My Old Home

Welcome to another Met Monday hosted by Susan over at Between Naps on the Porch. Today's transformation is rather bitter sweet for me. It revolves around our old home in California. We sold this home in the Summer of 06'. We had only been in it about two years. We had been in on the building of this home from the ground up. When Mr Whimsy got the opportunity to move across country to North Carolina we jumped at the chance. Me being a southern girl at heart (and gene pool) couldn't wait to get to the south. So we placed our home on the market and held our breath. The recession had already hit in California and homes were at a stand still. Low and behold our home sold in a mere four weeks and we were quickly on our way to North Carolina to search for a home. It was hard to leave my beautiful home. I had chosen everything for it and designed so many elements of it I just didn't want to leave it. I knew this was a good move for us so I kept my mouth shut and my eyes looking towards our future. A couple weeks back some old friends and neighbors of ours told us our old home had fallen into foreclosure. GASP! I cringed. I felt sick. You see because my design business was going strong at the time I built my home I had been fortunate enough to use my vendors for much of the finish work. I was able to put $65K worth of flooring in for $26K and the deals did not stop there. If anyone has ever seen a home in California you don't get anything but the drywall and the foundation LOL! No molding, no gorgeous wood floors. So to bring my home to life I had gone the distance and had all the bells and whistles put in by my finish carpenters. Lovely hickory floors, tumbled stone flooring in the baths used brick flooring and walls and molding galore. I will not go into the gory details but the home sold for $400 thousand dollars LESS than we sold it for in 06'. Someone is very lucky! I was able to find it online and see the changes the person who bought it from us had made to it. So here is a metamorphism from 04' during construction until currently. This is the dining room right after they had finished putting down the hickory flooring. This dining room had 20' ceilings.


Here is a picture of it as it was when we lived there. I had split the upper wall from the lower so I could use red in the dining room. It is one way of dealing with the open concept floor plans that are common issue in California homes. I had plantation shutters installed on almost every window in the home except for the family room and kitchen. There I had woven blinds put in.

The owner had taken the walls to the solid tan color. On one wall she did picture frame molding. I like the idea of this especially if the scale had been done larger to suit the space.

Here is a picture of one of the openings in the family room. This area was just a large opening with a little pony wall. Very unfinished looking. I had my carpenter encase the entire opening in molding closing in the pony wall.

Here is how it looked as we were living in it. She kept this area the same but for some reason I could not get the current picture of this space to upload. I had all the openings in this home cased out with molding like this.

Here is the kitchen getting the finishing touches. I had just had the woven blinds in this room installed that day and the faucet. Look how WHITE everything was!

This is how the kitchen looked when we lived in the home. I had the kitchen painted a lovely Nantucket blue and pendant lights installed over the island.

Here is the kitchen as the new owners left it. Tan. In fact she painted almost every space in this home tan except for the master bath and one kids room. I don't know why the back splash was left white??? I am wondering if there is actually something else there besides wall now?

This is the banister and stairway when we left. I had hired a contractor to refinish the banister in a dark stain but had put him on hold since we were moving. When she bought the home I passed on his info and well it looks like she had it done.

What an improvement that dark banister is! That is one thing the builder would not change for me when we were building it.

Those are all the pictures I am going to post. I am sad. I keep telling myself that it is good the home was not trashed like so many homes that fall into foreclosure are. None the less as I said before it is so bitter sweet! To visit more incredible transformations visit Between Naps on the Porch by clicking here.