My first fixer upper - Before & After

Happy Monday Darlins,

Today I'm sharing my first fixer upper.

When I first married I moved into this 1940's California ranch style home near the beach. 

My husband had bought it years before and did some remodeling of his own!!!

(Burnt orange tile-avacado green appliances, brick & a conversation pit)

So the story is looong, the short backstory is....

A young women dreams of the opportunity to be apart of choosing her first home.

Well I didn't get that, SOOOO my trade off was.

 I agreed to love it, not list it!

 BUT, In exchange, I would get to do a complete design and renovation of the house with my style and incorporate the other structures and landscape.

We began with a tiny 125 sq. ft shed in the back yard. I wanted to make into a darling guest house and live in it during the renovation. We had a budget & I wanted to be hands on living on site!

Yes, it would be the three of us because we had just had our first baby.

 Our son was 6 weeks old and we began the demo of our new family home.

The stakes were high!

{This was my first everything}

My marriage

my baby

my renovation

my design project.

{ I had no design background or experience}

So no pressure right!

BEFORE

This was the front elevation.

LOOONg no height

Needed an entry

The awful driveway in front of the windows and house needed to go

 along with the iceplant & palm trees! 

My Design vision was clear from the start and inspired by homes in New England or the lake houses in the midwest.

AFTER

The driveway was removed, a lawn with magnolias, birch trees, evergreens, boxwoods & roses were added. I love fences, my husband and I made 5 different designs for fencing!

The Roofline was raised to add height to exterior elevation and gave the interior more architectural interest to the interior ceilings.

We finally had a lovely proper entrance with a porch to watch the sunset and decorate for the holidays!

A single level home with views to the beach.

My husband laid all the solid southern pine floors and did amazing wood work and moldings in the interior. The process with plans & etc took about a year or so. We also hooked up to city sewer. The house renovation took about a year and half to complete. The years following we did the other structures.

We did most of the finish work ourselves and landscaping. I scouted for all the interior vintage lighting & designed some custom furniture pieces.

This and all our projects are truly a labor of love.

We sold the home a few years to do something totally different.

We have some land now, just a few miles from this home and are renovating another huge project into our french farm house.

I hope you enjoyed my first fixer upper!

A beautiful day week to you.

Stop by and follow on my new IG feed!

It's 

xogailsmithpeterson

xo,

Gail