The bars on the windows were also taken off

Notice the putt-putt carpet?  Yeah we took that out and boy was it EVER a pain in the rear to do! That glue does not want to come off easily

All the windows got replaced with retro fitted windows, which made a HUGE difference.  And here is the patio all freshened up.  Wow, what a difference!

I ended up putting carpet back down on the patio.  That glue just wasn’t coming off, and the soft feel of the carpet was nice…I felt that the green putt putt color was throwing the whole look off.  So I went with more of a neutral color outdoor carpet, a light brown.  I purchased the outdoor carpet at Home Depot right off the roll in the store. It was funny, I found out that not all the Home Depot’s carry the same carpet. It took me a couple of stores before I found the right size and color.  The skinny columns got wrapped in wood and we added detail at the top and bottom to give them some dimension.  It’s a quick and easy way to beef up a column without breaking the bank.

Isn’t that view beautiful?  I loved sitting out there during the remodel and watching the golfers.  I came to realize, most golfers aren’t that good, and it is more of a social thing than a game.

The view from inside the kitchen window is my favorite

When you are doing so much remodeling on the inside of a house, it leaves very little in the budget for the exterior.  It would of been nice to get new front doors, but they are expensive to replace, I needed to find a way to update the existing doors to save some money.

I decided to work with what I had, and so we took off the small panel molding and replaced it with larger simple panel molding.  And just by doing that simple trick, it instantly updated the doors. We painted the door and trim in Sherwin Williams Iron Ore.  I kept the original 70’s hardware because I thought it was so cool.  I also kept the 70’s glass.  It didn’t look so dated once we updated the door panels.  {plus it saved me some money}

That cute Hello door mat is from Target.

To brighten up the entrance, we painted the underside of the eaves the same cream color as the house.  It felt like such a cave before when it was painted brown, now with the cream paint, it is more light and airy

The before of the outside

And the after with some new paint on the trim.  Not a huge transformation, but a fresher look.

I have spoken to the new owners a couple of times since they moved in , and they go on and on about how beautiful the house is and how they love living there.  Awe, that just makes it all worth it!

I can’t wait to sit down and write my next post, it’s a remodel I started right when I was in the middle of this one. {that wasn’t such a good idea by the way} It is up in Los Angeles, and it gave me a RUN for my money like not other house I have remodeled.

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but you could also access the same closet when you walked into the master bedroom

What a weird concept.  To me, it was wasted space and just odd.  So we enclosed the hallway entrance to the closet, {I of course don’t have a decent picture, or from the same angle, but you get the idea}

We took out the mirrored doors on the vanity side, to give more wall space inside the closet, and we also made the entrance on this side smaller.  Rearranging the closet like this gave a lot more usable space, and also made it a walk in closet. Something I know buyers would love, versus the weird pass thru closet that was there.  But it was also an excuse for me to finally be able to use a barn door for the new entrance

Oh how I love how these barn doors turned out.  We actually re-purposed the closet doors from the hallway entrance for the barn doors.  We added, get this, baseboard molding to mimic the rest of the doors.  HA!  Pretty genius right?

Another item we added to the master bath was a sliding door from the bedroom area.  It was just an opening with no door. Again, to me that is odd.  You need to be able to close off the bathroom area while another person may be sleeping

There wasn’t enough room to do a swinging door, and I didn’t want a pocket door, so we did the next best thing and put in a sliding door.  We brought out the crown molding around the perimeter of the door to hide the track.

This door is also re-purposed like the barn doors using the baseboard molding to mimic the barn door

Ok, so now on to the actual master bath area.  There was only one sink in the original vanity area

So we added a double sink vanity, and two Restoration Hardware medicine cabinets. And of course removed the popcorn ceiling, 70’s light soffit, and endless wallpaper

Oh how I love Restoration Hardware medicine cabinets!  I always get them on sale, because the shipping is pricey.  They are so well made and look so stylish.  Unlike an off-the-shelf medicine cabinet.  Here is a glimpse inside during the remodeling construction.  The inside of the swinging door has a mirror as well.  They are the bomb. One tip for you though, you might need to re-route your vent pipe for your sinks if you decide to put in medicine cabinets in front of your sinks.  This is why they are usually on the side wall of a vanity, there are no obstacles to deal with.  But it isn’t that hard to re-route the vent, any plumber can do it, it is just an additional cost that you need to consider if you want to go this route.

