Dream House Upgrades!

I figured this would be an interesting topic and maybe people could get ideas from one another.

If you could upgrade your house in any way, budget be damned, what would you do?

I would paint the whole house (actually, since there is no budget, I'd pay someone to paint the house because I can't climb a ladder )

Place new carpet in all three bedrooms

New flooring in the kitchen and bathrooms

Get new cabinets and appliances for the kitchen

Screen in our back patio

Replace the front and back doors/install a cat door so the cats could sun on the patio

Pay someone to landscape my yard

I would:

Clear out all the clutter
New walls in bedroom
A sort out of the spare room (turn into an extra room or guest bedroom) and also add a small balcony on its window
Plant some more colour in the garden and knock down that darn old shed

I would add on to the back of my house with a large room that would function as entry to the house from the garage, a mud room and the laundry room.

I would have all the walls replastered since they are lath and plaster, which I would want to repair rather than replaced. I would redo the bathroom a little and get new cabinets in the kitchen. I would also get a better kitchen exhaust hood. Finally, I would get better landscaping and completely finish the basement.

Do not get me wrong. I love our little house. I think I have started to love it more now that it was paid off on the 10th; however, the person who built it in 1923 was not precise about things. He also cut a lot of corners.

Re-do the hardwood floors. I don't think the floors were installed properly. I have a huge 1/4 inch gap in between the floor boards in one spot now There's a few other smaller gaps between the floor boards. I know wood can shrink and expand due to humidity but these gaps seem to be slowly expanding over time.

Besides a completely new renovated kitchen I'd love a gazebo in the yard and front porch with rocking chairs and/or swing.

Everything has to be weeded out and de-cluttered.

Clean and paint every wall.

Replace wallpaper.

Replace electrical wiring and add a lot more circuits.

Refinish all woodwork.

Fix the fireplace so it will light.

Make entire house handicapped-accessible.

Renovate bathrooms.

Get rid of carpet and put flooring down everywhere.

Put in insulated windows.

Install French drains.

New fence.

New front doors that don't rust and are insulated.

Build a cat superhighway around the den.

Replace all trees with full-grown, healthy ones.

Landscape front yard.

Install lighting in den and living room.

Renovate the kitchen.
Replace bathtub with shower.
Repaint everything.
Replace carpet with hardwood flooring.
Put a handrail on front stoop.
Tear down deck and replace with a stone patio.

It will all have to wait until I win the lottery.

How did I miss this post? This is something my hubby and I talk about a lot!
Finish (finally) the downstairs renovation, including hardwood flooring throughout.

Add a heated greenhouse to yard
Hire someone to remove the bittersweet that has invaded my juniper bed.
I would completely renovate my gardens and really add the plants I want and get rid of the ones I don't including the burning bushes and the Norway maples (both hubbys idea), both of which are invasive here.
Add a garage, storage room and laundry room
new furniture throughout the house
Expand the front porch to all the way across the front of the house
Replace the front door
Replace the sliding doors with French doors
Enlarge the deck and make it a screened in porch
build a catio
add a water garden
Reconfigure our bedroom so we could enlarge the master bath
remodel both bathrooms, complete with flooring.
remove that AWFUL popcorn ceiling throughout the upstairs. Who ever thought that stuff was attractive??
Remove carpeting and replace with hardwood
Replace banister
Repaint the entire inside
Replace some light fixtures and ceiling fans
Make one of the spare bedrooms into an office so my husband could write undisturbed.
Have electrician completely rewire house since we have some light switches that don't seem to turn anything on. I think they were installed by mistake and never hooked up to anything.
Have a plumber check all the plumbing. Since we have such horrible water I am sure the pipes are not in great shape. The house is almost 30 years old. The water is so messed up that we have 2 filters.
I would research a different style of heating. We use fuel oil, forced hot water heaters now and maybe install central air conditioning.
I am sure I could think of more! To think, this was our dream home when we moved in 27 years ago.

