The Tudor House Renovation Reveal

Today I’m excited to finally be sharing our first (and last?) flip house! The Tudor house renovation reveal! It’s taken us nearly a year to get here, but now that the home has officially sold and 100% off our plates, I wanted to share how everything turned out with the project.

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The Tudor House Renovation: Background Story

In an attempt not to be too redundant, I’m linking my other posts about this home here in case you need a refresher or are new here.

• The Tudor Project: Our First Flip House
• The Tudor House Renovation Ideas & Design Boards
• The Tudor House: White Painted Brick Exteriors & Alternatives

If you want the full backstory on this project, I’d suggest reading this post. But long story short, we ultimately decided to flip a Tudor home from the 1920’s with two other couples last spring. The house had been in disrepair for quite some time. It had been on the market since fall of 2019, and over that winter, the house was broken into and the copper piping was stolen and most of the house flooded. So, prior to us even buying the house, much of it had been gutted to remove the damage. So, as much as we wanted to preserve some of the original character, there wasn’t much left to preserve.

This was the first flip house we have ever attempted. Only one of the other couples involved had prior experience in this area. I was tasked with helping to select many of the design element, including any floor plan changes, finishes, etc. But, given there were five other opiniated people involved, I had to make several concessions 😉 Add in a renovation budget that was spiraling out of control, and I was left with a very small finish budget and had to get really creative with some of my finds. Oh, and did I mention this was all during a pandemic when items were backordered for months? I’ve found it’s also difficult for me to not make the changes I would make if I were actually moving into the house. There are places it would have been worth stretching the budget a little. But, after some major expenses with HVAC, plumbing, etc. we had to ensure we made selections that would hopefully allow us to make a tiny profit – or worst case scenario, break even and call it a learning experience!

I’m not going to go into all the details and issues we encountered, as I know most of you are just here to see the before and after photos! But I also want to make it clear that it was a lot of work (and many tears, mostly on my part) to get here. When you’re dealing with a nearly-100 year old house, basically nothing goes as planned and budgets are blown at every turn. In a tragic turn of events, our contractor was tragically killed in a motorcycle accident in the final weeks of the project. He and I had grown close, and I really just needed to step away from the whole project by that point. I think he’d be proud of how everything ultimately turned out though!

I know I’m being picky and most of you don’t care. But I had to take the pictures at random dates over the past four months and basically, the house was never “ready” for me to take photos. It was one thing after another. So some of my pics are in constructions phase just before they were wrapped up. Others were after two months of showings in the snowiest months of the year and there is salt and grime on the floors. Others are after the stagers are started and you’ll see random things in the rooms. But, I tried to piece them all together so you can see the same angles in the before and afters to see just how different everything looks now!

I’ll also link sources along the way if I know them. Admittedly, there was a period towards the end of the project where I checked out entirely so I don’t have some of the sources for things like the mirrors and towel bars, etc. because I didn’t pick them. But, I’ve included all the other sources along the way!

The Tudor House Renovation: Before & After Photos

So, let’s jump into the part I know most of you are most eager to see: the before and after photos!

I also want to mention the paint colors throughout. The walls are Snowglory 0531 color matched at Sherwin Williams. The trim is all SW Alabaster and the floors were stained DuraSeal Coffee Brown. We were able to save most of the original hardwoods throughout, and the Coffee Brown stain was perfect to enhance their natural color, while also hiding some flaws but allowing the grain to shine through. So happy with it!

Welcome to the before and after of our Tudor flip house!

I’m going to do a dedicated post about the exterior so I’ll save all the details on that for a later date. But here’s a hint: we did limewash it!

Let’s start in the entryway.

We didn’t do much to change the floorplan of the home. However, one of the biggest changes was lowering the coat closet from the landing to ground floor. This allowed us to carve out a mudroom on the back side near the back entrance!

mandated we keep the front door because there’s nothing better than leaded glass in old houses in my opinion. So pretty!

And here’s that view now.

Off to the left of the entryway is the dining room and then the kitchen. There was a wall previously dividing them, making the small kitchen seem even smaller.

We took the wall down (and moved the main stack) to create a larger feeling floorplan. We stole a few feet from the dining room to give to the kitchen and the difference is rather dramatic. Here is essentially that same view today. Can you even believe it’s the same house?! This is where the dirty floors come out in full glory though, so you’ll just have to look past that 😉

Since the footprint of the kitchen was too small to add an island, we decided to use this tiny little breakfast nook as a butler’s pantry for extra storage.

It ended up being one of my favorite rooms in the entire house! I opted for glass shelves so as not to block any of the light coming in from that window. I found a bunch of examples of the types of shelving I wanted, and our crew built these from pipes at the hardware store and spray painted them gold! We then had glass custom cut for the shelves. I couldn’t be happier with how they turned out! This kit would be similar if you’re wanting to try your own!

