Hillside Renovations Part IV: Before and After Lower Level Living Room and Kitchen (Copy)

Well….who’s in the mood for some before and after photos? It's been a while since we have updated everybody on the renovations on our Hillside home, so we decided to get moving on a new blog post to show you some of the transformation.

At our home, everything is consistently a work in progress. We just ordered a couple of different runners to choose one for the kitchen (recent obsession Loloi rugs…), and things are slowly coming along on the bookshelves. Despite the lack of finished product, we took some photos anyway!

The kitchen was a little bit of a process. We chose to install a subway tile backsplash, changed the hardware out for brushed brass, and added a multi-patterned hexagon gray tile to the floor. The end result feels more like us!

For the den, we painted out the built-in and mantle with Sherwin-Williams tricorn black, added some trim to take it all the way to the floor so that it looked more finished, and then painted the walls with Sherwin-Williams pure white paint. The addition of new sconces with vintage brass touches completed the job!

We had the red oak floors refinished with water based black stain to help tone down the red, making it a rich brown color. We chose a diamond leather rug, and outfitted the furniture with some Italian leather recliners (comfort won over style for movie nights) and a great apartment sofa from Ikea….we changed out the legs for a more mid-century turned leg.

All in all, we are starting to love it. The kids often have the popcorn maker and gumball machine going and movies playing. It is a cozy space and we are settling in!

Have you made any updates to your home? We’d love to see them!!

Casey and crew

Hillside Ave - Before and After - Part One

We are excited to show you our preliminary makeover at our new home on Hillside Avenue. Everything is still in transition but it's been fun to start to pull things together. Please enjoy a few before and afters of our progress so far. Here you will find the entryway, the dining room, and our front porch: a quick note about a little front porch project that we did. We found an old window up in the attic and we turned it into a herb planter!

Our home is still a work in progress, but it's been really fun! We hope you enjoy some photos. Happy Halloween!

HILLSIDE AVE - ANOTHER WEEK OF RENOVATIONS

Happy Sunday!

Here is the recap on another week of renovations!

Our neighbors from Weldon are moving after 30 years. We are all sad that they will be leaving. CJ has been their chicken keeper for about 5 years now and they have generously given our family their chickens since they cannot take them along. We are grateful and excited to keep the chicken “farm” alive. Moving the coop, however, was not easy and thankfully we had some great help to make it happen!

Hillside is pulling together. Another really great and exciting moment was the delivery of our grand piano. This was really exciting for all of us. After buying my first electric keyboard in 1999, it has served me and our family very well through countless moves from college, military life, through now. We had vowed that once the space allowed, we would invest in a “real” piano. The folks at JML music really pulled through for us and made this dream come true. For the first time since I graduated high school, I have a real piano to play and it is a dream come true. You can believe the house is already full of great sound and several guest artists have made their debut on it!

We are still waiting on some electrical work and then the painters can return to finish their end of things. Having used nearly 60 gallons of paint, Hillside is definitely getting refreshed! We are turning to the downstairs kitchen where we will start the renovation there of replacing the backsplash, hardware, lighting and replacing the tile floor. That job is exciting but DUSTY!

Things keep progressing and we have made the move over to Hillside, so if you are looking for us, we’ll be there. Living in renovation is always a challenge, but we are hanging in there with the bulk of the work behind us. Annika has been working her organization skills in the kitchen - we are loving more space - even with all the chaos of moving!

It’s a mess, but we are getting there. Hope you enjoyed the update.

Have a great week and we’ll “chat” soon!

Casey and Crew

HILLSIDE AVE - 2 WEEKS OF RENOVATIONS

Happy Weekend! It has been a whirlwind of activity over the last two weeks at Hillside and we are excited to show you the progress. The home was lovely, but just not really our style, so we are knee deep in making it our own. Forgive the rough unedited cell phone photos - we are moving quick!

The first step was to uncover the 120 year old pine flooring throughout the home. This is always one of our favorite parts because floors have so much character and clean up so well. However, the deep ebony stair treads had likely never been sanded down and hats off to Dustin Brewington who had to sand them several times and then hand scrape them four times to get down to the natural wood. AH...MAZ...ING!

We have a mix of red pine and yellow pine in the home. We love the look of the yellow pine, but the red pine was very red. In order to draw that down, we chose a deep (actually black) stain to neutralize the red in the wood for the lower level of the home. As for the upper level, we are in love with the yellow pine. We wanted a natural stain, but even an oil-based natural stain has a yellowish/orangish undertone that will deepen over time. Additionally, oil based stains are very high in VOC chemicals, which we are trying to avoid in our renovation.

You can see how the natural oil based stain on the left really made the wood a orange tone…..not what we were going for.

Same here with the upper floors - the oil based tone really yellowed up the wood - and it deepens over time, which is likely what was already on the floors to start with. Any stain will darken the floors a little, but we wanted to preserve the yellow pine color as much as possible.

As a result, we ended up choosing a natural water based stain for the first floor to really allow the floors to be at their best. We are thrilled with the results, which will be posted once all the mess is cleaned up! For downstairs, we chose a black water based stain. The wood really soaked it up and created a lovely walnut shade. Plus, the water based stain is faster and less toxic. It is a great alternative to oil based, but it does cost more so be prepared for this if you choose that path!

We are adding shiplap detail to sections of the home. It is a great way to hide some of the rough plaster and it adds character and charm to the rooms. Texture is a huge element in rooms and it really provides warmth and comfort to the spaces. Although some people like the character of rippled plaster, we opted for more clean lines and less of this look.

Painting has begun and it is a task! There are a lot of areas to try to address in the walls and to optimize their look once the paint hits them. Choosing paint is never one our favorite tasks because there are thousands of amazing colors and they all look different in each space! Total fear of better options. We are somewhat married to cool undertones in this home due to flooring choices and cabinetry that will be staying, so we had to stray from our typical warmer undertone palate. That has been an adventure, but you can see the dizziness of the ride below. We’ll be chatting more on paint later.

We have a lot more photos to come as wall repair and painting continue this week. However, this should give you an idea of the controlled chaos at our new home!

Until next time!

Casey and Carl (and crew)

HOME STAGING SELLS - BEFORE AND AFTER PHOTOS

We hear plenty about staging a home for sale these days - experts recommend it, realtors beg their clients to do it, and homeowners stew about whether or not it is worth the investment. We get it completely. Staging a home takes important resources: time, energy and money. However, these efforts certainly pay off in the long run.

Staging a home often brings more interest in your home, a higher selling price, more viewings, faster offers (sometimes multiple offers), and quicker sales. In our experience, you will receive every penny you spend in staging your home back in selling your home for more money in less time. Additionally, sometimes staging will just get your home sold when it otherwise has been sitting. Avoiding more time on the market also saves money.

Below you will find before and after photos of a project we recently completed. We also did some light renovations with the staging, but they were mostly cosmetic- painting, flooring refinishing, and recoloring grout. There are a few types of tile that were added and swapped out. Overall, there are big changes with the staging and light renovations, and these changes at a big impact.

Prior to the staging, this home had been in the market for a year. Once staging and light renovation were complete, 12 days later it had a full price offer for over $30,000 more than the asking price when it was removed from the market for renovations.

Enjoy the photo tour before - we all love a good before and after don’t we? We did not have before pictures of the upstairs, so we just included the first floor of this beautiful home. Staging and updating allow a home to shine in its full glory, and give the best impression to prospective buyers. If you need assistance staging your home, don’t hesitate to ask for our help! If you don’t know where to start, we can help you figure that out too!

Enjoy!

The Benander Crew