Almost 4 years ago, my parents made the decision to retire and move from Indiana, to Georgia to be closer to me, let's be honest my kids. Since I was here and they were there, I went home hunting with their realtor. When we came across the Rivers Rd. home, I Facetimed my mom, and said, "You have to buy this place!"
I fell in the love the layout of the ranch & also could not believe how well maintained the home was. It was NEVER renovated since it was built, and had all the original appliances, cleaner, quite frankly, than my own at home. It looked like it was straight out of the set of "Stranger Things."
The bones of the home were in great shape and the veranda in the back was the perfect outdoor entertaining area. So they bought the home sight unseen, and we began renovations. I project managed the renovation, lead the design and helped to pick out finishes for my parents. The plan was to renovate both bathrooms, open up the walls between the two living rooms and the kitchen, remove the texture on the ceilings, resurface the kitchen cabinets, new appliances and new counter tops, and new flooring & paint on the walls in the whole home. My folks like natural wood color so they wanted to keep the trim as is to match all the windows that were a medium wood color as well. So just a bit of work!
While this project was exciting it was also nerve wrecking as it was my parents retirement home. And, unfortunately, I learned the worst lesson about contractors on this project. Our contractor spent our deposit on fixing his own truck (unbeknownst to us) and immediately after demolition things went south with renovations. He hired a second crew and paid them less and they did some pretty sloppy things. Hindsight, I should have moved on and lost that deposit vs. allowing him to try and fix. After some delays and some pretty big mistakes, we were finally able to finish the project and they moved in. They completed some more projects once in, but the kitchen really turned out well.
I realized I had never taken photos after we finished because it was such a race to their moving day to complete. So the other day, I snapped some and they are below. The cabinets are ecru, the countertop is granite and the walls are Sherwin Williams
PS. my mom has rotating themes for decorating their house, right now it's lemons & sunflowers, and her mantle is the main space for the themes. The kids love to see what Nanny has decorated!
I felt it necessary to share this as not every project is rainbows and sunshine. There are things you won't know when you start a renovation but hiring a good contractor is key. We had gotten ours as a referral from the realtor and from what I heard it was a fluke that he had bad financial luck around the time he started our project, he otherwise had done great work. I'm certainly glad it's now settled and my folks are down in Georgia!