a full-fledged master bathroom with a walk-in shower. Now the house will have 2 legit bathrooms instead of 1.5 baths – good for resale!

See all the layouts we came up with trying to avoid moving the furnace?

The layouts of both bathrooms are changing, now that we’re making 2 full baths out of 1.5 baths (and gaining extra space for the master bath by moving the furnace). You can check out the guest bath below.

The master bedroom is losing one closet to the master bathroom, but gaining another – there’s a closet in the den that backs to the master, so we’re just flipping the doors from the den-side to the master-side.
We’re closing up the doorway from the hallway to the den – and turning that space into a coat closet (since we’re losing the existing coat closet in the hallway to the guest bathroom).

There’s a useless space at the end of the kitchen near the back door – we’re going to create a laundry/mud room down there, framing in walls with a pocket door.

The water heater is getting moved from the kitchen into the attic – which means we have to replace it with a “short boy” electric unit so that it will fit under the low ridge beam in the attic. But the trade-off there is that the laundry room that we’re creating at the end of the kitchen will be able to have side-by-side washer and dryer instead of stackables. A win, I think.

We’re partially opening up the wall between the kitchen and the den – there will be a peninsula for casual dining and extra counter space.
We’re keeping the kitchen cabinets – but making a few changes. We had to nix some uppers and lowers to create the laundry room, and we may be reusing them somewhere. We’re closing up the doorway by the stove so that we will have room for an undercounter microwave. There will be floating shelves on either side of the range hood above the stove. The fridge is getting scooted over towards the laundry room to make room for the peninsula. Oh, and we’re also running a gas line to the stove. All of this probably doesn’t make sense now, but I’ll fill you in with more details along the way. :)

The wood floors throughout the house are getting patched (where walls are taken out) and refinished, and we’re extending the wood into the kitchen. With such a small space and an open floor plan it just seems to make sense.
We’re replacing the front door.
We’re getting new windows! And we’re switching out the giant picture window in the den for glass sliders that will lead out to the patio.
Yes, we’re putting in a giant 16×20 foot deck where the addition used to be. It will have benches and it will be awesome.

Remember that nasty addition? See ya later!

Even though 8 foot privacy fences are awesome, they are also expensive. We’re springing for a 6 foot board on board cedar fence, which should look great.

The hot tub is getting the boot.
We’ve also started buying things – like vanities and housing for recessed lights and shower valves. Are we exciting or what?

Whew! And to think, we’ve only just begun!

The Flip is For Sale!

August 14, 2011 By Liz - It's Great To Be Home 47 Comments

Pop the champagne, the flip is FINISHED and FOR SALE!!!

I’ll do a proper “before and after” later with lots of photos, but for now I just wanted to share with you the professional photographs that were taken Friday. I can’t wait to hear what you think!