We did it! We are finally living in our newly remodeled 1970's era home and I am so excited to share all of our before and after pictures as well as some of the products/tips that we used along the way. Redoing a home is one of those experiences where it feels like it's taking forever in the moment but once you're done, it feels like it went so fast! We did the entire remodel as a family (except for the carpet installation).
The first day that we got into the house felt like an entire move out day. The people who lived in the house prior to us left a lot of stuff behind so we had to spend the whole first day emptying the house. Next, we tore out all of the carpet and flooring since it was in pretty rough condition. Honestly, the whole house was in pretty rough condition in terms of cleanliness, smell and dust. PRO-TIP: We tried to scrape the popcorn off of the ceiling in most of the rooms before we took out the carpet so that all of the debris could be rolled up into the carpet when it was removed. In the rooms that we didn't do this, we had to sweep and vacuum up all of the popcorn debris and dust which became kind of difficult.
We spent a lot of days and late nights working on this house and we truly would not be anywhere close to living here without our awesome family members who helped us along the way. Personally, I think I went through at least 20 rolls of frog tape prepping everything to be painted. I wish I would have kept track because it was a ridiculous amount of tape.
If you want clean paint lines I would recommend both of these brands below. We personally used both of these!
I want to jump into talking about each room because I think that will be the easiest way to break down everything that we accomplished! When we originally moved into the house, we moved into the guest room since it was the first bedroom/bathroom to be finished. The master bedroom that we live in now was actually the last room that we finished.
Guest Bedroom
Here is what the guest bedroom looked like when we originally got the house. It had an entire wall of built in cabinets and drawers opposite of the bed in this picture. I didn't get a picture of it before we started tearing it out but you can get an idea of what it looked like in the second picture.
The main things that we did to this room include: tearing out the entire wall of cabinets and drawers and paint the walls, trim, doors and closets.
Guest Bathroom
The first set of pictures is the tub/shower area. We ripped out everything and replaced it with an insert from Home Depot that I linked below. The shower curtain rod is also an awesome pick and has worked well for us and never fallen down.
Tub Insert: https://rstyle.me/+oK1V4wXSNUAaU5me73wXcA
Shower Curtain Rod: https://rstyle.me/+7qTY73NOUFtQvhMO8yqvHQ
The next set of pictures shows you how we ripped out the built-in cabinets in this room and it totally opened up the space. I plan to add some cute shelves above the toilet but we haven't gotten around to doing that yet.
We bought these toilet paper holders for all of our bathrooms and I am very happy with them: https://rstyle.me/+yJlhmg2D2f8JYCMEsdjp4Q
The sink area is pretty unique. It's a long and skinny room that actually had carpet in it (ew)! I have the before picture below that I took after we had removed the wallpaper, carpet and popcorn ceiling. Since we didn't want to replace all of the vanities in the house right away, my mother-in-law actually sprayed the counter tops with this appliance epoxy: https://rstyle.me/+9zCYrbf-UY08_Z1iRMT9Dg.
I think this might have to be a temporary solution because after living in the guest bathroom for a little bit, it seems that it has scratched a little bit and won't last forever. Depending on how long we stay in this house, we will eventually tear out the bulit-in vanity and purchase a new one like we did in the master bathroom.
Here is the final guest bathroom sink area picture! I love how the shiplap and recessed lighting turned out! I think that these mirrors from Overstock look great and I love the natural/beachy vibe that they bring to the room. The cabinets are repainted by yours truly and the handles are spray painted black by my mother-in-law!
The wall color is Sea Salt by Sherwin Williams! Pro-Tip: Home Depot can color match any Sherwin Williams color! Just ask the person behind the paint counter to color match the color and give them the color ID from Sherwin Williams!
Overstock Mirrors: https://rstyle.me/+xt7PLgnYYjmghcyD2IdQIw (These are 24.75x36.75)
Black Faucets: https://rstyle.me/+s0ixMcZ9N0_S8pR0tvr4Pw
Living Room
The living room is the biggest room in the house and had the most wood! If you know anything about 1970's era homes, you know that wood panelling was the in look! As you can see in the photo below, the orange wood is overwhelming! Check out that honkin' TV that was left behind too!
We are honestly so impressed with how the walls turned out. The color is Sherwin Williams Spare White and we sprayed it with the paint sprayer that I linked below. The board and batten look left behind is totally in right now too so that was an added bonus!
Paint Sprayer: https://rstyle.me/+sCXL6NK_4A6nRYjBFu21lw
Here is the real paint sprayer MVP, Barrett (My father-in-law)! He sprayed the majority of the house and the results are amazing!
