Today’s guest post comes from the oh-so-talented Mary over at Lemon Grove Blog.  I’m so excited that she has just moved to NC and we are already planning a little meet up! She and her husband are now on their 3rd home, and have a real eye for DIYs and renovations.  Be sure to check out Mary’s blog and follow along!!

——————————————–

Well hello there! My name is Mary from Lemon Grove Blog, and I’m here today to give you a behind the scenes sneak peak at our last house renovation. I’m such a huge fan of Sarah’s, and I’ve been closely following her renovation journey via blogland for a while now. Something about rehabbing a big old historic house like that just had me at hello. Most likely, it’s because I too am a home renovating addict. Like, legit, certified, addict. :D

My husband and I just moved down to Sarah’s neck of the woods (North Carolina!) and we’re currently in the process of fixing up our 3rd home. Although I would love to show you some snapshots of before and after’s on our current abode, we’re most definitely in the “before” phase right now since we’re only 4-weeks in to owning it! ;) So, I thought I’d show y’all a tour of our last house, which we just sold up in Ann Arbor, Michigan this spring.

First things first, let’s start in the foyer. Here is what our entry looked like before move-in.

We wanted to give the house a more updated look, so we got rid of the cream trim, and stained our floors Minwax Dark Walnut.

Here are some detail shots, and another closer angle of the floors. We love how the dark floors turned out!

After you walk through the foyer, you land in the Dining Room. This room was really dark and dreary when we moved in, so we opted to remove the wall between the kitchen and dining space and add french doors on the side, so that we had more light coming through.

You can see the wall separating the kitchen and dining in the before shot, below.

And here is the after!

One of my favorite before and after rooms is definitely our kitchen. Now, I guess in all fairness I should start out by saying that Tuscan wall murals are really not my jam. Tuscan wine, totally. But wall murals, not so much. One of my first tasks once we moved in was painting over that job (I think it would have broke the previous owners heart, so I did feel kinda bad about it).

Alas, we decided to completely gut the kitchen and add some nice crisp white cabinets to keep the space feeling bright and open. One of my favorite details in this room was the herringbone tile backsplash we added behind the oven.

Here’s another shot of the kitchen, looking out from the Dining Room.

You can pretty much call this the house of herringbone, since I continued that theme right on into our downstairs bathroom. Although the bathroom was pretty basic, and definitely not offensively bad when we moved in, I knew that I wanted to spice things up a bit, and get rid of some of the more basic renovations that had been done a few decades before.

This is the before.

And this is how we transformed the space, after.

I wanted the room to feel authentic to the time period of the home, so I opted for some sweet little cross handle details on the tub and sink faucet. They’re from Kingston Brass, and we absolutely loved them.

We didn’t have a lot of storage in this small bathroom, so we decided to create a small inset cabinet while we had the room down to the studs. I love how it turned out – it was perfect for stashing toiletries and accessorizing the space.

One of the value adds for us on this house was the fact that it had a finish-able attic, which we eventually converted into our Master Suite. It was a ton of work, but in the end, it was definitely one of the selling features for the house, so I’m very glad we did it!

Although the room had some finishes already, it was really dated, and really bad quality. We decided to rip everything out to the studs, insulate it (we did live in Michigan after all!) and add a half bathroom.

This is what the room looked like right before we moved out.

Overall, the space was MUCH more functional, and we really loved how everything turned out!

We also decided to add a very small half bath on, so that we wouldn’t have to trudge down a flight of stairs if we wanted to use the loo in the middle of the night. ;)

Yep! Your eye’s are not deceiving you … even more herringbone marble tile. Can’t stop, wont’ stop.

We just purchased another house here in Durham, North Carolina and we’re already knee deep in projects. I’m loving every second of making our new house our home. Follow along with the journey here!