A few more kitchen details. We used Sherwin Williams Naval on both the range hood and the lower cabinets in the pantry and I love how the color turned out!

We worked with Annie at Cabinet Factory Outlet Plus to help us with the overall cabinet and appliance layout, and she was so helpful! There was very little space on the counters for small appliances and since we opted to do a custom range hood, we had the microwave installed under the serving cabinet. It was important to me that when you walked in the front door of the house, you didn’t immediately see the fridge so we tucked it into this wall as well.

We built a tall pantry style cabinet next to the fridge with rolling shelves for easier access. It’s amazing how much storage this fairly small kitchen now has!

The living room is a fairly long room and the original fireplace was still in decent shape.

Since the hearth was original and still in decent shape, we opted to keep it but we added a bit more substance to the area by building out the wall above the mantel. The photo below is obviously from when they were still working on the area but it turned out really nice in the end! I showed up one day and they had limewashed the surround to match the exterior but the hearth flooring was left natural.

Here’s a more recent shot with dirty floors but it helps to better show the length of the room.

Off of the living room is a really nice size office space. The windows in here were shot so the biggest difference of all was the sound quality once the windows were replaced.

Short of replacing all the windows, all we really did was paint and add carpet.

Welcome to the world’s smallest bathroom. This is the only bathroom on the main level and there wasn’t a way to change the footprint on this one.

It’s still really tight, but definitely much less creepy now!

The upstairs hallway bath was particularly scary when we first bought the house.

And here is that same bathroom now! We were actually able to find someone to build a new frame for the leaded glass so we could keep the original window. One of the few original items we were able to salvage! We wanted the floors and tub to be classic and reflective of the original style, so we went with a hex marble tile on the floor and beveled subway tiles in the shower.

The room below was the former master bedroom. It had a closet-like en suite (I’ll share that below) and essentially a coat closet. So, since we were adding square footage elsewhere, we opted to convert this bedroom into the master bathroom and closet, complete with laundry hook-up in case the new owners wanted an alternative to the basement laundry.

That same space looks like this now. This is the room we likely had the most “discussions” about, design-wise. It’s a different direction than I would have gone for the style of the home, but I had to choose my battles, and it still turned out beautifully.

Here was the shower below. It was tucked under the slope of the roof, and I’m guessing even most average-sized people had to duck while inside.

The footprint that held the toilet, sink and shower is now home to just the toilet. At one point we had envisioned built-ins under the roofline, but ultimately left it as is to allow the buyer to do what they want with the extra space.

And here is the actual bedroom. It was the bedroom next door to the prior master bedroom, and we joined it with the new bathroom and closet space. We like this location best because it’s also the quietest and most private corner of the house.

Other than some closet reconfiguration, we didn’t do much in the other two bedrooms other than drywall, staining the floors and updating the windows/trims and light fixtures!

BEDROOM SOURCES: Schoolhouse Light Fixture

And here is the other bedroom.

We also had to make the decision to remove this little bathroom off one of this secondary bedrooms. We were unable to adjust the footprint, and it honestly felt more creepy than functional. Your knees had to go under the sink to fit on the toilet. We tried 😉

So, although we hated to get rid of a bathroom, we ultimately made this space a closet since we weren’t able to move any of the walls here for structural reasons. The bedroom actually has two closets now, and this one would also be perfect for a little desk or toy closet! My wide-angle lens makes it look much larger now. I assure you it’s still tiny – it just looks less tiny without the toilet, sink and radiator! We also changed the orientation of the door so that it now swings out instead of in to avoid blocking the window when it’s open.

Perhaps one of the biggest changes we made was removing the old boiler system from the upstairs attic and moving to modern HVAC. Granted, this was by far our biggest expense, but by removing this equipment, insulating the walls and refinishing the space, we were able to add several hundred usable and finished square footage!

This is the same view as above. It’s crazy how open it is now! Perfect for a studio, toy room, office space, or really even another large bedroom!

This is a nook further down in the space. It’s also the only other original window we were able to salvage. To help with sound and cozy factors, we added wall to wall carpet. I don’t have any info on it, as I was not involved with ordering it.

Here are a few other details from the home.

The house is officially sold as of last week and I hope the new family loves the home we created. I’ll plan to do a follow-up post at a later date on the limewashing of the exterior. I don’t have tons of details on the actual process, but thought more images would be helpful for those possibly considering it!

I hope you enjoyed seeing this project over the past few months! Feel free to leave any questions below in comments and I’ll do by best to answer them!

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