~ flipNdesign ~: September 2014

Hello, hello!

Let's continue with the photo tour of our completely renovated fixer upper!

Continuing upstairs, the heart pine stops and carpet begins. We transformed a 800 sf home into one that is 1100 sf, so the heart pine that was in the original home didn't stretch that far upstairs.

Here is the upstairs hallway:

Here is a detail shot of a bird poster my mom got at a local event:

Next we have a shot of the stackable washer/dryer closet looking toward the stairs:

It is nice having the unit upstairs close to be able to put clothes away more easily.

Moving down the hallway, we will make our first stop to the left in the smallest bedroom. This is what I have previously referred to as the Study/Baby Room. I posted a few pics a while back of this room that we can revisit now:

These are from when we were living in the home, and our sweet little Judah stayed in here. I was very proud of the crib that his Grandma C restored for us that Gabe slept in as a kid. Also, the quilt is something I made as well. Can you see an African safari theme here? :)

In the above photo on the bottom right, you can see a glimpse of the alcove where we kept a desk with an office of sorts.

Here are more recent photos (sans snow) presenting the room with less furniture/personalized decor in it to stage:

From the door

This room doesn't have a built-in closet, so we were able to use an antique wardrobe my parents had. They recently restored it to display in this house.

Ok, the next two adjacent pics show the same view of the same window opening. Originally, there was a closet above the stairwell, but since we moved the stairs over to the east exterior wall, there is more room.

Much better!

Two changes to note would be the ceiling that we raised and the windows we enlarged to meet codes of egress.

Egress: (n). the act or instance of going, especially from an enclosed space; a means or place of going out; an exit.

Yep. I was wondering too.

Panning to the right:

Panning to the left:

The special thing about this space is the use of borrowed light. We had a windows put in on the east wall in the stairwell, so it is flooded with natural light. We had a picture window put in this room directly across the stairwell. This window doesn't open, but it does allow acoustical privacy, and gives the room light from two sides.

Pictured here:

Panning a little bit farther to the left, you can see the door opening:

This is where the desk was before

Moving down the hallway to the end, we have the 2nd Bedroom/Guest Room. This would be my favorite room upstairs :D

Moving a little farther into the room:

Different angle:

Some details:

Closet:

Check this out.

The chimney stack was removed and the ceilings were raised about a foot.

And the current wall color is a nod to the original.

Moving right along to the Master Bedroom. I liked the pictures we took before we moved out better, so we will revisit those here:

Panning right:

Panning left, toward the door connected to the hallway:

Looking into the room from the master bathroom

The next few are more recent pictures, staged:

Displaying the large window

Looking towards the master bathroom, with his & hers closets as well

Speaking of the Master Bathroom, let's get to it! This room is the piece de resistance, since it was the last one to be finished.

I really like the sink wall treatment. That was the last thing Gabe finished, and it looks fabulous.

It's a pretty spacious bathroom if you ask me.

This massive window overlooks the valley. The house is at about 700 feet above sea level so the view of the surrounding land is pretty great, especially in the winter time--the visibility is good.

From the Master Bedroom looking through to part of the window view:

Next is another before/after, although this one isn't displaying analogous spaces, just showing dramatic contrasts between what was a spacious downstairs full bath (retro fitted in the 80's) shower and what now is the spacious upstairs master bath jacuzzi/shower:

Yay!

Here are a few detail shots of the vanity:

This actually a really custom situation--most double vanities are 60" wide. Well, the width of our space to work with was 52". And, stock cabinets (from here) don't make vanity cabinets that size. And for that matter, they don't make stock cabinets that wide or that narrow. We had restraints going front to back too. So, how we solved this problem was to get two regular kitchen base cabinets (24" deep) that were 21" wide, cut them down (front to back) to a 21" depth and selected a 9" drawer stack. Equalling a 51" width. You say cutting it close? I say yes, it is. The saga continues...they didn't make a 9" drawer stack for the particular Shaker style that we chose (Ice White Shaker). The next best thing was the other Shaker style (Shakertown) that had a similar front and wasn't white. Luckily my husband and Dad take life by the horns and collectively fashioned drawer fronts that would work and spray painted them to match. No one would ever know.... ;)

Voila, more storage!

I love these "pump" water faucets:

The granite we used in the master bath is the same as the granite that is found in the kitchen--to recap--we bought "Black Pearl Antique" from here. Our fabricator was fantastic (and reasonably priced), recommended by our friend Mark. The finish is one that is honed and not shiny to correspond with the other textures in the home.

Here's a few detail shots of the wonderful heart pine detail Gabe put together:

Gabe drew his inspiration from a magazine, to do wood-clad medicine cabinets with shelves in-between. Mad props, it looks amazing. We had plenty of heart pine scrap pieces that were perfect for this application. It also solved a problem we had of a weird uneven drywall job in this area.

The shelves are really not very deep, but perfect for little knick knacks. ;)

Completing the linen closet just happened too. We lived in the house for 1 year and didn't have a linen closet because we moved out before it was put in! Go figure.

Here is a detail of the linen closet:

It is fully custom--I designed it, Gabe built it.

We originally bought two 18" wall cabinets to modify for this space, but only ended up using the doors because we thought 12" was not deep enough, so he built the shelves behind the doors, and I had him leave a few little cubbies for decorative spa-like items to display :D The cubbies have a bead board backing for a more textured effect.

Here is a detail shot of the finished shower/tub space:

I am very proud of how this turned out. I love my design (found inspiration from The Tile Shop brochure) and I LOVE natural slate stone.

The jetted Jacuzzi tub:

Welp, that is all of the upstairs.

Moving out to the back yard!

The deck was built Fall 2013 during the government shut-down. Gabe was off for about two weeks and was able to work heavily on house projects before our baby was born Nov 5th :)

Details of deck and landscaping:

In the sun and in the rain...

Looking to the right:

A little anecdote about the tall arbor vitae bushes in the back against the fence--we planted those last summer (2013) and had a really hard winter after that, causing deer to start eating evergreens. It was very bizarre to us at first, but when we did some research and saw it on other properties, we concluded there was nothing we could do and it would grow back. It's funny to me that they couldn't reach the tops to eat, so those look good still!

Detail of the lovely planter with Mom constructed: