A year later ... the "after" pics of the house renovation!

It's nuts to think we've been in the house for a year now. Nuts because there are still a few unpacked boxes tucked in corners and nuts because the walls are still largely empty. I'm not so great at this whole settling in and decorating thing, but I'm determined to get better.

I kept waiting to post "after" pictures, because I felt sure I'd get everything decorated and fixed up so I could show truly done pictures. I finally realized that that's going to take a while, and when I had a surprise visit from the family who used to live here, I decided I'd get the place as spiffed up as I could for them and would finally take some pictures.

The visit with them was wonderful. All three kids who grew up here came to visit. It was great fun showing them around, especially because we kept several things from their old bedrooms in tact. The daughter chuckled as I went on about all the "retro" stuff in the house that I loved, because it was all stuff she'd tried to get her mom to get rid of. We both agreed that it was a great thing that she didn't get rid of any of it, because I love it all so much! Just another sign that we were meant to be in this house.

Enough chit chat, y'all just really want to see the insides of the house, right? Let's get to it!

The front door is the perfect place to start, especially because it's one of my favorite things in the renovation. I never thought much about front doors, until I came across Crestview Doors. Then doors became all I could think about. My parents got the Langston doorlite kit (and a rad mailbox) for us as a house warming present. My husband had the awesome idea to put the windows down the center of the door, and it was perfect! I sprayed the escutcheon chrome, but we haven't been able to get new doorknobs yet. We painted the door the same soft aqua color that we used throughout the house. I never thought a door could make me happy every time I walk up to it, but this one totally does.

Man, what a difference ripping out cabinets can make! The space feels so HUGE and open, and it's awesome to come in and be able to see right out to the backyard. LOVE how it turned out.

Upper cabinets came down, and that made a huge difference. My inspiration for the kitchen was this picture of Frank Sinatra's kitchen Pam shared on RetroRenovation. We kept the original lower cabinets and countertop, and just added new paint and hardware. We put in a new vent hood and open shelving for everyday dishes. I love the tile, and the space feels ginormous - even though it's a galley. I actually really really love the galley. The light fixture over the sink was a $14 IKEA purchase to match the rad original light fixture in the breakfast area.

The laundry side of the room was also gutted (there was some water damage there) and built out to fit our washer and dryer. There's space to hang clothes and a cabinet for detergent, and a broom closet to the left. We keep our trash can and brooms/mops in there. Cleaning supplies above. It's kind of sad that this is one of my favorite spaces in the house, isn't it? I thought about pulling all the laundry out for pictures, but really - this is how it goes at our house. No need to pretend I stay on top of the heaps of clothes, folks. This is actually tidy for me.

   

We gutted the utility room and redesigned it for maximum efficiency. On this side, we put in a small mudroom kind of area with hooks for bags/coats and drawers for shoes. The three sections of pantry were custom built and outfitted with IKEA slide out shelves that are super handy.

   

The wife of one of Chris' co-workers had the brilliant idea to tear out the bookshelves in the living room and replace them with giant windows to match the rest of the windows in this part of the house. It made total sense and was one of the best things we did for the house. The contractor was able to match the frames almost exactly - I couldn't believe it.

 

Originally in bedroom 1 in the configuration on the left. We moved them to bedroom 2 (son's room) and consolidated them a bit. We *love* them.

  

Before, it was just a vanity, but we wanted to have sinks in this space instead of the shower area. The vanity design is based on a popular vanity design from the 60s. I love our metal rim sinks and faucets. The guys installing them just kind of chuckled at me "We've torn a lot of this kind of stuff out of homes, but never put it IN them!" That's just how we roll, fellas. Medicine cabinets above sinks and the cabinets below offer all the storage we need & make up for limited counter space. I actually prefer it this way - I hate having junk out on countertops.

 

This is in the room with the shower and toilet. We moved the sink out to the previous "dressing area" and had storage custom built for the space. The bottom left part is a hamper!

 

I could have gone more 60s and lest 30s in here, but finding affordable 60s-style tile was difficult. I decided to go with the classic subway/black and white action that I've always loved. It also feels weird to show a picture of our shower like this - and not "staged." Check out our shampoo! Look at our washcloths! Ehhhh!

