The Split - love it or hate it

Its so funny how split levels/ split entries/ raised ranches have such a nasty reputation. Yet they are everywhere!!! It makes sense why they became popular, as they do not require a full dug basement, they offer a lot of space, and from my research they are pretty cheap to construct. I will say, in our house hunting I NEVER WANTED A SPLIT! I know as we did some research to potentially sell our home, our realtor reminded us in comps that "that is a cape/colonial/etc, etc, you have a raised ranch - people don't want raised ranches".
All of this makes me feel a little sad for my poor house. I mean, I think that in the land of splits the curb appeal on ours is not so bad.

We have great land, a long, windy, paved driveway. Most importantly, we are in a great neighborhood. Location, location, location. When I first set out on my quest to find more on split level remodels, the one thing I saw over and over again was, "we didn't want a split, but it was in the perfect location." So when you have the perfect location, there has to be a way (cost effectively) to create the perfect house, right!?!

So lets look at the pros and cons of a split level, raised ranch, split entry. If you need to figure out what you actually have, I thought this was very comprehensive http://www.dakotacda.org/pdf/splitvisions.pdf

PRO's: Our house is spacious. We have 4 large bedrooms, 3 bathrooms (2 of which are large), and I love that we have two living rooms. We have a laundry room, so the piles upon piles of laundry my 3 kids create can hide from view. We have a beautiful 5 Bay window that lets in an incredible amount of light into our living room. We are also lucky that our basement level has really nice ceiling height (9ft), that I wish carried up to the main floor. We have a huge screened in porch attached in the back, which seems to be a pretty common add on that many splits have done in their early years. I also love our fireplace and wood stove, from my research I see this isn't always in all splits, but it is a great feature. Lastly, I like my laundry shoot :)

CON's:
INTERIOR:
BEDROOMS - All the bedrooms are together. In most splits the bedrooms are clustered to one side of the main floor. We are lucky enough to have one in the basement, but which kid do we send into the basement? Why I hate this? I hate sharing a wall with my kids. Right now it is okay cause they are little and many times I have to go into their rooms for nightmares etc. But, in the long term I know we do not want to be directly across from them in our bedrooms.

KITCHEN - It is small, dark, there is no counterspace. It is this tiny little room that does not align with the modern era of kitchens being the gathering space. The lack of counterspace is appauling, our first Christmas the kids and I needed to use the kitchen table as a floating island to do anything.

STORAGE - We are lucky to have a million closets in our house. Each bedroom has a closet, the upstairs hallway has 3 closets, and we have a closet as your enter from the garage. That said, there is no where to store stuff that is more appropriate for a basement or garage. Our garage fits both our cars, but barely, and with little room for storage. We have utilized under the deck, but it has meant every winter putting up tarps and struggling to keep them together through the rough New England winters. Not to mention it looks like hell.

BASEMENT - Its dark and its a basement. We have a living room, bedroom, laundry, and bath and although we have windows the laundry window is covered by the porch, the bathroom lacks a window and you just have the feeling of being in a basement. So 800 sq feet of our living space just has the basement feel. 

EXTERIOR:
ENTRY - There is no doubt, this is one of the most complained about aspect of any split. The entry looks last minute, or lacking in any design or style. Luckily ours has some great molding and a beautiful window that was easily spruced up with a little paint. But, it is still pushed back into the house leaving much to be desired.

ROOF LINE - It is boring and ugly and straight across. There is nothing drawing your attention away from the split or the recessed entryway.



So, with all that, what do you do about it? Well, if I had an extra $100K, I think I could feel confident to make any split something that I could love. But, sadly that is not my case.

The most common renovations I have found in my research focuses on the entryway. Adding a portico, or changing the roof line to draw your focus away from the fact that it is a split.

Here is my vision on our changed entry. I'd love to add a craftsman style portico and change the roof line over the living room. Plus the bonus of this is to add the garage and finish off the garage we currently have to add more space. This is an exterior I could definitely be happy with.

Photo credit: thisoldhouse.com

Interior-wise, the most common change is to take down walls where you can. Opening up the kitchen and the dining room and/or the kitchen/living space with a wall opening or half wall. Combining two small bedrooms to create one large master.

