1982 Golf Course "Dream Home" Becomes a  Dream Home for a New Generation in 2016

Before and After Pictures of the Transformation

Our latest project started with a well-built 1982 house on a generous golf course lot in the tidy Austin, Texas suburb of Lakeway.  After building their "dream home" in 1982, the previous owners loved and maintained it meticulously for the rest of their lives.  The This Home Has Potential Team immediately embraced the challenge of making this well-loved but dated home another family's dream home.  The prior owners left two jumbo bird houses and two normal sized bird houses in the back yard that were constantly abuzz with activity.  The birds inspired much of the decor for this project.  

The meticulous care taken by the original owners of this house is obvious from this "before" picture of this home.  Notice the recessed front door, arched windows and bare garage wall before and then after.

BEFORE

And AFTER

                                                                         

                                                                       

The major changes to the exterior elevation including bricking over the recessed front entry, removing the two living room windows and replacing them with all glass, triple, 8 foot tall bronze doors and adding the open front porch with exposed cedar beams.  We removed the arches over the windows (a common 1980s motif) and replaced them with stained cedar beams.  We painted the red brick a soft brown to complement the 1 year old roof and used gel stain to transform the white metal garage doors.  We added a cedar beam pergola over the garage door, removed the grass (which was 95% weeds) and replaced it with drought tolerant sod that would grow under the massive oak trees.  We also took out some of the concrete to create a grassy area and landscaping beds around the new porch.

This is a before picture of the living room windows, sunken foyer and inside of the front door.  These are the windows we replaced with the new front door unit. 

BEFORE

And AFTER

We added the recessed cabinet units and custom barn doors and wine bottle bins, stone floors, stone wall and barrel ceiling with bricks and left the original red brick from the front porch.  Here are more pictures inside the wine cellar.

This is the front door frame and red brick front porch-the recessed area you see on the BEFORE picture of the whole house.  We left the house numbers on the inside for a souvenir.  Jeremiah Weed is tea, by the way, for all of you folks wondering where you can buy some other kind of weed by the barrel. 

Finally, here is the entry to the wine cellar with the barn doors closed:

 Let’s check out the living room.  The major issues in the living room were the ugly red brick Heatilator fireplace with the giant vent front and center, the bookshelves flanking the fireplace which were not the same width or depth on either side.  And if you know me at all, you know that no symmetry is a no-no in my book.   

This is the view of the living room from the sunken foyer/new wine cellar BEFORE:

And AFTER:

                                                       

Hopefully, I will find the time to do a later post on how we disguised the ugly Heatilator vent.  After much research , we figured out that one cannot just disconnect the  Heatilator motor, cover up the vents and use the fireplace like any other wood burning fireplace-basically, the options are to keep the vents open or tear down the whole fireplace and start over.  So, we removed the ugly oak fireplace, built a metal frame over the Heatilator vent, covered it with Hardie planks and fire retardant sealer and covered all of that with faux wood tile planks to make it look like a cedar beam like those on the outside of the house.  We tore out the ugly oak side cabinets, built out the walls as needed to make the two sides symmetrical and added floating shelves.  As you can see, we added wood flooring and new 8 foot doors and windows to the golf course.  And look, there’s the horse picture that’s always welcome in our homes.  Love that guy.

Looking the other direction, here is a BEFORE picture of the view from the living room to the kitchen.  As you can see, there was a wall in between:

After removing the wall (and adding a great big structural beam), here is the AFTER view of the new, open space.   More kitchen views to come.

The original house had a decent sized dining room and a HUGE utility room, but no family room.  We decided to create a dining area between the living room and kitchen, steal part of the utility room and make ourselves a family room.  Here is the dining room BEFORE:

And AFTER:

The opening you see into the foyer was closed and is now the opposite side of the stone wall in the wine cellar.  The window onto the front porch had to be closed when we took in the front porch as part of the wine cellar.  In order to open up the floor plan and make sure there was enough natural light in this room, we doubled the size of the opening to the kitchen, removed part of the wall between the utility room and dining room exposing a window in the utility room and added a large three window unit.  

The sofa wall is in the place of the opening to the foyer and window to the porch in the BEFORE picture.  The three large windows are in what was formerly the laundry/utility room.  I love the little “homework” area we were able to create by taking in this space:

And the shiplap and Singer factory chairs?  Oh, be still my heart.  I love them in this area. Since we stole the only window in the laundry room, we added the bubble glass transom window at the top of the picture to get natural light into that room.  





Here’s the laundry room BEFORE:

As you can see, there was a LOT of unused space.  After taking part of the space for the new family room and replacing the cabinets on the left with a “mud area”, this is what the room looked like AFTER:

The transom window is the same one over the desk in the “homework” area of the family room.

Who puts the discussion of the laundry room before the kitchen!  Let's get to the kitchen.  Here are a few BEFORE pictures.  The first picture is the back of the wall that was taken out between the living room and kitchen.

