My husband, Aaron, and I bought a house in Rhinebeck on a whim. We drove up to the charming city near the Hudson River and looked at three properties shown to us by a highly recommended realtor. None of the three were right for us, but we passed by a home with a 'For Sale' sign. Our realtor said she wasn't able to show it to us that day. Not wanting to make the drive up again, I sneakily called the number on the sign after leaving her. I explained to the realtor who picked up the number that we were only up for one day, but were very interested in seeing the house. It took a bit of convincing, but the realtor was able to let us in and we saw it within an hour.
The home was perfect for our needs. Our primary goal for the property was to rent it on Airbnb and the location to the village center, distance to Amtrak station and large plot of land fit our needs. We placed a bid on the property that night.
We had a super fast sale process as the sellers forced us to use local lenders and council. Everyone knew each other at the closing! We were the outsides, but all at the table were very kind. The date of closing was 6/29/2018.
We quickly found a contractor recommended by our realtor and got to work. In my optimistic brain, I thought the work we wanted done would take one month. I had absolutely nothing to base that on, but sheer hope.
The list was as follows:
1. Full upstairs bath renovation
2. Pulling up wall to wall carpeting and dealing with whatever was underneath.
3. Painting every square inch.
4. New bathroom vanity in the first floor powder room
5. Kitchen face lift including- painting cabinets, new hinges and pulls, new floor, new counter.
6. Breezeway renovation- we had no idea how much work was needed yet, but something had to be done!
7. Painting the upstairs doors and installing new door knobs.
After the closing, we raced to the house (a mile away) to get started. I was planning on having the contractor do everything since we didn't live in the area, but we figured we'd spend our first night there. The owners left us a great mattress so we felt right at home!
Anxious to see what the floor looked like underneath, we pulled up a piece of carpet. The floors looked great! Aaron and I just kept on going.
Here's the living room when we saw the house:
Here's what it looked like when we pulled up the carpet! Look at that shine! We saved money by pulling up the carpet by ourselves and didn't end up needing to refinish it. It was hard work, but totally worth it. Our 3 year old son had a blast carrying out old carpet to the garage.
This is the living room now! It's amazing how you forget about all of the little things needed to make a room feel comfortable. The painter took down all of the blinds and threw them away. That was something we had to go back in and install. Finding the correct widths for blinds in an old house is hard! This picture was taken before installing curtains as well. Finding the right length, amount, etc. Another headache! But worth it in the end.
Our powder room needed minimal work. Once we painted the walls white and the trim grey. It looked many times better. However, the original vanity was a disgrace. It was way too big for the space. I chose the smallest one on the market and now you can walk into the room without hitting your hip on a sharp corner.
The old mirror was fine so we just painted it the same color as the window trim. Oh yeah, that paint was free! We had a few things in the house we wanted grey and our contractor had some left over. I bought the sconces towards the end of the renovation when money wasn't seeming as plentiful as when we started. They were $5 on Amazon!
The final chapter on the first floor was the kitchen. It had this gross carpet on the floor so we knew that wasn't going to cut it for our guests. The most cost effective and easiest thing was to install vinyl planks. I had my heart set on grey herringbone and it came out great!
The other side of the kitchen held the washer dryer. We thought about building a wall, but I fell in love with the idea of just having a shelving unit from Ikea act as a divider.
It's hard to tell, but the faux wood was grey. I considered keeping it, but thought it would have clashed with the grey floor and white washed it. Eventually we'd like to add a bench to the empty wall.
All of the bedrooms upstairs got whitewashed, doors painted and we installed the black doorknobs ourselves! It was the easiest job and had the most impact.
Bedrooms are as follows. This:
Became this:
And this:
Became this:
My favorite bedroom is this:
To this:
Lastly, the bathroom needed an almost full reno. We didn't touch the wood paneling since that can open a giant can of worms, but we pretty much did everything else. As many who know me know, I am obsessed with black and white. The bathroom was the most fun part of the house to design. My black and white bathroom dreams came true! We used black grout to keep things looking fresh at all times. I started the project going crazy with fancy floor tile and then quickly switched to this inexpensive oversized tile once I saw the floor's price tag.
I also downsized the vanity to give more space to the room. This room and the hallway had these really weird square lights that were inset into the ceiling. Because of the size it would have been costly to get a new light fixture and patch the ceiling. A quick coat of black paint gave the lights new life!
Oh wait. There's more! The breezeway linking the house to the garage was a whole project in and of itself. We ripped up the green faux grass 'carpet' and found a crumbling mess of cement. Our hopes of just painting the cement were squashed and we decided to lay down a floor of plywood and stain it a lovely grey.
Future dreams for this room include painting the ceiling white, stringing up some dreamy lights (already purchased and sitting in the attic) and filling that wall with mirrors.
This project was fun, a little stressful and we learned a ton along the way! Our home is filled with so much love and is listed on Airbnb. We hope you stay with us!
