Circa 1998 - 2002, Part 2

After an exhaustive four years of renovation, the "worst house I'd ever seen" was now quite livable. In fact, it caught the eye of the nice people at Better Homes and Gardens and was featured in their October, 2002 issue.

We chose to renovate and decorate in an eclectic cottage style as it worked with our minimal budget and the style of the house. I'm not one for houses decorated in literal period style, so no Craftsman furniture for us! We collected and reused materials before it was easy and fashionable. We spent many weekends sifting through junkyards and antique shops for hardware, lighting and furniture.

The outside of our first home. Wish we could have repainted it, but it wasn't in the budget. You can get a little glimpse of the steep stairs up to the house. It was a workout just to get to the front door!

The finished dining room. The antique chest has moved from room to room and house to house.

The other side of the dining room that leads into the kitchen.

The finished living room. Small but comfortable.

Our inexpensive but highly functional kitchen. We could only afford Ikea cabinets and they turned out to be a great value for the price. The wine rack was something we added when we miscalculated the space in the kitchen. It turned out to be a great feature for all those late night projects.

Our master bathroom. This original space was scary with a capital S. It was a small closet bedroom at best. We needed another bathroom in the house and this was the only space where we could add one.

Because it was a dormer, the ceiling height was limited. To visually open the space we fashioned a shower curtain rod out of wire and attached it to the built in storage unit. I loved this room as it was very functional yet warm and cozy.

The office space at the top of the stairs. If you remember from the before pictures, this is where the fireplace stood. We had to use every ounce of space in this house as there wasn't a lot of storage. The built in bookcases and file drawers became a life saver.

What you can't see is the hallway leading to our master bedroom and our actual master. To keep the small space visually open we didn't have any doors except for the bathroom. Once you came up the stairs it was one big long room. Again, because space was limited we had to be creative about closets and storage. We used the eaves of the attic for 4 custom height french door closets.

This was the sunporch out to the patio. We added all the beadboard, repaired the windows and added lighting. When we bought the house this was the scariest lime green room I'd ever seen. The paint was almost neon.

This house was an incredible project and learning experience. When I look back I'm not sure how we survived it!

I hope you enjoyed the pictures of our first home. Later I will show you the before and after pictures of our next renovation project.