This is one area I am stuck. We have taken down the wall between the kitchen and the dining room. We have added a window to let in more light for the kitchen/dining and we are adding solar tubes to again increase the light in the kitchen.

 

The view of our new window from the kitchen

Our master bedroom is large, but I would maybe take the wall between the hall closet and our master bath out in order to increase the size of the master bath. But none of this solves the bedroom cluster dilemma. We are thinking of finishing the current garage and adding on like in the picture above, allowing us to move the kids bedrooms all downstairs and putting the office upstairs with a spare bedroom.

If we are able to do the exterior upgrades and finish the garage and make a new one, I think our house truly could be our dream house. Sadly, these next two phases put us well over the $100K in renovation costs. We are left to debate, is it worth it?


What are your reasons to love or hate your split?

Office complete

In the beginning of this renovation my husband and I promised ourselves that we would tackle one project, one room at a time. This way we could focus our time, money, energy, and mess on one space. Sadly, that has become quite a joke as we usually have multiple projects going on in EVERY SINGLE ROOM in the house. It's because of this craziness, there is an amazing feeling when a room comes to completion.

On a side note, I hate to say completion, because I often rarely feel like EVERYTHING could possibly be done in a room. But, for the purposes of the immediate future, I'll say complete.

The office, is finally a room that can go on the completed list. Amazingly, it is the last room we have touched and actually the first room to be totally done. Sure, there are a few things that maybe could be moved, a shelf that could be painted. I have a curtain made, but not hung and honestly, I don't know if I will hang it.

Like all projects, after its done, I love it! I want to be in there all the time. I can't understand how I didn't do this 2 years ago, instead of having this messy, ugly, storage hub. So here it is:

I started with this:

If only we had a picture of the mess this room became.
It was the room everything without a home came to die.
We barely functioned as an office, because if I had to dig anything out of the closet, it stayed to rest on the desk. 

After removing the carpet, scraping the glue, painting the trim, changing the light, painting the walls, painting the floors, adding an area rug, and building a craft desk. 


HIS

Here are some quick iPhone shots, I will get the camera out, clean up and show you the goods later :) Isn't it such a cool room!?!




 HERS

Project office

Here's our mess :

I forgot to take a picture of the he original carpeted mess. 

Step one, carpet removal, glue scraping. 

Step two: trim

Now, trying to figure out the color scheme.

Here we have Sherwin Williams Antique Red, Dromedary camel, and Wool skein.

I think we're leaning toward wool skein (top left) for brightening. 

Need some inspiration.

We're tearing apart the office to do the floors. The office is never quite utilized right, its basically our downstairs junk room.

So, I need some inspiration to put it back together better.

I'm thinking even when our big dreams of finishing the garage happen, this is going to be the "music" room for a while. At least until the dream garage gets built - so you can see what I mean by a while.

This is one of the prominent pieces in the room, the other, a burgundy and black poster of my hubs old band. Chip away!!

The cycle

Sometimes I start on a project on a whim. For example, we venture to Lowes for this or that and we wonder with both our minds thinking, let's convince ourselves into something on our wish list that isn't "that" much. Sometimes reality and responsibility kick in and we both leave, heavy hearted hoping the other would have been the irrational money spender. 

Other times.. well, one of us breaks. My husband, when he breaks he becomes focused. Luckily for us both he usually takes on things that require a fixed amount of time and man power. So it gets done, in a nutshell. 

When it's me, it's usually something cheap that I'm going to do just "to make something better" but not permanent. Then I enter the cycle.

This is how it goes. I'm just getting this gallon of concrete paint for the basement to "test it out". Turns into "let's try it, it can't get worse." Enter me on a kid free hour testing it out, then testing a bigger place as I start to love it. I realize it's great, but maybe the color is off. So I buy more, and retint the original. Now I'm 2 gallons in. I venture to paint even more- thus creating a complete disaster of my basement. I love it do much I think, why temporary, this is awesome! 

This is the turning point. You know, where the temporary place holder becomes my DIY dream. Then I sink in. I google, I dream, I envision how this will all play out. 

Then reality hits. The kids spill water before the floor "cures" and I see how my family has a different version of "tough" on a surface. This is when I start to crumble. This is impossible, this will look awful, I didn't follow the directions on the can. Usually, this is when the kids are home and obviously not privy to my genius of home renovation glory. Then I lose my mind and want to throw in the towel.

