Tuesday, November 1, 2016

White and Neutral Dinning Room

Hello Fall,

Oh how I love fall!

And more than that, I love to share tablescapes.

Today I am sharing a tablescape that I created in just a few hours 
in my dining room.  I decided to take the candles from my bedroom
and use them in this tablescape.  I also love old silver.

Silver, Fall, Dishes!!!!

I just love these all together.


Here is that fun tablescape, with whites and neutrals.
The dishes were my grandmothers, who lived in Munich, Germany.
My mother and father brought home from a visit to Germany
sets of animal dishes, enough to put dishes around the top of the kitchen
wall, with matching platters.  Fish and animals, I also have a set of
fish dishes that I use in our camp trailer.  Ha, ha, who can 
go camping without china!


My dinning area is small, but we can sit 6 comfortably.
I chose to only set the table for 4 today.


Old candles that I cannot part with in gold, browns and creams.
My hand blown pumpkin.
And a pumpkin wrapped in book pages.


My mothers salt and pepper shakers, and the butter dish.
I use the butter dish everyday, it sits on the kitchen counter, and love to
uncover the butter and think of mom.  What did make me sad was, she
used a plastic dollar butter dish all the years she was alive, and this butter dish was
only used for special occasions.  I think of life in a different way.  Use these
beautiful items in your everyday life!!!!
You only live once.


This is my favorite plate, the fox plate.
I didn't realize I had a fox plate until I took these out again
in September.  What!!! I know, so funny, but how lucky am I to
have him.



This is the quail plate, I was lucky enough to get a set of mom's Michelangelo 
flat ware.  These look gorgeous even if they aren't silver.  I also used  silver chargers, 
and a brown set of gorgeous plates under these animal, bird dishes.


I can't even remember when I bought this face, he has hung on my wall for years
in the family room.  When I repainted it this summer, my hubby said, 
hey lets change whats on the walls, it is so busy, and scale down a bit.
MMMM, So smiley didn't get back up on the wall, but he sure looks good here.


The boar plate has such a funny story to it.  As kids we would set the table
on Sunday or special occasions with these dishes, as mom did use the 
dishes often in our lives.  Us kids did not like the boar plate, and we would always
put it on someone else's place setting when we set the table.
Alas, my dad always got the boar plate!  He wasn't there to set the table!
On Sunday after church, he came in, dinner was ready, and
sat down to the table, exclaimed, Why do I always get the boar plate!!!!!

Needless to say, we repented after that, Dad got a better variety of
plates to eat off of, and the boar plate stayed in the cupboard more often.
I still love to use him, if not only for great memories!


I love to intertwine silver with all my things around the house.
My house is on the cozy side, not much extravagance here,
but over the last 3 years I have been collecting silver,  you know it can
be obsessive!  But here is one of the platters I have found, with feet
and the white and cream flowers in a white pitcher fit perfect here,
with candles, pumpkins, and acorns with leaves and stems.  


I have used these colors for years, and each time I pull them 
out I just feel so comfy! 


The gold goblets are a favorite of mine, and just this year
we found these water glasses in Cabo San Lucas while we
were shopping.


Sliver Chargers!!


I just added these orange napkins to the linens.
I'm so excited about them, Target.


The last plate on the table is the pheasants.

These plates have just a touch of green in them.
I love the combination of browns with just a touch of green.

Well, that completes the table.

The China cabinet was added last year to the dinning room.
It was my mothers too.


It was wood, and I grey washed it.
I will post the before and after soon.
It has been a fun addition to the dinning room,
even though it is pretty large.



My buffet is small, and really looks small with this huge
silver coffee tea set.  
I love pictures of Europe, and as we have traveled
the world we add a few more pictures to the house.
The tablecloth my grandmother embroidered.
An just last year I was able to bring home my mother's silver
server set.
I found the silver candlesticks in Georgia on one of
our trips to the mountains.


This completes the kitchen/dinning area in my home.


I always wanted a serving area, with covered silver serving dishes.
I have finally found enough to fill this small cabinet top.


I love the combination of these together, and hope that I will be able
to find more of these covered dishes.
I added the mallard duck plate to this serving area.
Do you love the light bulbs?
Just a fun twist with the silver/glass look to them


The tiny little picture is handpainted of poppies.
One of my moms favorites.


On the extra chairs in the dinning room I added
some pillows.  At the corner of this pillow
are three broaches.  They are from my moms and mother-in-laws
jewelry collections.  
I love just the little touch of bling.


Both pillows are new for this year,
I made the quail pillow from some leftover
fabric I had, and a the so blessed was a gift.


So glad you could stop by and share my dinning area with me.

Hope you had a fun browse!

Ciao,

Robin

Monday, September 26, 2016

Pepperdine Flip

Pepperdine is probably by
far our easiest flip.

I think that from now on, this is the type of home we will
look for and we also liked the area.
Very nice neighbors, of course, how can I say this,
all the neighborhoods had great neighbors.
But this one especially did.




