My Denver Bungalow

Let me start by saying I ADORE THIS HOUSE.

Almost four years ago I determined it was time to sell our Denver square (only ten blocks down the road from this house) because it was too big and fussy not really our deal. We'd renovated as much of it as we could afford, and because the neighborhood is stupid-popular now, it sold in three days. Huzzah!

Enter the bungalow.

Hold up, rewind. I live in Japan now and I'm renting out this house for the duration. Ideally I will live in it again someday and pick up where I left off with renovations. The sooner the better.

Anyway. This little bungalow. It just felt right. From the minute I walked in. It's small, about 1200 square feet, and it has character. Nothing mind-blowing, just subtle and comfortable and happy and it didn't stretch the budget. Crazy, right?

Stuff I wanted and got with this house:

+ solid 1920s build
+ small, compact space
+ dated kitchen I could renovate
+ dirtscaped backyard I could landscape
+ two-car garage
+ great hilltop location (with no 24-hour hipster yoga studio in my alley!)
+ major remodel potential – plans below

Stuff I didn't even know I wanted but got with this house:

+ insane rental income
+ a garden shed!
+ new roof (replaced as part of the sale)
+ good neighbors who aren't all up in my face and don't have shouty children

Stuff I wanted but didn't get with this house:

+ an entry of some kind
+ normal sized bedrooms
+ established trees/shade

Still, I had work to do. My husband had taken a job in Beijing but I wasn't about to go live there – are you kidding? I can't even drink the water in China without developing intestinal mayhem. I visited him, that was all the China I could handle. I wanted to fixate on the house anyway and then on the Vail studio loft and it all worked out perfectly. I took a boatload of mostly low quality iPhone photos while I was doing the work and since I can't multitask for shit, I'm going to write about it now just for posterity, and very much after the fact. I hope there's no rule against that in the blogger bible I have no intention of ever reading.

ANYWAY. Off the bat I refinished the original floors from that standard golden oak to a dark grayish-brown. I painted all the interior things white, of course.

Next up we planned a low-maintenance, low-water back yard with a landscape architect friend. The house being so small, I wanted to add serious livable outdoor space back there. It went from all dirt to all this:

Not everything went so well. The house had pathetic water pressure, which turned out to be very costly to repair and required digging up the entire front yard. And half the street. THEN the kickass new water pressure made the old water heater explode and flood the basement.

But I don't want to talk about that.

Eventually I got back to the fun stuff, namely the kitchen overhaul. I overshared about that here.

Someday I'll decide on that backsplash. Maybe.

A note about the spartan state of the house in these photos: These are the shots I use to advertise it as a rental. They work.

Here's the rest of the house. Not much to it!

The small awkward bedroom off the living area with a door to the bathroom.

Tiny Ikea bathroom renovated not-so-well by the previous owner. But it's cute and it works for now. (You're welcome for not taking a photo of the bathroom with the toilet seat up. I hate that! But probably because I'm mental.)

Small bedroom/office off the kitchen at the back of the house, overlooking the back yard. Yes, that's a $40 tanker desk and my ONLY killer craigslist find. Sorry but I'm not one of those bloggers.

A small part of the basement was also refinished by the previous owner. Again, it works for now.

I GOT PLANS! Of course I have plans. Because I need to obsess over stuff constantly.

+ vault ceilings in the living area, add skylights
+ install small, stand-alone Scandinavian woodburning stove
+ partially enclose porch with nano windows to create quasi-entry
+ utilize the back half of the attic for a sleeping loft/bedroom
+ renovate the existing bathroom
+ excavate basement and create a real laundry room, full bathroom, TV area, and bedroom
+ replace fence, update garage, plant more trees

You know, nothing much. And by the time I get all of that done, it'll be time to renovate the kitchen again.

★

Sadass to Badass: Studio Kitchen Overhaul

I've been meaning to post this kitchen renovation forfuckingever. Yeah, I'm all slo-mo about blogging. So this is my little studio in Vail I renovated last year. Did almost all of the work myself because my thug spouse was working overseas and I'm a batshit crazy determined bitch.