Logan and I took this picture in the middle of the living room towards the beginning of the remodel. We focused on the ceiling first since we had to scrape it, texture it and paint it. As you can see we used a lot of tape and plastic. This doesn't even touch the amount of tape we used on every single door trim. That built-in desk behind us in this picture was torn out and we now have a couch on that wall! Check out those fans too! We replaced them with a shorter drop rod! When we were shopping for ceiling fans, I didn't realize how picky we are about the look of a ceiling fan. We thought that we would have a ton of options and styles that we liked but we really only ended up liking one and I linked it here: https://rstyle.me/+2nz7Sqk0mXcaUUsdRfJXQA
We have two of these in our living room and one in my office and the master bedroom.
We textured every single ceiling (for real) and used this texture gun from Home Depot:
Dining Room:
The dining room was fun since we left the built-in hutches and painted them black (Sherwin Williams Tricorn Black). Here is a before photo the day we got in the house with all of the leftover furniture left behind.
Here is my dining room (literally today). Did you catch that the black chairs are the same? We actually redid the chairs by painting them and recovering the cushions with drop cloth (shoutout to my mother-in-law for recovering them)!
I was so excited that I found this chandelier on Amazon because I was having trouble finding a chandelier in this style that would fit in this room.
Chandelier: https://rstyle.me/+qcCE0sOl9g7xRYJ8r7bsaQ
Table Runner: https://rstyle.me/+1Ee3lOL8Wk8lWTueJ6XIeQ
The built-in hutches were a fun piece that we left in! You can see what they looked like before in the first dining room picture. I decided to leave the top doors off and treat the top like shelves.
Here's an example of what I want to do with these shelves. I took this picture back before we even had floor in the dining room! I replaced the bottom doors and added some gold accent handles that I grabbed from Amazon! I love how they turned out!
Gold Drawer Pulls: https://rstyle.me/+mevpUy0ZG-5MGK5tqhOzBw
Entry Way:
The entry way was a sight. From the flooring to the wallpaper, this room screams outdated! We joked that this was the "peasant wallpaper" because if you zoom in it has some pretty interesting depictions of what look like farmers from back in the day and children scavenging for food. Shoutout to my mother-in-law for getting all of this wallpaper down. She is truly the wallpaper removal queen. She used an amazing wallpaper remover for the whole house and it definitely did it's job! I linked it below!
Wallpaper Steamer: https://rstyle.me/+x3-3a841K8o4fwrFp9N7Lw
Here is our entry way around Christmas time! We changed everything as you can see! The paint colors are consistent through the dining room and kitchen. We used Sherwin Williams Pure White on the chair rail and trim and Sherwin Williams Repose Grey on the walls!
I loved this entry way table from Amazon and my parents gifted it to me! I linked it below!
Entry Way Table: https://rstyle.me/+WlNzK8ArZ6BTJajvMvKx8w
The flooring that is in the entry way and the dining room is from Sams Club! We love how it turned out! This is also the flooring that we have in my office!
Kitchen:
The kitchen may be one of my favorite transformations! Since I love to cook and bake this is one of the rooms I spend most of my time in! As you can see from this before picture there was a long to-do list for this room! (I guess it was that way for every room to be honest!)
We removed the wallpaper, scraped the ceiling, removed all the doors and painted them, removed all of the cabinets and drawers and painted each one, removed the flooring, replaced the sink and stove top etc.
This picture shows you what it looked like when you entered through the garage on the first day.
Here is the after with everything painted from that angle! We got the tile from Seconds & Surplus so I can't link it here.
The stovetop that was left here definitely needed to be replaced! We found this awesome replacement that has been working great!
So far I have been loving all 5 burners and it's nice because the knobs are removable for easy cleaning!
Here's another angle of the kitchen! We have since replaced the gap between the two drawers in the middle. We were lucky to have some great appliances left behind that we didn't have to replace! The microwave and double-oven were both left behind and just needed to be cleaned!
Half Bath:
There is a cute little half bathroom in the kitchen that we had fun redoing! If you look at the first "before" picture under the kitchen section, the door to the immediate left is the half bath.
My wonderful mother-in-law sprayed this countertop with the Appliance Epoxy that I linked in the Guest Bathroom section. It has held up well since this is one of the least used bathrooms.
Here is what it looks like now! We haven't replaced the faucet but we may want to do that at some point! As you can see, we painted the vanity cabinet the same color as the hutches in the dining room! I also used some of the leftover gold drawer pulls in here too!
Here is the wall above the vanity and sink area before:
We added some shiplap to this wall as well and replaced the light fixture! We tried a different light fixture from Amazon that ended up not working out so I went with this one and I am so happy with the result! I linked this cute light fixture below! The mirror is from Target and I am absolutely in love with it too!