We really only had to paint, new floors, and update kitchen 
cabinets and bathroom cabinets.  In the end we did 
need to replace the HVAC.  We decided to replace the old
appliances and kitchen counter-tops and backslash.

The outside did get some updated paint colors on the
trim and front of the house.
I really wish all flips were this easy.

It could have been done in 3-4 weeks,
but alas the painters took way to long to paint the 
inside of the house.  It took 6 weeks.
Here are the before pictures.


Dining Room

Family Room


Kitchen
We took out a small corner of the wall here
so it would open the kitchen and breakfast
area to the family room



Kitchen
All the cupboard doors came off
we created a shaker door front on all the doors
and the drawers.


Master Bedroom

Master Bathroom


Now the finished house

This honestly is one of my favorite flips.
I wish we lived in this cute house,
it was sold to a cute couple expecting their first baby.


Here is the entry.

We installed beautiful bamboo flooring, which I have recently picked for
another house we are working on.
They are dark but not too dark,

All the walls were painted in Sherwin Williams Mindful Grey.
White trim and white cealings



The entire house flows,
as we ripped out all carpets, and only carpeted the bedrooms.
Everything else is in this beautiful bamboo flooring.
We bought the light fixture on a closeout at lowes
it really is an outdoor light, and had glass in all the sides,
but as we moved it one day, one of the glass panels broke,
I was heart broken, but then decided to take all the panels out of the
fixture and hang it in the dining room.
I love how it turned out!


The family room turned out so nice.
New fan light,  these flips are in the south, so most people
really want fans in their rooms.
We painted the fireplace surround white, and it lightened up the
whole room!
We also had the fireplace bottom tiled with the leftover tiles
from the bathrooms.  Love how it turned out.
All outside doors had to be replaced,
there was rotting around them all.


Here is a different shot of the family room, as a regular photo doesn't show how big
the room actually is, and that it opens to the dinning space and kitchen.
I love the bay window that opens to this family room with 
a space for the table.
The door that is closed in the bay window area goes into the  laundry room
and a door to the outside as well.


The finished kitchen!

Wow!  love how these cabinets turned out!  They were alot of work!
It took 2 of us 2 days to reface them, and fill all the holes and edges
around the outside of the doors and drawer fronts.
We had granite installed and then we installed marble subway tile 
backsplash.  There were 78 cabinet/drawer pulls for the 
entire house.
A tip:  I found these new cabinet pulls from a webside
99centknobs.com

They worked great, and I had a few left over for a different house.



The opposite view of the kitchen that looks into the family room.
We painted the cabinets a Sherwin Williams dark grey.


Breakfast nook,



Kitchen with new appliances


Master bedtoom, also has a bay window in it.
Used the original fan.


Master Bathroom
The new faced cabinets with new drawer pulls.
Framed the original mirror.
I spent a full day strpping the wallpaper from this room!
New light fixture.



We pulled out the bathtub, there is a bathtub in the hall bathroom
and put in a shower, I had the contractor tile this and asked him to stack the tiles
instead of off set the tiles.  I really like the contemporary look.


Hall bathroom with the tub,

Again here is the front of the house, we added some corbels, painted it grey, new light
new front door, and painted the shudders black.



This house sold the second week it was on the market.

It was truly a joy to work on this house,
I wish all of our flips were this easy!!!!

Have a great day!

Robin






Monday, August 29, 2016

Valley Spring Flip

Valley Spring,
mmmm, how should I share this?
I am wondering, it had some incredible
challenges, so I will share them all!




Valley Spring looks like an ordinary Ranch style home,
and pretty much it is, but the front window makes
the whole house, and I would live in this house hands down finished.
But first we must look at it before the flip.

Inside Kitchen looking into now the dining room

This is the original kitchen, without all the cabinets,
I should have taken those pics.
Pulling the cabinets out was a no brainer.

They were the original cabinets from the late 60's built
home.  The home was also a custom built home,
and the load bearing walls were quite un-normal.
The wall to the right we pulled completely out.

Inside the now dining room looking into the Kitchen
all the cabinets have been removed

You can see that the kitchen floors were tiled later,
so the floor had to be completely removed.
The vinyl floor in the dining room where I am taking
the picture was covered with laminate, that
we took out and will use on some other flip.

Inside the now dining room looking towards the kitchen

In the dining room we also took this wall out as far as the hole
in the ceiling.  It was at that point where
the rest of the house was sitting, so a very load bearing
short wall.

Living room

We didn't change much here, just paint,
but when the entire house is finished, and the kitchen put
completely together, it does make a big difference in this room.
There also was a pocket door from the living room to the
dining room, which when we took it out, and because it was
part of the original plan, it had a header and opened the living
room wall up fabulously!

Kitchen

At the far wall are 2 cabinets that came with the house.
I will show you where we reused these in the kitchen.