I also purchased the wall scones from Restoration Hardware.  They are ok.  The light they put out is pretty minimal, but luckily I have natural light coming in from the bedroom and shower area, plus the recessed can lights.  So it wasn’t that big of a deal.  And they look pretty in the space, which is what matters lol

The floor tile is the same 12′ x 24″ linen look tile that we used in the other bathroom

The shower/toilet room right off the vanity area again just needed updating

We installed a pocket door, new wall and floor tile and added a glass enclosure

That wall tile is so cool.  It comes already cut in the chevron pattern, and has a slight texture to it

The shower head was raised higher on the wall and new plumbing fixtures installed.  They are by Mirabelle, my first time using this brand

We used the matching floor tile in the 1″ x 1″ size for the shower pan

I don’t know if you noticed, but there is a large space in between the shower and toilet.  The previous owners had moved the toilet over I think to accommodate a wheelchair or walker {remember this is a 55 and over community}. So I left the toilet where it was.  It makes for a nice storage area, and if the new owners ever find they are in need of space for a wheelchair access they have it.

I think the rearranging I did to make the closet bigger, and adding another sink, really made this master bath area feel more open and functional for two people. Plus it gave me the excuse to use a barn door  The outside transformation will be my next post.  You will see how I took this dated enclosed area, and brought it to life taking full advantage of that golf course view.

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The hall bathroom in this house was in good shape, but just needed updating

We gutted everything, including that 70’s light soffit and banjo countertop.  I chose the Shutter Vanity from Restoration Hardware

And this is how it looks now that the bathroom remodel is done

What is nice about the Restoration Hardware vanity, is that is came complete with the marble countertop and sink, so all I had to buy was the faucet.  I used a Mirabelle faucet from the St. Augustine collection

The mirror and wall sconces are from West Elm

I opted not to do a shower enclosure because I wanted to have the Mirabelle soaking tub as the focal point.  It is by far my favorite tub to use in a bathroom remodel; it is affordable and so sleek looking

I used a large white porcelain tile in the tub/shower.  Using a large tile means less grout lines, which makes it easier to keep clean.  It’s hard to tell, but there is a slight vertical pattern in the tile

On the plumbing wall, there is a Carrera marble mosaic, which ties it in with the marble countertop.  The marble mosaic was expensive, but adding it just down the plumbing wall adds a little pizzazz yet it doesn’t break the budget.

Now that the bathroom remodel is finished, it feels more open and lighter even though the footprint is the same.

I’ll show you the master bathroom in my next post.  Just like this bathroom, it wasn’t in bad shape it just needed an update. Here is a peak of my favorite part of the master bathroom remodel, the barn doors.

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They put the HVAC and water heater right inside the door, and gave about 12″ of space to stand in front of the washer and dryer.  And that included moving around the yellow bin that caught your mail.  What I didn’t get, is that this house has a two car garage, and an additional area for golf cart parking  There was more than ample room to have all this mechanical stuff in another area in the garage.  Why they put it smack in the walkway, in front of the laundry area was beyond me. Here is a shot standing inside the garage

This whole set up just boggled my mind.  And I knew the first thing I was going to do when I got this house, was to give it a real laundry room.

The good thing about this house, is that attic space is massive, and I decided to take advantage of it.  I had the HVAC moved into the attic, and got rid of the tank water heater and installed a tankless water heater in the attic as well.  It was costly, but I felt well worth it.  Very few of the houses in this neighborhood have a separate laundry room, and I knew adding a laundry room would add value and a great selling feature to the home.

The original floor stopped about 2 feet in front of the wall that separated the room to the garage. After we took everything out, we poured a new floor to extend the existing floor with the existing wall.  Doing this enabled the room to be bigger, and gave us the space we needed to add a new wall for the garage swing door.

This is they only picture I have to show you, but to the right is where that new wall went up and the door opening into the garage was placed.  We had to relocate the plumbing as well.  This was not a cheap adventure for sure!

