We just purchased a new house in the south side of San Antonio, built in 1925 it has gorgeous bones, but that's been muddled by years of deferred maintenance and ...interesting... remodeling choices.
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| Original kitchen design |
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| Original kitchen design - note the island, and bar mounted on half wall |
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| Black paint over longleaf pine floors? A tragedy! |
The way timing worked was this:
A two week period where the previous owners rented the property from us while they moved out
Followed by a two week period for us to do work on the interior of the house before our furniture arrives (and we get kicked out of our temporary housing situation)
Which translates into a two week planning period followed by a two week work-our-rears-off period, followed by move into the house.
Planning Stage
Of all the things we want to eventually do to this house, we prioritized these three projects to be done in our two weeks of work:
- The (largely original) wood floors need to be refinished, if only to remove the black paint on the main living areas.
- The kitchen needs to be reorganized and rebuilt.
- The master bedroom needs to be inhabitable
Floors:
Given our time frame and the extent of the damage to the floors, we decided to pay for professionals to take care of them for us.
Kitchen:
After some reading and pricing out our options we decided that in the kitchen, we will remove:
- Tile counter top
- Tile back splash
- Breakfast bar
- Lights that used to illuminate the breakfast bar
- Half wall supporting the breakfast bar
- Kitchen cabinets
- Kitchen sink
- Kitchen island
We will install:
- Refurbished cabinets (in a straight line instead of L-shaped)
- A concrete countertop
- White paint on the cabinets
- A dishwasher (in the new dishwasher -sized mounting spot we will create)
- A new undermount-style stainless steel sink and chrome faucet
- Paint the walls and trim
- New appliances (white) - the house came with exactly zero appliances.
Master bedroom: mostly just cleanup and repainting. Perhaps new doors on the closet (though we're thinking of eventually removing the closet altogether to create room for the (currently cramped) bathroom.
