Then & Now: Out With The Old

In some previous posts, I’ve mentioned that there have been a few changes in the Fine-Whatever world.  And in good faith, I’ve been promising to provide more details. I’ve decided that the best approach to doing so is a series of posts I’ll be calling “Then & Now”. There will most likely be four or five (maybe six) posts in all and they will roll out at a pace of about one a month. The posts will be different from my usual fair since they won’t have much of a fashion focus. Those of you who enjoy home improvement before and after stories may find this post and a future one “In With The New” interesting. The next one in October will be about the blog itself (it’ll be my fourth blogaversary) and another will share my transition to natural hair color. There are a couple of other topics that I’m still mulling over.

Just about a year ago, The Husband and I began to entertain the idea of buying our “retirement” home. We’d both been wanting to move away from Los Angeles for some time.  However, not wanting to uproot our children while they were still in school, having responsibility for our respective mothers’ care as well as my work location in Downtown Los Angeles keep us anchored in the northwest part of the San Fernando Valley. In the last couple of years, both of our mothers have passed and last September, our youngest started his senior year in college. So with the plan of my retirement in the Spring of 2020, we began to imagine “making the move”.  But first, the story of where we’d be moving from.

Mind you, we’d “downsized” just four years earlier.  That was when we sold our 4-bedroom single-family home of 12 years and bought a 4-bedroom townhome that was only 100 sqft smaller in size.  The downsizing was not so much about the physical size of the place we would live in but more about finances and time spent on upkeep.   We’d set our sights on an area not far from where we’d been living but where real estate prices were/are a bit less and there were/are several townhome complexes.  Since townhomes typically cost less than single-family homes, we were hopeful that we could still enjoy about the same interior space and rid ourselves of the expense and time of maintaining the exterior spaces.  Our prior home was on a 17,000 sqft lot and we had a pool.

We found a place that met our size needs, the location was great, and the complex was well-maintained.  However, the complex was about 40 years old and we wound up buying a unit from its original owners … who had not done any remodeling in those 40 years … and who were smokers.  The place smelled like an ashtray.  In House Hunters fashion, we would refer to the place as the “Smoke House” when we were still considering whether or not to buy it.  We’d expected that we would need to freshen any place that we bought, but with this place, we wound up doing a top-to-bottom redo before we moved in.

The really great thing about this post is that it has practically written itself from here on.  I had not yet started this blog back when we did this move and renovation, so I’m a little limited with the before photos.  The ‘before’ ones in this post were taken during the home inspection that happened a few days after escrow had started.  The ‘after’ photos were the ones taken for the listing when we decided to sell the place this past November.  I’ve matched the before and after photos as best as I could and you should be able to understand the changes that were made.  Further on down, I’ve included the floor plans of this townhouse as well.

Although The Husband and I hired a general contractor for this remodel, we were the designers and selected all of the colors and finishes ourselves. Our contractor was a gem and offered a few suggestions as well that we were grateful to take. As much as I’d have liked to have had the “we did it ourselves” bragging rights, we (and our kids) didn’t want to live through another major remodel. We had done so at our previous home and this time we wanted the place to be “move-in ready” when we moved in.

1st Floor

Going along as you would if you stopped by for a visit, we’ll start out as you’d come through the front door and enter the living room.  The brick on the fireplace wasn’t that bad but the bulky mantel and chunky hearth had to go.  The carpeting you see in this room was also throughout the place and it was a faded mauvy/salmon color.  All of the walls were also the same beigy color.  Not obvious in the photos is the popcorn texture on the ceilings, skimpy trim moldings, and the lack of recessed lighting.

All of the carpeting was removed and we had a mix of bamboo and tile flooring installed. Downstairs, the living and family rooms both got the bamboo and the kitchen and dining room got the tile. We removed the raised hearth and refaced the fireplace with a dimensional tile. The ceilings throughout were smoothed and we added crown molding in several rooms. In the living, three different banks of recessed lights illuminate the fireplace and the wall behind the sofa as well as provide general lighting. Playing upon the fireplace as a key feature in the room, we selected “Wine Stain” as an accent color for that wall and the other walls are a soft gray. Because our patio was well-secluded, we decided to forgo window coverings so that we could enjoy all of the sunlight that came through the slider and adjacent windows.

The furnishings in this room were all new because our last place had only one family space. The choice of yellow for the smaller couch had been The Husband’s idea. We repeated that color in the pillows and the small accent chair.

The walls in the dining room were painted the same color as the living room and this color was also used in the stairwell and 2nd-floor hallway.  All of the trim items, as well as the ceilings and all of the doors, were painted white. We replaced the chandelier with one that was much more contemporary and added wall-washing recessed cans to light artwork. The table and chairs we brought with us from our last place.