With the entire HVAC and water heater gone, and increasing the size of the room, it was now an official laundry room. And I was ready to go all out on the design.  My inspiration started when I saw this sink from Rejuvenation

It’s called the Alape Bucket Sink  Isn’t it just the coolest? It is a shallow sink that hangs on the wall, more for hand washables items. Since there was already a big deep utility sink inside the actual garage, I figured I could get away with using a smaller sink in the laundry room.  I brought the colors of the sink to the other side of the room where I installed the cabinets. I went with slab front cabinets painted in Sherwin Williams Naval on the bottom, and white on the uppers.

And now when you open the door, this is what you see

Goodbye HVAC and water heater…Hello laundry room.  We added an off-the-shelf sky light tube so that the room wouldn’t be so dark.  It kind of gives off a purple hue to the room, so photographing this laundry room was challenging. {the washer and dryer came with the house, so I just slid them into their new home}

I used the same wood plank porcelain tiles I used throughout the house, but laid the tiles in a chevron pattern. Just to give it a little pizzazz.

Don’t you just love that hardware?  It’s called SteamPunk by Atlas Hardware

I used simple white subway tile for the backsplash and a pre-fab “Calcutta” looking marble for the countertop {oops, that’s my cell phone on the counter lol}

We had to build out the sink wall to accommodate the plumbing. I took the opportunity to use a fun grey/blue and white chevron tile behind the sink. I had a scrap piece of the marble countertop left over, so I used it for the shelf above the tile

The sink comes with a plastic drain pipe, but I upped the look by replacing it with a polished chrome. Spending that extra $20, brought the sink to a whole new level

I scored the faucet on Ebay for a song.  It had a tiny little obscure scratch on the back of it, so it was heavily discounted

The cute copper pendant came from Lulu & Georgia.  My electrician rolled his eyes when I said I wanted a pendant in the laundry room. He had to ask me twice to make sure he heard right.

The wall color is Sherwin Williams Alpaca

It was so fun to design this new laundry room.  Every time a new item went in, I was posting it on Instagram..it was borderline over-gramming lol

For staging, I hung the round mirror, but I think I might see if the new owners want it.  It’s just so perfect for this spot.

When you are remodeling a house to sell, you have to know where to spend the money, and I am confident that the expense I incurred to make this ugly space into a true laundry room paid off, because the house sold in 4 days!  And! it sold for the highest price yet for the area. I am pretty excited to say the least!

On my next post, I will share the bathrooms.  They weren’t as bad as this laundry room, but they were in need of a major update.

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For the size of the house, about 1800 square feet, this kitchen was dinky comparatively to the rest of the house.  It was a galley kitchen that was dark with very little room to move around

It had two entrances to the kitchen.  This door from the formal dining room

And a door from the kitchen nook/den area {you can’t really see it in this picture, but it is right past the slider}

I wasn’t kidding when I said in my last post that this house had a ton of wallpaper.  At first I thought the herringbone flooring that was throughout the house was actual tile, and I was determined to save it… but it turned out to be vinyl.  That was a good laugh in the midst of the demo.

We took the dropped soffit out and gutted the kitchen. The wall and door in between the dining room and kitchen is now gone

So much better already

After all the walls were removed I was able to design a bigger more open kitchen.  But the one thing that was getting in my way was the slider. It really made no sense to have a slider, since it just went to a small side yard that looks into the neighbor’s house. So I took that out and put in a door with a glass panel for natural light.  Oh, and it has built in shades in-between the glass. Never thought I’d buy one of those type of doors, but you know what?  They are REALLY cool.  Now I want one of my own.

With that slider gone, I had a lot more room to work with to give this the kitchen the space it deserved.  And this is how it looks now

The dining room stayed in the same general area, but gone is the wall that cut it off from the kitchen.  I was also able to fit an island in, which makes up for the kitchenette area that I took out. The grey glass tile backsplash reflects the light coming from the windows that were blocked by the wall.  It just feels so light and airy now compared to the dark galley kitchen it had before.