Gold Light Fixture: https://rstyle.me/+_w5p4KFQ709VbnOHJopNhw
Black Round Mirror: https://rstyle.me/+V_FrL6RonxxHnHjrqZn_oQ
There was another cabinet above the toilet just like in the guest bathroom and we tore that out to add a more open feel to this small bathroom. You can see in the mirror reflection that I added some cute shelves above the toilet!
Master Bedroom:
The master bedroom was one of the last rooms that we completed. We finished this room while living in the guest room.
Here is one of the before pictures that I got of this room. This was after we had scraped the ceiling and pulled up the carpet.
Look at that weird half wall that is in between the bedroom and vanity/bathroom area! We definitely needed to do something about that so my lovely father-in-law built the wall up and made it into a "normal" wall and doorway to the bathroom area.
Here is the wall that he built! It doesn't even look like the same wall/room! I think we will eventually get a barn door that we will install on this wall that will open towards the chair (which we will move).
I added an accent wall to our bedroom for fun! This is Sherwin Williams Peppercorn and I love how it turned out! This is the wall that our bed sits on now!
And here is our bedroom now! This room has definitely come a long way!
Mater Bathroom:
This is the most recent room that we have "completed". There are still a few things that we want to do in this room. This before picture is after we had already removed the light fixtures, the mirror and the wallpaper. We ended up tearing out this built-in vanity and purchasing a new vanity to go on this wall.
Here is what it looks like now! We added recess lighting just like in the guest bathroom and I love how it turned out. We bought this vanity online from Costco. I don't think it is available anymore so I can't link it below.
These mirror are the same as the ones in the guest bathroom but in black!
Overstock Mirrors: https://rstyle.me/+xt7PLgnYYjmghcyD2IdQIw (These are 24.75x36.75)
The floor is from Seconds & Surplus too! We got the faucets from Amazon as well!
Black Faucets: https://rstyle.me/+4vxfMKv0iPtQOomAcxIGLw
Here is the toilet and shower area in the master. The shower area that was previously in there was walled off as you can see in the after picture. We ripped out the cabinet above the toilet to open the room once again and also tore out the tub.
We plan to add shelves in the open area in front of the toilet to the right of the shower. I think we will eventually add a glass door to the shower too. For now, we just use a shower curtain with weights at the bottom. If you have a shower pan like this and you want to use a curtain, you definitely need shower curtain weights. I linked them below because we are happy with the ones we got on Amazon.
We also ordered these shower walls that turned out great! They look like the wall is tiled but it's just a wall insert. I also linked the shower pan below. MAKE SURE you order the correct drain configurations. We ordered a left drain for this bathroom. We still need to replace the fan too.
Shower Curtain Weights: https://rstyle.me/+xUL_il3ppJMcJAKtrgyWEA
Shower Walls: https://rstyle.me/+L57DSzP38gKXjKZgoGWdDQ
Shower Pan: https://rstyle.me/+zWUKQehHbvshx5tMTeT4QA
This is us in the thick of the renovations! The dust and paint fumes were no joke.
Looking back on this experience makes me very grateful for all of the support we have in our lives! All of our family members contributed in their own way and we truly would not have been able to accomplish anything at this scale without all of their help! Another crazy thing: we still have an entire sunroom and a 500 square feet "back room" that we have closed off and haven't even touched yet. I'm not sure what we are going to make of those rooms but I am excited to get around to it one day!
Here is a small list of tips and tricks I would suggest for anyone that wants to re-do an older home on a budget:
Re-use as much as you can! We spray painted all of the door knobs and most of the door pulls from gold to black. We also repainted some of the built in cabinets/vanities!
If you are using a paint sprayer, paint the trim first and then the walls. We painted the walls first and then the trim. This resulted in some "over-spray" on the walls that we ended up having to come back and fix with a roller. Trust me on this one. You will save touch-up time later.
If you are painting wood paneling or any wood features (like doors and trim) USE OIL-BASED PAINT. The sheet rock walls did great with WATER-BASED PAINT.
PRO-TIP: if you get oil based paint on your skin use OLIVE OIL to remove it. (I wish I would have learned this sooner because paint thinner on your skin is so toxic!)
I said this earlier: If you like a Sherwin Williams paint color, you can get it color matched at Home Depot. Just tell them the color ID and they will color match it for a much more affordable price.
Another product that I would recommend that we personally use in our new home:
- Eufy Security Cameras: We have 8 total outdoor cameras and one doorbell camera at our gate. I linked the original set that we bought and then we just bought additional cameras to go along with this set.
If you have any questions about our remodel, comment down below or email me: tifulann@gmail.com
XO,
Taylor Ann
AKA Tiful
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