Before and After: Beauty, where there should have been ashes Pt. 4

This was the 'rec' room.  More like the wreck room, though, if you know what I mean!!

It had a wood burning stove, a leaky roof, those black patches under the window are mold...black mold.  This was sitting on a cracked up, slab foundation.  If you live in Oklahoma, than you know what I mean by that.

The soil here is filled with clay.  When it's 105 degrees it shrinks up, becoming like rock, but then, get a little rain in it and it expands, becoming all nice and mushy.  Can you imagine what a little foundation does in that kind of soil?  It cracks.  There are tons of solutions for it, so it's really nothing to be afraid of, but this room needed to be demolished for more reasons than just that.

The ceiling was, obviously, falling in, that's insulation coming out of the holes.

Outside.  The brush and trees had encroached upon the house up until the line you see here.  We did clear it all out, but it took a while.

The original porch was not so useful for relaxation. 

We scraped it ALL, building a new crawl-space foundation to match the rest of the house.

Josh became quite the carpenter through this project.

I love the picture window!  The best thing about this house was the 1.14 acre it sat on.  Green and beautiful and filled with mature trees.  It was wonderful to wake to.

Please note the little buzzed head in the lower right hand corner.

 I know this isn't the best picture of an AFTER, but it's all I have, sorry!!!

Lots of natural light, new everything, and we matched the hardwoods to the rest of the house.  There's a small full master bath too, but no pictures, ahhh!!

A little note on the hardwood floor:  Josh and I installed them ourselves.  I was 6 months pregnant.  Josh lined them all up, tongue in groove, and I would follow him, just nailing away.

         

   

Lovely new sod.  Can you see the new screened in porch to the right of the master?  The kitchen opened to it.  That small window to the right of the big picture window is to the master bath.  

Inside the porch.  It's like a whole nother living space!  This was the best part of the house.  It had 2 ceiling fans and minimal bugs.  It was perfect for breakfast, lunch and dinner, plus coffee with friends while the kids played.

I think this concludes all of the remodel pictures I have for this little house.  It was such a joy to work on and I would do it all again in a heart beat.  Of course, I didn't execute most of the labor, but...