Wouldn't it be funny if these were the 'after' shots? So funny.

Hell yes that is one fly kitchen. I sort of hate posting these photos because they scare me a little. The realtor used these to advertise the property and nothing about that makes sense to me. And they just don't go with my whole punk blog aesthetic. Forrealz.

 Your observations are spot on. The previous owner was indeed a cat lady.

Things began to calm down, thank fuck.

But then it got worse. Like there were at least five hundred grimy cat toys under the stove.

Hot damn, those fleshtone cabinet interiors.

Amazing what appliances, paint, and decent lighting do. I bet you're thinking all that shit on the counter is maybe not so good. Oh, is that boxed wine next to the hand saw? But I get so much more done when I drink. You think I'm kidding.

Wood floors help too. Actually it's engineered wood. Which is cheaper and therefore boss.

And now begin the sparkly-shiny 'after' shots. Read on for the all the fascinating minutiae of this small but magical kitchen transformation.

KitchenAid stove, hood and dishwasher, a bitchin little 13 cubic ft Fisher & Paykel fridge, and small undercounter Panasonic microwave that I built in all by myself. I searched for weeks for the right size stove, if its depth were 1/2 of a centimeter more the dishwasher wouldn't open. Good times in small spaces yo.

I painted all the things. Because I'm a punkrock painter. However, I painted the cabinets 3 times before deciding on colors. Sometimes I hate myself. My go-to colors (black, white, grey) were not working with the counters so I went with something that would. I mean, as far as anything can work with the color of a loogie. Fuck if I can't remember the paint colors I used right now but it's Benjamin Moore Aura satin. Bomber paint.

 

I agonized over ripping down the upper cabinets and installing new ones or open shelves. In the end I ran out of time and money. Same reason the lame formica counters are still there. That always happens. One day they will be so not there.

The devil really is in the details. The LED fixtures, shelf, and most accessories are from Ikea. Newgate clock from Horne. Budget Pfister faucet from Lowe's.

Russell Hobbs coffee maker and there's a chrome Dualit toaster but you can't really see it. I wasn't being as thorough as I should have (what?) because I took these photos at midnight just before driving 14 hours to catch a plane from California to Japan. That's just how I roll.

Approximate cost breakdown: Large appliances $4250 (got the $2800 stove for $900 because it has a small ding on the underside of the handle), small appliances $250, faucet $50, electrical and plumbing labor (not mine) $200, paint $100, accessories $150, light fixtures $100, random shit $50, already had flatware, dishes, clock, toaster and most everything else. So that's just over $5k not including flooring.

Someday I'll do a full redesign the way I want it with open shelves, tile, new cabinets and dope countertops. But for now this is all kinds of awesome (people tell me) and it's full on ready for your next mountain weekend escape so please rent it and make your friends rent it.

★

UPDATE: Fuck yeah professional photos!

Rad Black Cabinets in My Japanese Kitchen

Before (duh)

Boom. Black is beautiful.

No more mottled mauve or pink-beige or whatever fucktard color that is. 

Removable chalkboard wallpaper, people. Took an entire half day. (and that's probably because I don't have hand-eye coordination)

The trickiest bit was smoothing out the bubbles once I'd stuck each piece in the right place.

Best part? When I check out of here I'll just rip it all off and be on my way.

My Tiny Mountain Studio Loft

During the summer and fall last year, before I fled the country and moved to Japan with two big dogs ... before all of that ... I bought and renovated a studio loft in Vail, Colorado. Why? Hard to say. Oh wait, probably because 1) I'm certifiable, and 2) a few years ago I decided to become a real estate tycoon. Putting aside the subject of my life intentions for the moment, the work is done and I'm renting it short-term. If we ever get back to Colorado, it will be our small but sick little second home. And I'm stoked about that because then I'll feel wealthy and special even if I'm neither.

As you can see it's not your typical mountain kitsch, which was my intention. No vintage skis or snowshoes on the walls thank you very much. I'll post before/after project shots but for now you get this. Or see more of it here. There's an updated post on it with much better photos here. And please check out its website. You can also rent it! Or tell your rich skier friends and their rich skier friends to rent it. Poor redheaded step children who snowboard are also welcome. I don't discriminate yo. Just pay me.

