Older homes sometimes have great charm and nostalgia, but often they lack features of modern homes. Bringing older homes up to current standards can be a challenge, and expensive.
This project involved a 2 bed, 1 bath house in an area where the homes were built in the 1930s. Many of the homes in the area have undergone updating to make them attractive to families who need more space than when the homes were built.
The homeowner contracted us to add a bedroom and a bathroom, in addition to modernizing the entire house.
In the video above, you’ll see much of the renovations and upgrades that we did on this house:
- Transformed the carport into a new bedroom and bathroom.
- Painted the exterior.
- Replaced all the gutters.
- Refinished all the floors.
- Restored and replaced much of the trim/moulding.
- Repainted all the rooms.
- Replaced all the windows.
- Updated the kitchen cabinets.
- Replaced all kitchen countertops.
- Removed unnecessary doors.
- Replaced old french doors.
- Replaced the fireplace surround.
- Restored and upgraded the shed in the backyard.
- Refreshed the backyard landscaping.
- Removed a tree that was undermining the foundation.
- Installed a new fence door.
- Replaced the old HVAC system.
- Sealed hole in brickwork.
- Sodded front yard.
- Installed new landscaping in front yard.
- Removed old driveway and installed circular driveway.
- Plumbing updates.
- And more.
Halcyon Remodeling does jobs both large and small all over the Metro Atlanta area.
If you have a kitchen, bath, basement, deck or an entire home, that needs updating, or if you need to add any rooms to your home, request a quote today.
We’re ready to help you make your home exactly the way you envision it. And if you need help with designing the perfect kitchen or bath or other room, our in-house design services can help you create the perfect plans for your home.
We’d love to have a conversation with you to discuss your plans. You can call or text us at 678-869-0041 or visit our contact page.
Video Transcript
Greg Kurzner
Hi, I’m Greg with Halcyon Remodeling and we are out at a project we’ve just completed. And this property is located in Buckhead in the Collier Hills neighborhood. This home was a two-bedroom, one-bath house with a carport and roughly 1,200-1,300 sqft. Our client asked us to add a master suite where the carport was behind me, and also just update as much as we could the existing home with new features, but also keeping the general vibe and the feel of this home, which was built in the late 1930s. So let’s take a look inside and I’ll show you what we’ve done.
You know what, before we go in to see what’s new on the inside, let’s talk about what we’ve done on the outside. So on the outside, obviously we added this addition, but we also painted the home. We replaced all of the windows, did landscape. There was a driveway up to this and we removed that. We put in a nice half-circle driveway here and generally landscaped the home so that it looks completely different than it did before. So let’s take a look on the inside now.
All right, so we are now in this home’s family room and we’ve kept it basically the way that it was. One of the things that you can’t tell or can’t smell is that this home had tremendous pet odor. The homeowner had five little dogs that never went out and so we had to address that. And we did that quite extensively so that the house smells fresh, new, clean, and we’ve refinished all of the floors throughout the home. In the family room we painted, we replaced any kinds of damage to the walls and we also replaced the fireplace surround with a very high end calacatta. And that calacatta countertop flows throughout the home. You’ll see it in the kitchen on the countertops, you’ll see it in the master suite on the countertops.
So let’s walk through the rest of the home’s original design. So this is sort of a vestibule between the two bedrooms and the one bath.
This bedroom, which is the larger of the two–this room we kept relatively the same, but we just improved it cosmetically. We painted it, refinished the floors and touched up any kind of trim work that was damaged.
The next bedroom, which was serving as the homeowner’s master bedroom at the time, was a little bit smaller. And essentially we did the same thing here. There was some damage to the trim and we’ve just come in and fixed what was broken and painted it. Also, do note though that every single window in this house has been replaced. Brand new, Low-E, energy efficient windows.
To my right is the bathroom. And this bathroom again, we wanted to try and keep and preserve its original style and design, but we wanted to do a few things that cleaned it up somewhat. So we changed out the fixtures and the plumbing fixtures, lighting fixtures, and just cleaned the general bathroom up.
The kitchen was where we spent a fair amount of the homeowner’s money because we felt it was really important to bring this kitchen up. It’s a galley kitchen. It was painted very dark. And so what we did was we kept the flooring that was here, which is a contrast to the rest of the home, but it’s lighter and it makes this room seem brighter because of how closed in it is. Obviously, brand new countertops, cabinet doors and drawers, a brand new stove, and generally paint, replace these French doors, fixtures, everything is new.
And so, also behind me, what you’ll notice is that we’ve got a wall of cabinets here. Now, this wasn’t here before. There were open shelves and a couple of very basic plywood doors that were sort of the thing back in the 1940s. So we’ve replaced this with glass top cabinets and shaker cabinet doors so that we’ve got lots of storage, because this is an important feature to the kitchen to be able to have food and other storage. So we’ve added that, and I think that adds a tremendous amount of value.
The dining room was where the dogs were, and so we had to do a lot of work here to improve this. And it came out really good. We added a medallion to the original light fixture, and we wanted to keep this fixture just because we felt like it tied the home’s original design with the current design. This vestibule, we thought was a great transition for the homeowner to have either a work office, a sitting room off of the master, and this was where the carport started and the rest of the house finished.
We had a very substantial difference in elevation, about 3 feet. So this is built up on a crawl space to be level with the rest of the home. And everything about this room is new. There was nothing here other than posts and the roof. So the master suite is composed of a cathedral vaulted master bedroom.
We have a fantastic farm pulll door here. And one of the features that a lot of people comment on, that’s fantastic is the size of this master closet. You’re not going to find master closets with this size and spaciousness in homes in this neighborhood.
As we walk from the master bedroom to the master bathroom, what you’ll also notice is the features in this master bath just don’t exist in most of the homes in this community. So we have a separate birthday tub, a very spacious water closet. You’re not feeling like you’re cramped into a tiny little room. Double vanities. And again, we’ve tied the calacatta countertops throughout. And really, I think the most important and nicest feature is this master shower. It’s huge and current and just something that you don’t see a lot of in homes in this neighborhood. So we’re very excited about how this came out.
The homeowner is very happy. And it was a really interesting project for us.
Quite a bit of challenges. We had air conditioning fail at the last minute. We had to replace that. The unit that was here was substantially different from what we had to repurchase. So we did a lot of work out here.
I don’t know if you can see through the window also, but just back here was originally a one car garage that most people now use as a storage shed, or a she-shed, if you will. And we finished that out very basically so that that room has power and could be used as an outside office. It could be a workout room, could be just general storage. But it does add value because now you’ve got another space that you can kind of have a living space in. All right.
Okay, so now we’re on the outside of the house. And just to kind of wrap up, as I mentioned, most of the work was done on the inside. The addition was the really big part. But also changing out and updating the kitchen was very important. But we did paint, we did replace gutters. We replaced all of the windows and the doors, and we had a lot of infrastructure underneath. The air conditioning systems failed, so we had to replace all that as well.
So overall, the project was quite challenging. A lot of fun for us us to do, and we think it came out fantastic. The homeowner is very happy, and hopefully the future homeowner who buys this house will be happy with it as well.
So for everyone at Halcyon Remodeling, I’m Greg Kurzner, and thanks for watching.