Hand-1917 Bungalow Becomes a Four Square « Rejuvenation Projects Blog

New Paint and Lights

Posted in Hand-1917 Bungalow Becomes a Four Square by ericateaches on February 5, 2010

Living room is in a light yellow color. "Jicama" from Benjamin Moore. Don't the columns look great? Guest bedroom/t.v. room. Light fixture from Rejuvenation. Paint color is "Veranda Green" from Benjamin Moore. Turned out to be more of a blue color than green but we really like it. My favorite light fixture in the house. Hanging above the top of the stairs, "The Euclid" from Rejuvenation. It gives off this great warm, golden glow when turned on. Love it! Dining room is a kind of beige color. New light fixture from Rejuvenation. Color is called “Shelburne Buff” by Benjamin Moore. One of the best colors ever! Could have painted most rooms with it. The allusive colors are the best. Sometimes it looked more on the brown side and other times it looks like a darkened gold color. Pendant light over what will be the breakfast nook with benches and a trestle table.: School house lights with green accent stripes that match the green paint on the walls.

Green paint in the kitchen-”Caper Tree” by Benjamin Moore

To remodel or to move? That was the question.

Posted in Hand-1917 Bungalow Becomes a Four Square by ericateaches on January 14, 2010

Before my husband and I got married I was renting a 1917 bungalow on the edge of the historic Irvington neighborhood in Portland, Oregon. When we decided to get married in 2002, the owner decided to sell the house for an incredibly low price. We jumped on the chance to buy it as the location was ideal being walking distance from pubs, coffee houses, an organic food store, and a bus line.

Later, in 2006, my husband and I had a little boy. The house was in many ways mostly like a one bedroom as there was a bedroom on the main floor and then the upstairs was an attic converted into a living space that ran the width of the house. The pitch of the roof made for extremely low ceiling room which was not conducive to my 6’3′ husband. Furthermore, the upstairs was freezing cold in the winter and blazing hot in the summer time. We didn’t have a dining room so, entertaining was cramped to say the least. As those of you who have children know, you begin to accumulate “stuff” and more “stuff” . We soon realized that we were out growing our house.

We had every intention of moving so we consulted with a realtor and began to look for a great family home. We searched the “four corners” of Portland (i.e. Southwest, Northwest and Southeast and Northeast) and we always found ourselves gravitating back to our old neighborhood.

When the bottom of the housing market fell out a couple of years ago, we had pretty much decided that moving was out of the question. We were stuck like so many other people in that trap of not being able to sell our house for enough to buy something in our neighborhood and then on the other side, not being able to obtain financing for a remodel for our home because banks were putting so many restrictions and hurdles on home loans.

Luckily, this past summer we were able to get a renovation loan for our house and our dream of staying in the safe neighborhood that we love with good schools, awesome neighbors and everything within walking distance was realized!

Our team consists of an incredible designer-Melissa McCall of McCall Design (melissa@mmccalldesign.com). Melissa has been amazing. She really listened to us and followed our lead on wanting to design the house so it was family friendly and at the same time stayed within the era of the house. That was important to us to preserve the “soul” of our house.

Next is Isaac Walker our contractor of Walker Home Improvement (isaac@walkerhi.com).Who can say that they love their contractor? Not many people but we can! We met Isaac through Melissa and I can whole heartedly say that he has done a phenomenal job. Isaac is even-tempered, patient, listens, has attention to detail and is an all around good guy. The thing about Isaac is that everyone that he works with is this same way; all of his sub contractors were polite, professional and such hard workers. Fortunately for us Isaac lives in Irvington too so he was passionate about the project from the get go and knowledgeable about historical homes from the ground up.

Now we are seeing the light at the end of the tunnel with our project and we are over the moon with how well everything has gone. We are so excited to move back in and start living there and loving our new home.

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