I miss my old barcelona

17 ways to make coffee

Karlstad sofabed

Cozy loft bedroom

Ikea love

Subway & marble

Serial Killer Basement

That's what I've been calling it for the last few years. Why are basements so scary? And so grungy? Here are some before pictures of mine for your viewing pleasure. You're so lucky.

The bigger problem was the stale smell that always, I mean always, wafted from the depths of our house. There's only so long you can live in an old house and blame everything on its oldness. No, this was something ... else. I was the only one who was, according to others, being overly sensitive to it. First we called Monster Vac who promptly sucked fifty some years of muck, filth, and rodent corpses from the vents. That helped. But that smell of murk lingered.

Yes. We could have spent the money elsewhere like on, say, widening doorways on the main level or heightening the hobbit doors upstairs. Yes. It would have probably helped the resale value of the house more than what I chose to do. Yes to all of that. But I couldn't take it anymore. I was starting to think the house needed this. Who knows what's happened over the years in here? I decided it needed an exorcism, and it needed me to perform it.

Someone had installed carpet in the basement. That's right. Sort of a thick brown green plush number. Not hideous, but not exactly stylin' either. The 90s version of shag. I have no idea how long it had been there. Or who had installed it. Didn't want to know. It didn't seem that old. Had I known that it, and it alone was causing those funk daddy fumes all along I would have readily ripped it out myself. But I was afraid. Afraid of what? Of what I would find under it. Turned out to be just an innocently uneven concrete floor. No dead bodies. No map of satanic ritual. No tunnel to the old headquarters of the Ku Klux Klan downtown. Four fucking years we lived with that smell. I'm getting to be a real pussy when it comes to the unknown. What happened to my fearlessness? Old house ownership is what happened. And I watch too many slasher movies.

Buying It

I sold real estate for a brief time. That is one cut-throat world of corruption. Bounced that job real quick. I've since bought six properties and sold four. Here are a few suggestions when buying, mostly from mistakes I've made. 

+ Trust your gut. If you walk in and feel it just feels right, it probably is. If you walk in and walk right out again, it probably isn't for you. This tip is from my mother and it's a good one.

+ See the light. Visit at different times throughout the day to see how the light comes and goes. Does it come at all? No matter how goth you want to be, darkness is probably not something you want to endure for years to come.

+ Patience and money. If it's a place you're hoping to renovate, you'll need lots of both. Be realistic about how much you can spend and how much improvements cost. When you estimate the price of a project, multiply by 3 and you'll get close.

+ Never trust your real estate broker, he or she is ONLY trying to make the sale. Even if it's your sister-in-law.

+ Don't be stupid. Don't believe anything an inspector, agent, or homeowner tells you unless you find information to back it up on your own. If your home inspector finds a big problem, depending on what it is have a plumber, electrician, roofer, or structural engineer take a look at it. They're the real experts and will give you an estimate for the work while they're at it.

+ Follow your building inspector around on inspection day and make them explain everything in detail. They miss stuff all the time so test things yourself like windows, lights, outlets, faucets, drains, etc. Go to town.

+ Do research. Public records are online and will tell you if it's been bought or sold recently. One of our brokers neglected to tell us the home had sold for less than half the price just a few months prior, and we already had a contract on it. Fired that bitch.

+ Location is crucial but it's not everything. Don't buy something just for its location especially if it's overpriced or because people say the word three times in a row.

+ Don't rush. It's the largest wad you'll ever blow, so talk it over. A lot. To death. More than they do on HGTV shows.

+ Soul search. In other words, ask yourself if it's really you. Look very closely. Is it?

+ Don't borrow more than you can afford right now. And, if possible, get a 15 year loan. Markets crash and circumstances change so play it safe.

+ Expect surprises. Both good and bad will happen once you're in. Home ownership has a steep learning curve. You will have buyer's remorse at some point. Absolutely no doubt about it. You will come up with insulting nicknames for whomever you bought it from. Completely normal.