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