First Home Before & After {Interior}

Warning, some of the following "before" images are graphic. Continue reading at your own risk.

Our first home, all 900 square feet, and let me tell you it was a steal.

Then again, maybe the previous owners should have payed US to take such a headache off their hands.

As you can see the interior was, well...interesting to say the least.

Hubby and I renovated this house, entirely on our own, top to bottom (with the exception of the plumbing that was replaced under the crawl space, performed by an experienced professional) and helping hands from friends and family from time to time.

Let me apologize for some of the photo quality. I discovered these long lost "before" pictures, scanned them into my computer and started this post!

First things first, GUT THE ENTIRE HOUSE!

Below, you can see the climbing wall of field stone that surrounds the hand made wood stove, dark wood paneling glued to concrete cinder block construction, mismatched ceiling fans and if you look close enough,  parquet vinyl floor complete with a mis-matched patch of vinyl in an equally repulsive pattern.

Since the exterior walls are concrete, which we found out after stripping off the paneling, hubby applied a mesh netting and hot mud drywall compound directly to the concrete. Hot mud dries practically as hard as concrete and can not be sanded. So you have to apply it properly. It comes in varying dry times from 5 minutes to 45 minutes. Very useful stuff! You could not tell they weren't drywall! Drywall texture was applied over the hot mud and painted.

Interior walls were insulated for sound proofing, drywall was hung and finished.        

 We tiled over the hearth with Travertine and replaced the wood stove with a cast iron pellet stove.

Hard to believe it's the same place!

Sadly the wall furnace had to go. We put in an arch between the living and kitchen rooms and moved the fridge to the other side of the kitchen. The old wall furnace chimney hole was removed and patched but not yet in this picture.

All that hard work was so worth it!!!

Below is the doorways to the two bedrooms on the right and the bathroom is on the left. More lovely paneling.

You can't see in the picture but the doorway to the second bedroom on the right is only about 24 inches wide, not a typo that door was only 2 feet wide.

So the doorways were all re-framed and re-aligned, we also pit in a lighted nicho.

We replaced the carpet in the bedrooms with more hardwood.

We should win a prize for the worst kitchen, EVER!

Notice the lack of cabinets and counters?

We had a vision,  right???

More dark and dingy, anyone? 

Not anymore.

 Even though the walls take on fluorescent yellow vibrancy in the photo below, the actual color is more creamy than yellow as in the lower left hand portion of the photo. Light plays such an important role with color. But it doesn't even matter considering the former condition.

So much better!

We installed hickory cabinets, new appliances, and tiled the counters with granite.

 Notice the front edge of the counters are also granite. We have seen so many granite tiled counters with a wood trim on front. Reason being that cut granite has a very rough edge. We used a hand held grinder to smooth the edges and I love how it turned out!

On the kitchen used real Saltillo tile from Albuquerque, NM. Hand made, sun dried and nothing like the thin uniform ceramic you see in the store.  Thick grout lines are a must,  I used nickles to space them.  Hubby did the cutting and measuring. I picked out each and every tile, since they vary from yellow to dark orange, you have to make sure they look good next to each other. Love the rustic charm and warmth they give off.  

I think the worst part was the demo. It was just so gross!

I don't know what was worse the black widow spiders or the mouse droppings.  Miraculously, there were no live mice since there was nothing to eat as this house sat vacant for quite some time. Hindsight is 20/20 and if we EVER take on such a project again, we will have pest control come in first to take care of any squatters.

Living in progress, please disregard the clutter on the counters and fridge.

Even though there are no windows in this pass-through kitchen, it's very bright.

Here we are at the bathroom, it pretty much speaks for itself.

Gutted and now brand spanking new! Since we removed the window in the shower, there is a new skylight. If you time you shower just right, the Sun would stream down on you, quite lovely.

Due to the position of the toilet "drain", this tall narrow backed, ah hem, decorative, toilet was the only one that fit, and by fit, I mean the wall was notched out so the tank lid would fit.

The bedroom was more of the same...

There was no perfect solution here. The electrical box above could not be easily relocated, so it is hidden behind the picture. It is an odd closet configuration but necessary to increase closet space while maintaining usable square footage. The wood looks orange here, but is not.

All in all we replaced...EVERYTHING! Walls, floors, windows, fixtures, wiring, outlets, switches. Hubby ran the rope and I assembled every. last. outlet. and. switch. OUCH is that rough on the hands!
Insulation, drywall, hardwoods, interior doors, tile flooring...you name it, we did it.

 We had to be creative at times, you know how it is nothing is square, unforgiving concrete (did you know concrete gets harder as it ages? this house was built in 1950.) You always uncover the un-expected.

Not much in the way of decorating at this point, but Rome wasn't built in a day, right?

 Hope you enjoyed the journey as much as we did!

But we didn't stop here, we put on an addition and renovated the exterior as well. We'll save that for another post or two. I'm worn out just thinking about it.

Thanks for stopping by.

Great places to link up to

FridayTatertots and Jello, Miss Mustard Seed, Funky Junk Interiors, All Things Thrifty ,Fingerprints on the Fridge, Remodelaholic Saturday

Be Different Act Normal, SundayI (Heart) Naptime, DIY Showoff ,, MondayBetween Naps on the Porch,  Skip to My Lou, Craft-O Maniac, Sumo's Sweet Stuff, Midwestern {sewing}Girl, Thrifty DecorChic(1st Monday of Month),Tuesday Carolyn's Homework, Tip Junkie,, Home Stories a to z , My Uncommon Slice of Suburbia Ginger Snap Crafts Wednesday Southern Lovely, Wicked Awesome Wednesday, LiLLuna,  Blue Cricket Design, Wow Us Wednesday, Thursday Somewhat Simple,The Shabby Chic Cottage, House of Hepworths,  Delightful Order, Crafty Scrappy Happy,