After a year and a half of marriage living in an apartment in Houston, Dustin and I landed in a house in Brownwood, Texas -a house that from my design perspective (as well as the realtors) was in GREAT need of a face lift.
First I think it would be best to start with a little bit of background about the home. Dustin actually owned this home about 6 years prior to even meeting me. When he moved to Houston he rented out the house to some wonderful tenants, who kept the house in the same condition Dustin left it in. (Houston is where Dustin and I met at a country dance hall.) Changes Dustin made to the house after purchasing it included:
- Tearing out a horrible lean-to addition the previous owner had done. (One of the walls to this addition was placed right in the middle of the bay windows of the kitchen!)
- Using the slab from the addition Dustin built a deck out using a product made out of recycled milk jugs (instead of the standard wood).
- Removing an above ground pool that the previous owner had just recently proudly installed.
- Putting up a really nice fence in the backyard
- Adding a storage shed for tools and lawn equipment in the backyard.
- Replacing all the windows and back patio door with nice double pane windows.
- And painting the exterior of the house.
Can you pick up on what all of these items had in common??? Outdoor projects. So the interior of the house didn't receive any updates, with the exception of a few rooms he painted. (Though the exterior of the house says the man can paint, the interior paint jobs he performed had me asking some questions). Which makes Dustin lucky that he married a girl who happened to major in interior design and enjoys construction projects.
Here is a look at the floor plan of the house. It is not a big house, the game room (which at one time was a garage - now two 8'-0" wide sliding glass doors fill in the space the garage doors left behind) probably accounts for 40% of the square footage of the whole house.
The tenants moved out middle of October 2010 (because they bought a house of their own). Shortly after we began our rennovations. This is the platform on which Dustin and I began to tackle the inside of the house and give it a more up to date look on a budget with the intent to either sell or maybe rent again once complete.