 

Looking back at the kitchen all opened up now.

 

Aaaaan, the STUDIO! My Happy Place. A needlework wall on one side, space wall on the other. The couch and chairs came from a garage sale (for a steal!) and the work table was traded from a friend for sewing lesson (hey, Lauren ... we need to do those!). Love this space so much! 

There are lots more "after" pictures over on Flickr. Hopefully this will spur me on to getting the place decorated and more put together, but for now it's suiting us just fine. We love it here. The house has been amazing, the neighborhood is awesome, and we're still happy (even happier?) that we got this place.

Finding inspiration for the renovations

Don't fret. This isn't going to be renovation-only blog forever. And, actually, I'm going to be documenting some of the DIY projects I do for the house, so the "crafter" in Average Jane Crafter is not gone. I just want to share as much of the house stuff as possible, 'cause I always get a kick out of seeing other folks' befores and afters and because I'd like to have some kind of record for myself.

That said, as the renovation gets down to business, I've been compiling ideas, doing some online and in-person "browsing" and working my way through the seemingly endless list of decisions that need to be made. I never imagined how many things have to be picked out, how much stuff is out there to see and how hard it would be to decide on something as simple as bathroom faucets. My head is spinning.

I thought I'd share some of the resources I've found and am using to get inspired and save and organize what I've found.

Initially, I bought a giant stack of magazines, dogeared and tore out pages and put them in an accordion file. My main focus for inspiration and resources, though, has been online. I'm going to share a few web sites that are inspiring me and then a few online resources I'm using for gathering and organizing my ideas. Here we go:

Retro Renovation
When I started looking for inspiration for mid-century renovations, this was the first site that popped up. I instantly fell in love. Pam posts about pretty much everything related to mid-century design and aesthetic, with vast resources for finding anything you could hope to need in the renovation of a mid-century home. She's a prolific poster, and her readership is quite active, sharing their own renovation projects and resources. It's just my kind of community. And it's broken a habit of mine: aside from just subscribing in my RSS reader, I actually keep the site open in a tab in my browser so I can pop over and refresh and not miss anything. I don't want it to get lost in my bloated Reader. Be warned, when you pop over there, you may as well right off the next few hours, 'cause that's at least how long you'll want to spend there.

The Brick House
One of our designer friends pointed us to this blog, chronicling Morgan Satterfield's renovation of a mid-century cement brick house in California. She does things on a budge, so there's lots of great thrift-find inspiration and DIY projects, and loads of gorgeous pictures.


Aesthetic Outburst
I found Abbey's blog through a post on Houzz (more on that below) and feel in love with the look and feel of her place, especially since it's kid-friendly. I've fallen in love with the crafty side of her blog as well, so that makes it a bonus find!


So as I gather ideas for the house, I've got to put them somewhere, right? It's nice to be able to sort of bookmark things and go back and look at them all together. There are a couple of sites I've used to do this, and I owe my thanks to Diane for turning me on to both.

Houzz
I admit, I haven't spent tons of time on Houzz, but it was a great place for me to start and see lots of pictures of interiors so I could start to hone in on how I wanted things to look in our new place. I've always kind of known what my style is, but it's hard to put it in to words. With Houzz, I can browse hundreds of pictures and add any I like to an Ideabook so I can go back to them later. It's like being able to tear pictures out of one hundred magazines in one go 'round.


Pinterest
Diane posted about Pinterest a while back, and I jumped on the opportunity to grab an invite. I wasn't doing much with it, because of our move, but now it has become my go-to place for bookmarking things I find while searching online. I feel like it's somewhere between Tumblr and Delicious, both of which I've used. I like that, rather than Tumblr, I can divide my posts up in to categories (boards) so I can have something for the house and something for crafty stuff and something for space, etc. And since I'm such a visual person, I love that I don't just have lists of links (like on Delicious) but instead have a big grid of pictures. I need that. It's come in handy as I've browsed literally hundreds (ack!) of bathroom fixtures and lighting. Right now, my "For the New House" board is a mess of crazy bathroom fixtures, because I just couldn't make up my mind. But I did. And I'll share those choices with you soon.
I've set up a temporary home "office" on our back deck by the pool, and can work under the 30-ft pine trees, watch the woodpeckers and be on hand if the contractor or subs need me. These first few days of demo have been kind of hectic, but I imagine things will smooth out more as time goes. Pretty much all decisions/purchases have been made. Almost all the demo is done (pictures soon!) and from here on out, it's just building things back up. Stay tuned!

