PROJECT WATERTON REVEAL - INTERIOR PART 1
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Welcome back! So I said I'd be back in a few days when I blogged about the exterior transformation, but instead, it's been 2 months. Sorry, it's been a little busy over here. So...without further adieu, let's take a tour of the new interior of this project. First stop, as you enter the front door, you are now greeted with a mudroom closet. This is a very popular design feature for today's homeowner as we all need a central place to organize shoes, backpacks, purses and the like. This used to be a typical entry closet with a shelf and rod and we stripped it, took the door out and created a wider and taller opening, added one shelf for storage above and a bench with open shelving on the bottom for shoe storage. The homeowner found this very modern coat and hat hook which we installed for them to hang the kids' jackets and backpacks on. Personally, I would have preferred installing multiple single hooks to maximize storage (I'm practical like that), but you can't dispute the clean look of the bar. My favorite part is the yellow stripes. It took a bit of convincing to add a fun pop of color to the entry since the husband would prefer an all white house if he had it his way.
As you walk into the house, it is now an open concept space. There used to be a wall between the kitchen and dining room and kitchen and living room. That wall was taken down to create one large living area which is much more conducive to today's lifestyle. Here is the living room now...
We completely updated the look of the fireplace. We had discussed removing the fireplace altogether, upgrading it with a gas insert, but ultimately decided to keep the existing fireplace and giving it a facelift. Not too shabby eh?
And during my recent visit, they finally got their TV installed so I had to take a pic.
Here's a quick side-by-side comparison of what that fireplace looked like before and now. Can you believe it? We removed the old mantel with legs, removed the brick colored tile on the hearth which we replaced with the same tile used to cover the brick. Above the tile, we framed out the wall to be the same depth as the tiled area and added drywall around the recessed niche and painted it the same color as the rest of the walls. The result is a very clean, modern look. Obviously, electrical was planned during the process. As you saw in the picture above, the TV fits perfectly into the niche as it was designed to fit a very specific size television. I will write a separate blog post outlining how we created this fireplace. Stay tuned!
Here's a view of the Living Room and Dining Room now... we installed two chandeliers side by side in anticipation of a 10 foot dining table that was being fabricated for the space. One chandelier would have been too wimpy!
Oh, did you want to see what the space looked like before compared to now?
And here's the new kitchen...
You can never go wrong with a classic white, glossy, subway tile, especially when you pair it with gray grout...so fresh!
And the white vinyl slider was replaced with a fiberglass French door. So glad we painted the door the same color as the kitchen island. Very sophisticated touch!
Here's a reminder of what the area looked like before...can't see a thing with that wall! In an upcoming blog post I will chronicle removing the wall that separated the kitchen...it was quite the adventure!
Moving away from the main living space to the bedrooms. First stop is their son's room. No major construction here. New paint, new trim around windows and doors, new baseboards, new entry door, new closet door and the focal point, a new chandelier chosen by the homeowner. Truth be told, we were all a little surprised by the scale of this light fixture. Still, very cute for a little boy's room.
And as you can tell, the new occupant is quite happy with his new space.
Down the hall is the "Queen's" room...again, no major construction, just new finishes and a beautiful glitzy chandelier to match the occupant's glitzy personality!
She too is very proud of her new room. I especially loved that when I went to visit, they both wanted to show me their spaces. They obviously don't realize I "lived" there before they did! Too cute!
And here's the Master Bedroom...
My favorite part is the new closet with double doors that open into a closet organizer which is a much more efficient use of space than the typical shelf with a rod.
One thing that we did in this house that made a huge difference was raise the height of all the door openings to 8'. Standard height for most interior doors is 80", we went with 94". This causes your eye to look up and makes the ceilings appear taller. Take a look at this side by side comparison of the before and after. We also used very contemporary trim without any details at 3-1/2" wide around all the doors and windows and 5-1/4" tall baseboards. This gave everything more weight. There's nothing worse than wimpy baseboards! The shaker style doors also continue the modern aesthetic.
Do you see the difference taking the doors up to the ceiling makes? This is a small house but the doors make you feel like you're in a much bigger space.
Okay, I will have to save the bathrooms for another blog post as this one is incredibly long as it is. Hope you enjoyed the tour so far. See you at Part 2 of this interior tour!
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