Good list posiepurrs ! You just need to pick away at it one project at a time. As far as the light switches that don’t seem to control anything. Have you checked to see if they control an outlet or one plug in an outlet. I had those in every room when I moved into my 60’s house.

And if natural gas is available, a natural gas forced air furnace is the cleanest and most comfortable for heating and you don’t get that fuel oil smell when you turn the furnace on. Good luck.

We remodeled our kitchen a few years ago. We remodeled the bathroom last year. Hmmm, let me see:

• Get rid of the living room carpet and replace with a hardwood floor
• Replace the ugly stair railing with a nice wooden railing
• Repaint the living room and put a new light in the foyer
• Get rid of that ugly deck on the back of the house and put a new and larger deck there, using Trex instead of wood. Actually I'd like to have a back porch.
• A new concrete deck around the pool. And while we're at it, we could use a new filter for the pool. And some nice landscaping at the pool area.
• A 3-vehicle garage on the house
• I'm still dreaming of a Bluestar range in my kitchen! In red. Build Your Own | Custom Kitchen Appliances | BlueStar
• New siding and a new roof. We still have the original siding and our "new" roof is already almost 20 years old, give or take.

I think that's it.

Well, if money was no concern, I would buy acreage and build my perfect dream house. But if we are talking about simply renovations...First you need to picture my home. I have already put so much thought into this, it is ridiculous.
We have a side split (3 level). Front door faces the road and opens into the living room. Side door faces the driveway, and opens into the kitchen. Our main level consists of the kitchen and living room with a wall dividing both rooms, no door just an opening.
The center of the house is where the stairs are. Leaving the living room, you go up 4 steps to the upper level which has a full bath and three bedrooms. Two bedrooms that face the front yard side by side, and one bedroom and the bathroom that face the back yard.
Leaving the kitchen, you go down 10 stairs to the "split" basement. The half basement under the upper level is full height, where as the other half of the basement under the kitchen/living room is about 5 feet high. (Better than a crawl space!) The full height side of the basement is divided into three spaces. The side that face the front yard is the largest and is our recroom. And the back side is a random room (only divided/no doors) and our laundry/bathroom.

These are obviously not to scale, but this is what my house layout is...sort of.
So, What I would love to do....
Add a 4th level over the kitchen and living area, the stairs to that upper level would go over the basement stairwell, we would just remove the linen closet.
The upper level would be the "master retreat" with a bedroom, big walk in closet and full bathroom.
Then the two side by side bedrooms on the main could be merged so that the room is bigger and we can have a decent sized closet in there.
The little alcove in the single bedroom side of the house would get turned into a closet, and I would remove the closet on the other side for a better layout of the bedroom.
I would remove the walls dividing the full height side of the basement and make a more user friendly rec room so I can have a pool table.
The laundry/bath room in the basement would get a face lift.
I would pretty much gut the whole kitchen and remove the wall between the kitchen and living room. It seems like we have empty space for nothing and it would allow me to have a better functioning kitchen and a better space so I can add a "dining area", which currently doesn't work.
I would replace all the floors with vinyl plank flooring.
We need to replace a few windows in the house as well as our patio doors.
We also need better insulation in the exterior walls, especially on the upper level.
I would also like to add an enclosed porch/entryway off the side door (kitchen). That is the door we use to come in and out, but because it goes right into the kitchen, that means we have all our shoes/boots and coats in there and it just makes the kitchen look cluttered, and the floor gets dirty faster.

And of course, I would love to build a 2 car garage on my property. We have a pie shaped yard, so our frontage is quite wide and would accommodate a nice garage. To never have to clean off my car in the winter would be a dream come true!

Anyway, sorry for the long post. I'm home sick and have lots of time on my hands!

Since we can't increase the footprint of our house, I would have the stucco exterior removed and replaced with fiber cement siding, and jack the house up and a poured concrete foundation replacing the original rubble one, with a French drain system to keep ground water at bay, then have our walk-up attic converted to living space, and finally, a standing seam copper roof and copper gutters and downspouts.

I'd just move into an existing dream house. Preferably in the Florida Keys.