I'll save the description of temper tantrum like texts my husband receives and my udder disappointment. Luckily, this means the 360 degree turn is on the way. I finally realize the disarray must go. I need my house back. My propane is mixing with fumes from the cement paint prompting a $85 call to the propane company to see if there's something wrong.

------side note: when vapors mix with your propane they cause a terrible smell but clean your copper while cooking, a happy side to the fear of our house exploding------

It's then I realize, WTF let's just go with it, it will be better then it was. Enter 360.

Trusting your house.. and being frustrated in the meantime

One of the frustrating aspects of buying an older house is finding that sense of trust. Trusting that its secure, trusting there is no hidden mold, or hidden defects just waiting to pop up. Along with that comes the fact that most, if not everything needs to be replaced. Old water filter, old water heater, thermostat, windows, etc etc etc.

As we continue to tackle renovating our house, I find myself optimistic, excited, but in all honesty - most of the time frustrated and hopeless. It feels too large of a task, especially while running a household of 3 kids, two pets, and 2 parents. Throw in winter, financial woes, and just everyday life and it can be totally overwhelming. Many of my friends in similar situations as us have quit, they just don't get around to the renovation. I have so many people tell me they can't fix one thing in their house, let alone all the changes we have made. They can't understand how we get all that we do done. But, it comes at a price - a stressed out price. Just hoping and hoping that in the end (which will hopefully be sooner than later) it'll be all we wanted.

Since we have moved in, we have replaced the water system. That was a year ago, today they are coming out because since the new, amazing water system our water smells like sewage. Seriously. We had a bit of an odor before and now, especially the master bath, it is gag worthy to brush your teeth in there.

The mold in our windows. We have single paned 1987 Anderson Windows. Any poly on the wood has since worn off and the condensation that drips has created a warped mess of mold and soggy wood. Sadly, we didn't really notice this when we moved in since the previous owners didn't live here in the winter and so the windows were blessed the massive heat discrepancy of outside and in during cold winter months.

Old thermostats. We don't have the luxury of our thermostats telling us the temperature of a room. So we think we are placing the room at 65, but honestly have no idea. What has mostly made me not trust the thermostats is the new thermostat in the kitchen. It works amazing. You put the temp on 60 and the kitchen is there. You can tell. The boys room, you turn it on 70 and its freezing most of the time. Not too bad a fix at $21 a pop, but as the owner of an electric heated house, that is 11 x $21.

Here's the nasty windows in the master. I hadn't gotten around to finishing the trim in here. But even those windows I did look like this.

It's entirely frustrating and gross.

It's in the details

Our house is from the '80's - throughout this renovation we have discovered things that we don't really want, things that I would have never thought about. These little details are definitely one of the perks of building brand new, everything is new. One such thing we have run into is the outlets/covers. We have the lovely off white/almond/looks dirty outlets and covers. Some of the rooms hide it well, since there is an off white motif any way. But, other rooms, these ugly almond covers stick out and just look drab.

Here's a picture of my daughters room with the regular outlet.

The white trim added such a clean look and the outlet just looks off, it looks dirty and outdated. My solution, via pinterest:

It adds so much to the room. Instead of your eye catching on what you think is dirty and old, you look at a cute little detail of the room. The best part - its so easy. A little modge podge, an exacto knife, and drying time. I did the two light switches in my daughter's room with some left over craft paper I used on a friends wedding invitations. The light pink has sparkle white dots. Unfortunately, in doing these outlets I realized the other outlets stood out more. I didn't really want to do them all in this contrasting pink polka dots. So for the other outlets, I used left over fabric from her curtains.

Here is the final coat with modge podge.

This is the end product. It's so adorable and subtle! I sort of wish I just did the whole room in the paisley, but the polka dot is adorable too. I will say, I prefer using fabric vs. scrap booking paper. The edges glue down easier, it lays flatter and just looks more professional. About 5 minutes of prep, a couple hours of drying and here you have it!

I don't know that I want every outlet cover in the house to be fancy, but since the cost of replacing all the outlets and covers is staggering, its a great way to add some beauty in the rooms that really could use an extra little touch.