Back yard
Front of House
Front of House

Hall Bathroom

This bathroom was so big, why wasn't it the master bath?
So crazy how bathrooms were built in the 60's.
The left wall with the cabinet had a closet that opened into the
room next to this room.
We will show you how we used this space,
and closed off the space where the sink is here on the right
and made it part of the master bathroom.

Master Bathroom

Here we have taken the sink out,
but.......
We also took out all of this tiling.
Was this an easy feat? Absolutley NOT!

It too an entire week to demolish the 2 bathrooms,
we gutted them, and pull up the kitchen floor.
Brutal!!!!


Master Bathroom

Now the Transformation 



The eaves were painted,
brick now lines the walkway with plant edging.
New roof installed and the shudders painted too.




Beautiful front window now painted and glazed and
a fun wreath on the front of the house.



Front window inside and out!


Living room now finished.
Paint - Sherwin Williams Mindful Grey
with an accent wall SW Sea Salt
Just a SW standard white for all the trim

Flooring is from Lowes
It is a wood looking vinyl.






You can now see how the new kitchen cupboards wrap
around the pulled out kitchen wall and now become part of the
open concept living room/kitchen.



New Front Door

Next is the changes that we made in the kitchen,
remember it was gutted and a wall removed opening
the kitchen to the dinning area and living room.





The Kitchen now feels like twice the space!
We had to have a post at the end of the
kitchen opening where the butcher block now is.
This is where the beam ended for the opening in the original
galley kitchen.



This is a better view of the kitchen.
We used the same wood look flooring to make the
rooms flow and all look like one big space.
This is where the kitchen cupboards wrap around the
corner of the kitchen.





We purchased the cupboards from Home Depot.
Entire cost of the Kitchen cupboards was $3,800
New Stove and Microvave
Lowes now carries in stock butcher block.



Butcher Block



We had originally planned to make all the counter tops butcher block,
based on what the Lowes designer had told us the size of the butcher block
size came in. However, unless it was special ordered, 9 feet was not available,
So, learn from us.  Lowes butcher block only (in stock) comes in 8 foot sections,
Because of this we put granite in, and it cost us $1,800.



In the end, this really cost us a big part of our profit.
But was the only solution that was fast.
Here are the 2 cabinets that were originally in the dining room
of the house, I painted them white to match the rest of the kitchen
and to be honest, these cabinets are what make the ambiance of the kitchen.
This is a great addition.
In my original pictures I'm not sure if it showed the sliding glass doors,
Maybe we had them covered because we were chiseling ceramic tiles,
but we replaced them with french doors,
and it gives such a great look to the back yard of the house.




Now this table is a charmer!
We found it on the side of the road all beat up, original
color was black.  When all my little jobs were
done, I started working on this table, sanded it,
Dana replaced one of the short lets, it was 
missing, and then painted and stained it.

Pretty nice for FREE!
Found these chairs for $30 each.



The table helps with the feel of the kitchen.



This is the master bedroom, all the bedrooms we 
just spruced up the original floors and painted walls.
This dresser was left in the outdoor shed,
and I painted it with leftover paint from some of our other houses.



The master bath turned out killer!!!!
After removing all the original walls and there was 2 feet of extra 
unused space behind the shower, and we brought into this bathroom
the space from the hall bathroom where its original sink sat.
(The original master bathroom floor space fit only one person
like an outhouse!)
There now is a large shower, double sink, and the toilet!



The hall bath was made smaller, only taking out the space of the
original right sink, and pulling in the closet space from the left
side of the room.  We did not put the old cabinet doors
back on the cabinet in the wall, but left it open for towels and toilet paper.




It still turned out to have some nice open space.





The laundry room stayed the same, we took out old metal cabinets
and just left it open, the new owners can either put up a bar to hang clothes
or add nice cabinets.


Hallway



2 nd bathroom attached to the hallway.





The trim was painted SW  Iron Ore,
now here too I thought we were ordering a dark grey color
and it turned out rust. It ended up looking fine on this house, and
I painted the back shed the same color, but I had really wanted
a dark grey.  A few weeks later I found my swatches and SW does
have a dark grey called Iron Ore.  What happened?
Still not sure.






The back yard.
We replaced the laundry room door with a french door with windows,
this was left from one of our other flips, so it only cost the time
to put the door in and paint it.  It gave the small laundry room space more light
and I really liked that about that small room.



We bought the house at $46,500.
We thought it was a great deal, until we had to replace all the plumbing,
electrical in all the kitchen, replaced the roof, new kitchen, 90% of the
flooring, I wanted to change all the doors, but was not in the budget,
nor were expensive cabinets for the master bathroom.

Even at all that, we put in
We went under contract in 3 days on the market for $107
But alas, the appraiser we got only appraised it at $99
So, for 3 months work we only profited
$10,000.  So many variables came that kept bringing the
profit down, if however, we had been appraised at $107, we
would have profited $17,000 which would have made
the 3 months a better profit.

We are learning about flips for sure,
and what type of houses to buy.
This wasn't the best buy, but we didn't go in the
hole either.

Live and do better next time!

Ciao!

Robin