Speaking of the island. I took a risk, and used reclaimed wood around the apron of the island

I didn’t now if potential buyers would like it, but I just thought it gave the traditional look of the kitchen a touch of rustic. I also painted the island a different color than the main cabinets.  It was suppose to be a tad bit more grayer, but in the end I liked it.

I went with GE Profile appliances.  It was their new slate color that got me.  It’s not so in your face as stainless steel can be.

The golf course view from the farmhouse sink is gorgeous. It makes doing dishes a little bit more enjoyable

I just love the light over the sink. It is from Lulu & Georgia.

I wasn’t able to get the microwave in the slate color due to the size of the trim kit I needed.  So I had to go with stainless steel. It is built-in to the pantry cabinets.  That opening you see to the right is the den, or I guess you could say family room.  I’ll share that room in another post.

I added a little pizzazz to the stove area and did the glass tile in a herringbone pattern. It is an inexpensive way to dress up your backsplash

Did you notice that there isn’t what I call “plug acne” in the backsplash?  That is because I always use under cabinet plugs instead.  I hate the way wall plugs can mess up the look of the tile.

Remember in the beginning I showed you the dark galley kitchen from this view?  It’s amazing how much bright and open it feels now

And this is the view standing behind the new kitchen island

You just never know if potential buyers will be on board with your design choices, and this time it paid off. The house sold in 4 days! It is humbling and exciting at the same time.  The new buyers loved everything about the house, and there is even a cash backup offer if this buyer falls through.  It is such a relief and a little surreal that it has sold already.  No complaints here, especially since I already have another big project started.

On my next post, I will show you how I took this sorry state of a laundry area

And transformed it into a real laundry room.   If you follow me on Instagram, {cre8tivedesigns} you already know by the numerous pictures I posted during the progress, that it is by FAR, my favorite room in the whole house.  You’re going to love it!

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I came up with this marble artwork DIY  last year for my daughter’s house.  Here is a crappy cell phone pic I took when they were sitting in my office, she eventually took them home and hung them above her nightstands in her master bedroom.

I framed her marble artwork in gold frames

Since I had two of the papers left over from my daughter’s project, {I bought extra in case I messed up} and I needed inexpensive large artwork, I decided this DIY marble artwork would be a perfect fit for the living room.  And I was right, because once I hung them on the wall, everyone kept complimenting what beautiful artwork they were. The best part is that they are so easy to make!  I of course didn’t take any pictures when I was frantically putting them together, but here is my written version on how I made them. It honestly took me a total of 15 minutes to do both of them. It’s that easy.

DIY marble artwork

Where to get the marble paper and frames

I purchased the paper from Dick Blicks here in San Diego, but you can buy them from their store online here.  They are called “Black Ink Thai Marbled Mulberry Papers”  They are 24′ x 36″, and come in a variety of colors, and run about $6 each. No two patterns are exactly the same because they are handmade, but that is what is cool about them.

I purchased two, 24″ x 36″,  silver painted frames from Aaron Brothers.  I waited for their by one get one for 1-cent sale.  The frames were $69.99 each, so for $70 I got two large frames.  Add in the cost of the paper, $6 each, and the total cost is $82 for two big statement pieces of art. Pretty darn affordable.

How to mount the marble paper 

I wouldn’t say I am a lazy DIY’er, but I do like to find the easiest route when it comes to DIYing.  So with that said, I’ll tell you how I mounted the marble paper to fit in the frame.  All I did was take the paper insert that comes inside the frame, {you know the one they display in the frame with the fake family on it?} and turned it over to the white side, and used it to mount the marble paper on.  I sprayed the white paper with spray adhesive, re-positional spray adhesive works the best, and let the glue set for a couple of minutes.  It is important to let the glue set, otherwise it will be too wet and soak through to the marble paper. I then folded over the marble paper on to itself, {not bending it to make a crease though} and lined up the top edge of the marble paper to the top edge of the white paper.  Then I slowly, very very slowly, rolled the marble paper on to the white insert paper.  The trick to getting the paper to lay smooth, is to roll out the marble paper on to the white paper a little at a time. I did about 1/4 of the paper at a time, smoothing out the bubbles as I went with my hand.  It’s a little tricky, and requires patience, so don’t rush it too much.  The paper is pretty thin, so be gentle if you have to pull it off the paper to re-position it. Don’t expect perfection on the way it lays, you will get areas that will want to lay funky, and you just have to go with it, and smooth it out as best as you can.  Once it is in the frame, you don’t even notice those spots, trust me.

