Traditional | It's Great To Be Home

The Flip: The Dining Room, Then & Now

January 7, 2011 By Liz - It's Great To Be Home 23 Comments

After the great room, the next reveal on the agenda is the dining room!

Here’s how it looked 3 months ago:

Renovating the dining room was a breeze when compared to the great room. All it needed was new bamboo floors, a column-ectomy and a little layout switcheroo.

The original dining room was in the smaller back room, and the larger room with the bay window was the formal living room. Since the house already had a ginormous great room we thought the formal living room was a little unnecessary, so we took the opportunity to upgrade the dining room to the larger room so that the future homeowners can host big family dinners and all of that fun stuff (the room can actually accommodate a much larger table but we chose not to use our table’s leaves). To us, the smaller adjoining room makes more sense as a sitting area or study, but we left the junction box so the future owners can always turn it back into a dining room by moving the chandelier if they’re so inclined. A win-win in my book.

( The bay window is definitely my favorite part of the dining room, but I can’t take any credit for that since our only contribution to the window was having it cleaned! )

It’s amazing what a little paint and flooring can do! What do you guys think?

The Flip: The Great Room, Then & Now

January 4, 2011 By Liz - It's Great To Be Home 80 Comments

We did it!! We reached the finish line and our old pal the flip is now on the market and FOR SALE!! Cue the confetti and streamers. :)

Now that every inch of the flip has been fluffed and puffed beyond all measure, I think it’s high time to see how far it’s come over the past 3 months!

Without a doubt, the great room underwent the biggest transformation. It was a gigantic undertaking to figure out how to combine four different rooms (den, kitchen, breakfast room & enclosed patio), get the vaulted ceiling figured out, fix the flow of the kitchen, and a billion other things.

Here’s how the great room looks now:

And here’s a reminder of how these four rooms (that we combined) looked when we bought the house on September 29, 2010:

What do you think?

This room gave us the most headaches during the renovation, just trying to figure out how to make the most of this gigantic space, but in the end I think it’s the room that most buyers will fall in love with.

Maybe I’m being sentimental, but I can just imagine an entire family hanging out in this room, kids doing homework at the kitchen table while the dad reads his newspaper at the peninsula and the mom whips up something tasty for dinner. Can you see it?

Okay, now it’s time for a bunch of gratuitous great room shots. I got a little camera happy. Hope you don’t mind. :)

Whew, enough pictures – I’m ready to hear what you guys think!

Confetti image via Flickr.

House Stalking

July 26, 2010 By Liz - It's Great To Be Home 10 Comments

I like to do a little real estate stalking from time to time – I guess you could call it a hazard of the trade. My latest victim is a gorgeous traditional home in Dallas.

Prim, proper, inviting and elegant.

The one thing that I wish we had in our house is staircase {of course, since we’re only on one level it would be a little strange to have one. Hello, staircase to nowhere!} I love it when staircases greet you in the entryway {for some reason it feels really homey and inviting to me, maybe because the house that I grew up in had one}, but I hate ones that are overly grand or pretentious. This one, to me, is a perfect balance and adds interest to the foyer without feeling snooty. I wish there were more photos of this house, I would love to get a better look at the gallery wall and the mirrored console table, but it’s that chandelier that has me intrigued!

Whoever designed this space {and the interior in general} did a great job incorporating elements that are so very on-trend {can you say starburst mirror and garden stools?} in a way that still feels timeless and classic. I think the muted palette and the wall-to-wall seagrass helps achieve that effect.

I don’t love the table – it feels heavy and out of place to me, but the rest of the space is doing it for me.

I think this kitchen is really beautiful. The banquette with the tulip table is charming, and the touch of zebra adds personality without going overboard. And I can never turn down an all-white kitchen!

I’m moving into this bathroom. And even though the shade-free garden window isn’t very practical, it’s so lovely don’t you think?

I’m not in love with this bedroom, but I love elements of it. The wishbone chairs are something I’ve coveted for awhile, and the gilded screen is very interesting. But it feels too much like it was placed there just to cover up that blank wall. I know they were trying to show off the size of the room {these are MLS photos, after all!}, but I would have loved a closer look at the bed area and what looks like beautiful panels on the closet doors.

This room feels like a bit of a departure from the rest of the house – a little bit casual and a slightly more masculine feel. It looks to be surrounded by windows on two sides with wooded views – I think I could make myself quite comfortable here. :)

In this photo you can see all 3 of the residences on this property. Yes, I said 3. I think it’s strange – it’s not like Dallas is the Hamptons where people come to stay for weeks at a time! But maybe that’s just me. On another note, that pool is begging me to jump in right about now – it’s been H-O-T in Dallas lately!

Does this house do it for you?

Images from here.