Moving onto the family room, we opted for a creamy shade of tan for the walls and added a couple of recessed lights. The furniture in this room had been in our last place and we’d always planned to get an area rug but never found one we liked. The fireplace wall in the living room wasn’t the only wall we accentuated with a pop of color. The wall behind the TV (see larger photo below) which separates the family room and the dining room we had painted a dark grayish-brown called “Chocolate Pudding”. It was the same color on the other side as well which can be seen in one of the living room ‘after’ photos.

Some of the most noticeable changes happened in the kitchen. Everything was replaced including the lightbox on the ceiling (just visible in the before photos) which impeded the opening of a couple of the upper cabinets. We had opted for dark cabinets in our previous kitchen, so this time we chose white.  Besides extending the upper cabinets over the sink, we added a peninsula for casual dining and even more added storage. The cabinet over the sink had a lift-up door and housed a TV that could be watched while we ate. We’d had a similar set-up in our previous home. However, the biggest change in the kitchen is shown in the next set of photos.

First, to help explain the change that was made, take a look at the floor plans below. The layout of the kitchen shown is the after version. Originally, in the area behind (or to the left of) the kitchen peninsula was a closet that housed the forced-air unit of the HVAC system and provided a small space for storage. There was no actual pantry in the kitchen. On the wall facing into the family room and next forced-air unit closet was a wet bar that covered the full width of that wall. Seeing little need for a wet bar, we eliminated it and used that space to create a set-in space for the refrigerator and make room for a 24″ pantry. The remaining space where the wet bar had been was filled in with a custom-made cabinet.

The original placement of the refrigerator next to the range can be seen in the before photos above. Just imagine how closed off the kitchen felt with it in that location. During our house-hunting explorations, we saw another unit in the complex with the same floor plan that had made a similar change and that’s how we came upon this idea. Additionally, our contractor also lived in the same complex, in a unit with the same floor plan, and he too had found a new location for the refrigerator in his own kitchen. We needed to replace the whole HVAC anyway so the forced-air unit was relocated to the garage which freed up the space needed to house the refrigerator and pantry.

2nd Floor

Making our way upstairs, the next reveal will be the hall bathroom. New vanity, new flooring, new tile, paint, and lighting.  The tile used for the tub surround and the floors was the same as was used for the kitchen and dining room floors.  We’ll take a peek into the secondary bedrooms on our way back but next, a look at the primary bedroom and bathroom.

New flooring, crown molding, fresh paint, and an accent wall transformed our bedroom into a retreat. Recessed lights were not added in any of the bedrooms but we did add ceiling fans to help with air circulation.  We used the same bamboo as on the 1st-floor for the 2nd-floor hallway and our bedroom. That’s a 55″ TV you see in the photos.  Our bedroom was quite large, nearly the size of the two-car garage that was directly below.   All of the bedrooms had generously sized closets, but ours wouldn’t have been big enough for both of us.  My idea to address this issue was to take some area from this bedroom to build a 6’x10′ walk-in closet.  The bedroom would still have been plenty big, but The Husband was resistant to that idea.   The story of how we resolved this problem will be the subject of another soon-to-be-published post.

Like the hall bathroom, the primary bathroom was also completely updated.  The one thing I’d hope to find in a new place was a spa tub.  Even though we couldn’t add a bathtub, we had a great shower with a rain shower head and spray wand.  Instead of using tile on the floor, we opted to continue the bamboo flooring in here for a seamless look.  We knew that wood floors in a bathroom would be a risky idea.  But we reasoned, it was our bathroom and we made it a diligent practice to wipe up all water immediately.

Below are the after photos of two of the secondary bedrooms (numbers 2 and 3 on the floor plan) as well as the downstairs 1/2 bathroom. We’d let the kids pick the colors for their rooms.  As you can tell, no one in our family is afraid of going with bold choices.

Another feature of the townhouse that we especially liked was the size of the private outdoor space. Instead of front and back yards, we had two enclosed patios. The larger one was in the front and accessible from both the living room and the family room. There was also a gate adjacent to the front door. We kept our barbeque on the back patio since it was closest to the kitchen.  See the fence on the left side in the photo of this area?  I typically used it as my backdrop for the featured images of my Last Week This Week posts as well as for my Poshmark listings.   Of all things, I miss that fence.

Recognize this chandelier?  If you scroll up, you’ll see it in its before state when it originally hung in the dining room.  Remember the promise of a story?  The one regarding how The Husband and I solved our “how to create more closet space” dilemma?  This is a hint.

Well, would you look at the time? I’m going to wrap up at this point.  I hope that you enjoyed this little tour of our last home. In upcoming posts, I’ll muse about this blog, give a tour of our new place (although still a work in progress), share my experience of going gray, and offer up a little more about me that I haven’t written about before.

Let’s connect! Subscribe, tweet, follow, friend, love, pin … all options are available and waiting for you. I look forward to hearing from you.

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