Putting the marble artwork in the frame

Once the marble paper was adhered, I just laid the marble paper that I attached to the white insert paper face down into the frame glass.  Then put the hard backing piece on top of the paper and closed up the million clips to secure the back.  And that is it.  Easy, inexpensive and fast.

So what do you think of my marble artwork?  You game to try it yourself?

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The house is a 55 and over community, like the last one I remodeled.  It sits on the golf course and was in impeccable condition.  But nothing had been done to it since 1977, it was time to bring it into the 2016’s.

When you walked into the house, it had a dark and dated feeling. Popcorn ceilings, heavy drapes, lots and LOTS of wallpaper.  I kid you not, every room had some type of wallpaper.  There is a beautiful view of the golf course beyond those heavy drapes, and it wasn’t being taken advantage of at all

And this is how it looks after the remodel

We took down the wall in between the dining room and kitchen and gave it an open living concept.  Which also gave it the room a lot more light

I actually really liked the wallpaper in the dining room area {that mirror got to go home with me, and now resides in my entry} There was a door into the kitchen, so 70’s right? The dining wall made the kitchen really small, and cut off the view of the golf course and the natural light from those big windows. But look at all that light pouring in now with that wall gone

The original windows were retro fitted with energy efficient replacement windows. I loved the look and placement of the old windows, but they were single pane aluminum windows which weren’t very efficient.  This is the old view looking from the dining room area

And this is what you see now.  A new updated fireplace, new flooring and crown molding

The fireplace is one of my favorites. We didn’t demo the fireplace, but used the existing brick as our base.  We framed the front of it with metal framing so that it would be flush for the drywall and tile.  Here is a cell phone progress picture of what I am talking about

The drywall and mantel is installed at this point, but the metal framing went all the way up to the ceiling behind the drywall.

I think the tile really updates the fireplace. It is a Calcutta marble in a chevron pattern.  Don’t you just love the beefiness of the fireplace mantel? Can you believe that mantle is from Pottery Barn? Yep they sell fireplace mantels.  I purchased it on their Black Friday sale.  It is hollow {but real wood} and hangs with a french cleat.  The texture on it is a hand scraped,  Love!

We kept the original fireplace screen. The hearth is a pre-fab piece of marble, which saved me some money. They run about $250 for a 9′ piece with an eased edge, the installation of the pre-fab was $150. A slab would have been at least double that, plus the fabrication and installation.

The color on the walls is Sherwin Williams Alpca.  It is a very neutral grey, my go to color for sure.  I used a porcelain wood plank floor throughout the whole house.

Taking out the heavy drapes in the living room really made a huge difference. Sometimes, less is more.  With the wall gone, adding new flooring, paint, crown molding and a fireplace makeover it is now a more open, inviting and entertaining space.  I’ll take you through the kitchen make over next post.  You won’t believe the before…so 70’s

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He worked so hard on it, and he got the cabinet spot on.  I painted the front of the cabinet in a floral pattern that complimented the room {so I thought}

Let me preface, a couple of things about this bedroom.  I had this room painted from the original all pink, to a bright white.  The room faces north, and it gets a lot of shade from the landscape outside. It just felt gloomy.  I wanted to use pops of color against the white walls to brighten it up.  And! it is VERY hard to photograph, so I appologize in advance on the quality of pictures. On top of wanting a piece of artwork to hide the tv, my plan was to also add moldings on the walls from O’verlays.  I’ve always wanted to do something with their cool moldings, and I thought this room was a perfect spot. So you might notice them on the wall and then all of them off the walls in some of the pictures.  It was a learning curve to figure out the spacing, so that too took a couple of tries.

