Places In The Home hails from the house I grew up in.
My parent’s built the house in 1965, and in the forty years they lived in the house it underwent two major renovations.
My partner in this crazy home improvement ideas life, Dave the Builder, convinced me we are up to the challenge of home improvement ideas renovation.
The standard issue formal living room/dining room combination of the 1960’s ranch house served its entertaining, special occasion event, and makeshift photography studio for homecoming and prom pictures purposes for many years.
Thankfully, my mother received the all good things and trends come to an end memo and did away with the design relic during the great renovation of 1986.
My mother design ideas included turning the formal living room into a formal dining room, and repurposing the small formal dining space into a sitting parlor.
What designs worked then do not work now, so here’s the new home improvement ideas plan: keep the formal dining room space in place, but with one major design modification.
I’m a huge fan of taking down walls and opening up a space to new design and decor possibilities, so taking down the wall between the sitting parlor and the kitchen it is.
With the home improvement ideas flowing, it’s bye-bye swinging ’60s, get down tonight ’70s, and don’t you forget about how you hated the decorating trends of the ’80s interior design.
As soon as the subject of home improvement ideas came up, Dave the Builder read my mind.
“The wall is coming down, isn’t it?”
Yes, Dave.
Yes it is.
It’s really the only option.
Running the numbers through my head convinced me even more I was on the right track.
It would be much more cost efficient to repurpose existing rooms in order to emphasize function, relaxed formality, and flow.
Although eight foot ceilings are not exactly a hot design favorite, they’re not a design deal breaker either.
As I snapped the shot the bulb went out. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it!
We vaulted the ceiling in the foyer and added the decorative molding to accommodate our taste.
For less than $200 we added the beveled glass panes to the front door unit.
The five figure estimate from the architect to raise the ceilings throughout the house put a big “that ain’t happening” damper on that idea real fast.
Change comes again.
Subtle replacements, salvaged fixtures, deeply discounted flooring and wholesale lots helped to make this a cost efficient update.
Two and a half rooms down with a few more to come.
Change has come.