And now to introduce you to the new house

Also known as "why I've disappeared for the last 6 weeks or so" and "what I'll be up to my eyeballs in for the next few months."



As I mentioned in my last post so long ago, we've been in the process of moving. We had a very crazy eight weeks - all right during the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays - of getting our house ready to sell, finding a place in Houston and moving. Things rolled out muuuuuuuch faster than we had planned on, but it was good, because everything fell right in to place so seamlessly I can't imagine having done it any other way.



I'll try to sum it up quickly: husband got a job offer in Houston he couldn't refuse, I freak out at the thought of leaving Austin, my family, close friends and great neighborhood/school, we decide we'll try to live close to downtown Houston since that's where his office is, I scope out neighborhoods with Claire, but can't find anything that fits our safe/affordable/good neighborhood schools trifecta, we decide to pursue suburbs, I realize the only suburb I'd want to live in is the one where I can see rockets on the way to the grocery store, we focus our search on the Clear Lake area, we get our house all spiffed up and on the market and head to Clear Lake to scope out the area, our house ends up selling the first weekend it's on the market, we find a Dream Home in Seabrook, everything falls into place with coincidences and "signs" that are enough to make your head spin, we find a rent house one mile from our new house where we can live for a few months during renovations, we move down on New Year's Eve, kids love the new school, we love the new neighborhood, it's all good.

Whew.

If you'd told me three months ago that I'd be living in a new city, getting ready to start renovations on an awesome old house, I'd have laughed hysterically in your face. Oh, life, you're so funny with your curve balls!



And so here we are, in Seabrook, Texas. I'm in Space Geek Nirvana, the kids' school is amazing, we've already made some really lovely friends, and the house we bought is not only totally rad and a "dream house," but we also made a really wonderful connection with the sellers. More on that in another post (or three).



When we started looking down here, we found some great, cozy neighborhoods with fun older homes. One MLS listing had me intrigued. The pictures weren't great, but it was a 1961 ranch with a pool and - most intriguing of all - an art studio and darkroom. I've always wanted to live in a mid-century ranch, so I kept going back to that listing. When I first met with our Realtor, we previewed loads of homes before heading out with my husband the next day. After going through house after house after house, we headed over to this one. Just pulling in to the neighborhood was completely dreamy. Idyllic is an understatement.



When we walked into the house, it was ON. I liken it to looking for your wedding dress: you try on a bunch of dresses, and then the second you put on THE ONE, you know it is THE ONE. This house was THE ONE. It needed some updating, but the bones were incredible, and it had a great spirit about it. And then I walked into the studio. The glorious, amazing, jaw-dropping, can't-believe-it's-real art studio. My creative juices started boiling. I'm planning several posts on the studio alone, and the woman who designed it and worked in it for the last 30 years. Let's just say that I've never experienced kismet as strongly as I have with this home.



So today, I introduce you to THE ONE. We're planning some pretty big renovations over the next two months, so I'll be updating on that as well. We've never done a renovation before, so I'm a little nervous (ok, A LOT nervous) but I'm excited, too. We're taking a place we love and are just making it even more lovable. I'll share as many of the resources as I can, and welcome any tips/advice on renovating a mid-century home. We're working to keep it pretty true to its time period.

I've given you a sneak peek with some pictures here, but I put together a complete slide show over on Flickr. It's easiest to zip through the pictures that way, and I ordered them such that they take you on a full tour of the place. If you are interested in the notes I've made on the pics, you can view them in the set. I'll be keeping it updated as the renovation beings.