Ok, now back to the tv cabinet saga.  If you didn’t notice, the tv cabinet looks squatty on the wall.  I noticed it, and so did EVERYONE else who wanted to put their two cents in.  The whole look was not at all close to what I had envisioned.  And that floral painting wasn’t doing anything for the room. So I started over. I took off all the Overlay’s molding, I had the layout and spacing wrong, and decided to paint over the floral with a geometric pattern instead

Ok that was a bad idea. The whole squatty cabinet and my amateur art wasn’t working for me either. I knew what I had to do.  I had to go way bigger on the cabinet to get the look I wanted. And find a real piece of art.  Taking that cabinet down bummed me out, since my husband worked so hard on it. He was very understanding, and was fine with me starting over, thank goodness.  And I decided to use my handyman Carlos to make the cabinet this time, figured it would save my marriage I also had him put up the O’verlay moldings correctly.  And now when you open the door to the bedroom, this is what you see

Pretty swanky isn’t it?  No I did not paint that artwork.  I wish I could paint like that.  It is from Fall into London on Etsy.  I have always loved her art, and was so happy she let me buy the artwork in digital form so I could print it as big as I wanted on canvas.

I need to get the painter back out for touch ups from where I took down the old cabinet and molding, but dang, doesn’t it look good?  It is such a far cry from the previous two I tried.   So how did I make it open to view the tv?  Yeah, that took a lot of figuring out.  I didn’t want to cut the artwork to hinge it in panels.  And I thought about making it slide open, but that wasn’t going to work either.  In the end, the the thing that made the most sense, was to hinge it on one side.  To keep it flat against the frame when it was closed, we used magnets on the other side.  Here is the artwork fully open

Now granted, this cabinet is huge, it finishes off at 50″ x 50″. I had to make sure that when it opened, I had enough room to have the artwork lay against the wall.  And luckily I did.  I used a piano hinge for stability.  And the artwork itself is very light, so it opens with ease and doesn’t sag.

So cool right?  It is just as I had envisioned, just took me awhile to get it right. I still need to add something to the two panels flanking the artwork, but I don’t know what I am going to use yet

Here is the other side of the room that is pretty much done

I love how the artwork reflects in the mirror…and those Overlay’s are the icing on the cake.  I love the simplicity of the panels

Check out Daisy bombing my picture sneaking under the bed

The room could use some more styling, but honestly, I am just glad I have gotten this tv cabinet done, it was a thorn in my side trying for so long!  I was determined to make it work, and now that I did, I can concentrate on adding the finishing touches to the room. I am just so happy I FINALLY got the cabinet done and it is how I envisioned it.

For those of you who think they might like to use this idea, here is a little more information on how I ended up making it work.

To save money on buying an expensive frame, I bought this large picture at the thrift shop for $16,  knowing that I was just going to use the frame

I took the 70’s {?} artwork out of the frame and painted the frame high gloss black.

I uploaded the digital print I purchased from Fall into London for $55 to Up Printing, and had them custom print the size I needed on a rolled canvas.  That cost me $105

I took the canvas and frame to Michaels, and had them stretch it and mount it to the frame for $50 {which included a backing paper, so that when you open the tv the inside of the frame looks finished}

Then there is the cost of the wood for the tv cabinet frame, we used two 8 foot pieces, 1 x 4 in poplar, $35. You can use less expensive wood for the frame, I just like poplar because its smooth and easy to paint. The piano hinge was around $11.

We made a 50″ x 50″ box with mitered corners. Carlos attached the tv cabinet frame by screwing a board on the wall at the inside top, similar to a french cleat I guess you could say, and he put three “L” brackets on the inside bottom.  You can’t see “L” brackets in my pictures, they are hiding behind my frames I put on the inside shelf

The total material cost for the wood, frame, and artwork was about $300.  I got lucky, and my handyman Carlos did the work carpenter work for free!  What a nice guy.  {I think he felt sorry for me because I had been working on this for a year. Plus I give him a lot of referrals :)}

This way of hiding a flat screen tv with artwork can be modified to any size you want.  I used a large piece of artwork because it fit the room, but it can be used on a smaller scale, and you can save money and use one of your own photographs and get it enlarged.

It was a running joke in my family every time I brought up my tv cabinet saga, {insert rolling of the eyes}, but everyone loves it now, especially since they don’t have to hear about it anymore.  So what do you think?  Would you make one of these to hide your flat screen tv’s?  Or am I just the crazy one?

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