And here is the kitchen AFTER:

And here is the kitchen AFTER:

Holy Shiplap!  I love the shiplap walls on the kitchen and family room walls.  

Before looking at the bedrooms and baths, let’s take a look at a new space we found off of the garage.  The previous owner had a very nice wood shop off the garage that we decided to turn into interior space.  By closing up the double doors into the garage and installing a door in the back hallway, VOILA!  New room in the house.  As a bonus, the workshop had a large closet that we were able to steal half of to expand the closet in the adjoining master bathroom. 

Here is the work shop, during construction because it seems I neglected to take a BEFORE picture:

And here it is AFTER, staged as an office, but it could also be a bedroom or anything else the new owners want. Recognize the super cute sewing machine base desk from earlier posts?  One of my proudest creations!






Ok, time to look at the bedrooms and baths.  First, here’s the master bedroom BEFORE:

 Hello?  It's 1980 calling and they want their matching curtains and wallpaper back.   Whoever designed this house loved storage-enough to cover the whole “bed wall” in the master bedroom with closets.  These are in addition to a decent sized master closet off the master bath.  

We decided to keep the left and right-most  closets in order to create a cozy bed alcove:

Three things I have to say about this space:  
1.  The barn door to the master bath has mercury glass inserts that are soooo cool 2.  The wood accent wall behind the bed is made of a brand new product called, appropriately, “walling”.  It’s a much easier alternative to pulling a million nails out of pallets to create a “pallet wall”.  I recommend it.  3. The new 8 ft. tall doors on the closets are a good example of how taller doors can really add to the drama of  a space if your ceiling height will allow it.  OK, four things:  I swear the bed skirt isn’t purple.  Something weird is going on with this picture.  

The beige chair in the corner is one of two examples of upholstered furniture I painted to stage this house.  AGAIN, hopefully, I will find time to do a tutorial on painting upholstered furniture.  It was really fun to try it out for this house and I'll definitely be doing in again. 

Moving to the master bath, this house had something had never seen before.  There were two doors off of the master bedroom, each one leading to a different full bathroom-vanity, toilet and tub on one side, vanity, toilet and shower on the other.  It look a lot of brainpower and manpower to take down the dividing wall and reconfigure all of the plumbing to turn those two full baths into one nice master bath.  Here are some BEFORES of the separate baths:

                                 

                                   

And here is a picture of the new, modern bath AFTER:

These pictures truly do not do justice to how pretty this master bath turned out.  You can’t see them side by side, but the ceramic tile in the shower and the wood ‘walling” on the master bedroom accent wall matched almost perfectly.  The wall behind me as I’m taking this picture is a mirror image of the vanity wall in front of me-symmetry, sweet symmetry. 

Here are the 2 secondary bedrooms BEFORE:         Back bedroom with views of the golf course:And AFTER:

Front bedroom BEFORE:

And AFTER:

The pale blue chair is the second example of furniture I painted for this house.  It was my second try and turned out much better than the first chair.  The result feels like something between suede and “Sunbrella” type outdoor canvas.    See that headboard?  I was driving down the street with my sweet husband when I spotted a pile of old fencing on the curb waiting for the trash truck and yelled:  “Headboard, I need that gate for a headboard”.  He indulged me, as usual, and got out and threw the gate in the back of the truck.  I love, love, love how it turned out!

Here is the bathroom that serves these two bedrooms BEFORE:

And AFTER

OK, take a peek at the back of the house with the nice full light doors, the ugly pillars removed, some new lights and a double ceiling fan.

Back of house BEFORE:

And AFTER

I love how you can look all the way from the from the golf course to the front yard and vice versa. And I love how painting the red brick a neutral color brought out all of the neutral colors in the roof instead of the rusty browns.  I think it looks like a completely different roof.

Thank you for looking!  We love what we do and love sharing our results with anyone kind enough to look!   If you want to see more areas and views of this house, including brand new full bath we made out of a hall full of closets, look at this link from Realtor.com:   http://www.realtor.com/realestateandhomes-detail/913-Vanguard-St_Lakeway_TX_78734_M77556-05845

FROM BORING TO BEAUTIFUL ON BEAR CREEK

Searching for properties has at least one thing in common with searching for romantic partners.   When you find The One, you know it with your whole being immediately.  And then you take awhile to kick yourself for putting so much time and effort into convincing yourself that something else maybe could be, with some effort, and a miracle or two, be The One.

The Bear Creek house itself looked like someone borrowed the plans from a tract home in a so-so subdivision and built it where it didn't belong.  It was completely unworthy of the 4+ acres of picturesque hilly terrain with 200 year old oak trees, rocky bluffs

and a lovely creek running all along the back property line.

It had a decent pool, an awesome barn,

a rustic sheep barn, great fencing for miles, a nice sized playhouse with crown moulding and a big front porch

but a really boring house that looked like all garage.

