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

One day I bought a house.  I had just turned 23, was a student, and a new, part-time employee in the airline industry.  I should NEVER have been trusted with a mortgage, but thanks to our government, I was!!  So the mortgage bubble was a good thing for someone, let your faith in the elected ones be restored.

Anyway, that house was the beginning of something beautiful, or at least beautifying.  It was a disaster.  There were holes in the master bedroom wall that the sun shone through.  The bathroom was horrifying, mainly because there were no working lights and all kinds of growth in and around the rusted out shower.  One of the front bedrooms had mold growing about waist high.  It was a house that would definitely fall into the 'fixer-upper' category.  I made the initial tour and my dad asked, "What do you think?"  "I LOVE it!"  I responded enthusiastically.  He laughed.  

Not exactly move-in ready.  But I took out a loan from my credit union and hired a handy man to get it livable.  The very nice guy I was dating also wanted to help out.  My master plan was to rent the house out to him and a few of his buddies while I lived with mom and dad (thanks mom and dad!).  The guys had a house, cheap rent, and I began my "Rich Dad, Poor Dad" rat race escape move.

Fast forward a few years.  Now I'm married to that nice guy (shaping into an extraordinary handy man).    We have 2 children together and we find our next little gem.  It was a lovely summer day.  I had just given birth to Ben, our second son, and we were on the hunt for a project.  While searching through the ads in the Tulsa World I find one that holds my intrigue.  A 2/1/2 on an acre in the middle of Broken Arrow.  Needs work.

Well, as you may have deduced, we aren't afraid of a little work, so I called the number and we went to see it.  It was....a lot of work.  An overgrown acre with a little house filled with mold.  Perfect!!  The woman who showed the house advised I leave my children outside...to protect their health.  It was a deal within the day.  

I will continue to post pictures of the transformation (and it WAS a transformation).  I love that house.  It was so much fun to work on and design.    So here it is from the front..

It was a puke colored house with metal siding around most of it.  Poison Ivy filled the front yard, as my friend Erica Fleming can attest to.  The previous owners had converted the original one-car-garage into a utility type room with a seperate entrance (see below in the pink portico).  Then they added a large two car garage and a rec room of sorts.  Those pictures will follow on a different day.

During

We had to remove all of the original 'patching' of the front...the weird add-ons and etc..., raise the foundation of the 'utility room', take out the original front window and make the house work from the inside out.

After

This picture was taken when the leaves had started to fall, but you can get a general idea of the transformation that took place.  We put in rock planters, which are hard to see here, and a lovely rock path to the front door.  

Maybe we are just gluttons for punishment, but I like to consider us as visionaries!  We see something, tattered and decrepit, see past it's need for demolition, and begin to restore it into a valuable asset.  It was tons of work, but totally worth it.