Kathy's Dream Home Becomes Reality!
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After making the hard decision not to build a new home due to the time and cost, my husband and I purchased a twelve year old home in the Suncadia resort in April of 2019. We spent the next two months remodeling to brighten up the dated house and moved in that July. The first decision was to create consistent flooring as there were five different types of flooring materials just on the main floor! They ranged from hardwoods, carpeting and slate so we decided to install a manufactured wide plank hardwood in a light taupe/grey color which created a better flow from room to room and set us on a lighter color palette. The sad yellow beige wall color through needed to be updated so I custom made all of the paint colors for the walls, ceiling, beams and trim to complement the new floor color.
I wasn’t a fan of the mission style heavy trim around all the doors and windows and the cost to replace it was out of our budget. So the next best thing was to paint them! I used the same color on both the walls and trim so to distract from the trim and now your eye is drawn outside thru all the windows and doors. And I would much rather look at the beautiful green landscape than the dark heavy trim and beige wall color. My goal was to a brighter color palette so to create a fresher modern feel for our new home.
The house is situated at the end of a long driveway and within a few months of living there we decided that some of the tall trees in the front of the house needed to be removed so to let in more light. We removed a total of thirteen trees which made a huge different to the overall feel of the exterior and interior light. We painted the garage doors to match the exterior trim and replaced the lighting with modern fixtures. Within the next few years we plan to paint the exterior body to a light taupe color which will tie in nicely with the interior color palette.
Being an older home, there were several functional things that worked for the previous owner yet not for us. Initially we removed two exterior doors and two windows in the garage in order to gain an entire wall for built in cabinetry. We also removed a large window from the master closet and created a functional built in closet system for all of our clothing. Being the outdoorsy people that we are we needed additional closet space for all of our seasonal outdoor attire so we removed an exterior mudroom door and created a large second closet in the mudroom area. We also removed upper cabinetry in the kitchen and laundry rooms so to open up the spaces.
During the COVID-19 shut down, my interior design business came to a halt and I wanted to stay busy at home. And I love the instant gratification one can get by painting so I started with our master bathroom and then moved on to the kitchen. The key to painting doors, trim or cabinetry is to clean them well prior to priming. I used a TSP to clean all the surfaces, Kilz premium primer and applied two coats of the Rodda Paint Renaissance low gloss paint. Now we can enjoy brighter rooms until they both will be completely remodeled in the coming years. So watch for those before and after images.
This summer’s projects include the removal of the garage front windows, privacy screens in the back yard and a new backyard patio. Always something to do with a new home!
New Home- New Beginnings- New Design!