Besides sticking out like a sore thumb in its beautiful setting, the house had been a rental for a few years and showed signs of neglect.  My favorite was the whole cactus garden growing around the perimeter of the house in the gutters.  

The most obvious thing that this house was screaming out for was an entrance.  If you imagine the street being at 12 o'clock from the house, there was a front door but was looking at 7 o'clock.  And 7 o'clock was two overgrown shrubs that blocked the view of all the beautiful scenery around the house.  The picture above is the street view, which is a full on view of the left side of the house.  The building on the left is the garage, which is in connected to the house in an "L" shape by a breezeway.  Pay attention to the window and two chairs on the tiny front porch above.  When you see the pictures of the new foyer later, that will be the area you're looking at.We knew instantly this house was The One for Team Jerri and Virgil.

We completely renovated this house inside and out.  In order to keep this post from getting two long (and because I'm not completely organized with pictures of the inside yet), I'll do one post with pictures of the outside renovations and one with the inside.  Also stay tuned for an upcoming post Shabby Sheep Barn Turned Shabby Chic Guest Cottage.

The arched window you see in the picture is over the original front door.  What you saw when you looked out the front door was the overgrown shrub that fills the whole archway on the front porch.

The front door faced the white fence to the left of the barn and humongous oak trees-OK humongous for Texas.  The only exception I know of to the rule that "Everything's bigger in Texas", is trees.  I forget that until I visit my family in Ohio and marvel over the height of the trees. Here's some of the scenery being blocked by the overgrown shrubs and odd orientation of the front door.

When we bought the property, two horses and a goat mysteriously appeared in the pasture every morning.  After a week, we encountered their owner who had an arrangement with the seller of the property to bring her animals over to graze every day.  We liked visiting with them and kept up this practice until the day we found the goat in our dining room, but I digress.

Here's another view of the outside of the original house.  It looks a lot bigger with the garage and breezeway included.

Are you ready to see the "After" pictures of the outside of the house?  Well, hold your horses.  It is my blog and I insist you suffer through some "During" pictures first.  One thing that appealed to us when we looked at this house was that it had 800 square feet of unfinished attic space, most of it a usable height.  Finding space that is partially built but not included in the square footage when you buy a house is one of the best sources of profits because, technically, you don't pay for that square footage.  You can finish it out for less than the cost of all new construction and, after it's finished out, you can sell that square footage at whatever price per square foot homes are selling for in the area.

So, we knew we were going to make the house two stories, but what happened next is what tends to happen when The Big Idea Guy, aka Virgil is left unsupervised for any period of time.  I left the house in the morning with the understanding that the roof was going to be raised 2 feet so that all of the upstairs space would usable.  Does this look like two feet to you?

In his defense, he felt that as long as we were going to pay the cost of raising the roof, the additional materials required to raise it a few more feet so that all the space was not only usable, but had high ceilings AND  a space between floors to prevent noise transfer from children doing gymnastics upstairs to parents enjoying peace and quiet downstairs, was worth the cost.  As usual, he was right about that decision.  It also created some killer sunset views from the back of the house.

The next thing we tackled was reorienting the house so that the front faced the road.  To accomplish this, we enclosed the little porch you saw earlier with the small window and folding chairs to create a foyer.  We made an opening for the front door on the side of the foyer facing the road and reused the original double door unit (without the arch, which felt like an 80's detail to me).  After relocating the front door, we added a porch from the breezeway between the house and garage, across the front of the house, wrapped around the corner and matched it up with the outside line of a the small bedroom that stuck out from the right side of the house.  In order keep the porch from looking too small for the new overall height of the house, we built a gable on top of the porch roof that tied the two levels together.

He we are pouring the slab for the new porch.  You can see from this picture where the side bedroom was that we used as the outer line for the new porch.

Next, we thought what you all must be thinking: "What's a front porch without a fireplace?" Right?  So we added a fireplace.  Awesome place to toast marshmallows or sip a glass of Fireball after the kiddos are in bed.  Can I get a witness on the Fireball on the front porch?

And here is the house after the exterior renovations.  No question where the front door is now.  It's facing the road.  We did have to re-roof the house when we raised the roof, but the budget didn't allow us to put metal roofing on the whole house.  We really thought metal roofing was perfect for this style of home, so we compromised on a brown metal roof on the wraparound porch only.

Here's are "Before" and "After" pictures next to each other.

Here are pictures of the fireplace and porch:

This post is supposed to be about the exterior renovation only, but I did tell you to take note of the small front porch with the small window and folding chairs to compare it to the picture after it became the foyer of the house.  Since it was originally exterior space, I say it qualifies for this post, so here is the original front porch after it became the foyer.

The lovely bench was custom made by Virgil's dad to go in this space.  The picture window looks out at the fireplace on the front porch and the barn beyond.

We're pretty sure we nailed it.  If you agree, leave us a comment.  Or just have a Fireball in our honor.  It's still too hot for Fireball in Texas.  Thank you for visiting.

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