60's & 80's - A beautiful combination

From our 1911 Craftsman we moved across the lake to the dreaded land of suburbia, the eastside. The place I told my husband that I would move "over my dead body" now became our home. We bought a 1960's daylight rambler that looked like it had been lifted straight out of a trailer park. Seriously.

What it did have was a view of Bellevue, Seattle and the Olympic mountains on a big lot. It was in a good neighborhood with a great school. But it also had shag carpet, an inside BBQ in the party room (aka downstairs playroom), a bathroom that had a pseudo stripper pole as a divider for the toilet and vanity, and every inch was covered in wallpaper from the 60's and the mauve and blue variety from the eighties. It was a huge cosmetic interior and exterior project.

We were feeling brave from our last project. This would be easy. It was cosmetic after all. So what if we now had a baby. We could still do everything ourselves. That was our crazy mindset as we moved into the new house. Needless to say, our son rocked our renovation world.

We tackled it room by room instead of the whole house and we brought in a contractor to do most of the work. We started with the downstairs party room as it was in it's original 60's glory and I was scared of what might be living in the carpet! I can see it now - a family gathered around the indoor grill roasting marshmellows. That carpet had to come out and fast!

Once the downstairs was livable (not finished but livable), we moved upstairs to tackle the outside and main living areas. Here are a few before pictures.

The outside during the renovation. You can glimpse the original mobile home.

The upstairs living room fireplace. This brick fireplace is over six feet long. Lovely wood paneling. Imagine this fireplace downstairs with another two openings on the left for the indoor grill and firewood storage below. How they didn't burn the house down I'll never know.

The updated eighties kitchen. Notice the orange formica countertops with the oak cabinets and bay window. The backsplash was harvest gold with leaves imprinted in the tile. You can't see the harvest yellow linoleum floor that tied into the backsplash. This is the danger of following trends.

An example of some of the wallpaper in the house. Every inch, and I mean every inch, was covered. It took me weeks just to remove it all.

Our friends thought we were crazy. How could we have given up our beautiful old home in the city for this? They didn't see the potential in this old rambler.

Now they think we're geniuses.