Buena Vista After - Kitchen

I love the way this kitchen turned out. The one inch tile backsplash is beautiful. As I said before, it is wonderful what tearing out walls can do for a space.

The vent hood and glass cooktop on the peninsula made for tons of new room. Also check out those slate floors. It is the same slate as around the fireplace.


I am a fan of stainless steel appliances.

Now the kitchen has a view of the outside. What a breath of fresh air!

Buena Vista After - Living Room

This fireplace looks so much better with slate and the new mantle. This is my best view of the wood floors we found under the carpet. How could anyone cover that up?

This is the rebuilt back wall of the living room along with the resurfaced back porch.

This is the half bath just off the kitchen area. The green looked weird in the can but great on the wall.

Buena Vista After - Master Bath

In the master bath, we turned an old closet into a stand-alone shower.

These new sinks looked great. The old layout only had one sink, but knocking out walls does wonders.

Here is the jacuzzi tub.

Buena Vista After - Guest Room

The guest room turned out very nice. This new tub and shower has a curved shower curtain rod. It is very cool.

This is the new sink and cabinetry.

Here is the slider that we originally had trouble with. It turned out beautiful. I also like the ceiling fans we used throughout the house. I probably should have dusted this one before taking a picture. Also notice the hand-scraped wood floors. The house was full of this great, old wood, but it was covered up by some ugly carpet.

This is another view into the bathroom. One of the highlights of the whole remodel is the flooring. Somehow, I didn't get any great pictures of the floors. This bathroom has large ceramic tile.

Cheyenne Roof 2

Here are the last few pictures from Cheyenne. This new roof looked really good. We also got lucky one night. While the roof was only about half done, there was a big storm with some tornadoes. The weather guy had it headed right toward this house (and mine - I only lived a few miles away). Luckily just before the storm got to me it veered further south. We got some heavy rain, but no damage was done the the partially completed roof.

Cheyenne Roof 1

While I had other things getting done at Buena Vista, I did a roofing job I got on a referral. There was a little shed in the back that was in pretty sad shape. We added it to the job, too.

This does not do justice to the horrible shape of the old shingles on this roof. All the grain was worn away and nothing but the fiberglass backing was left. I had never seen anything like this.

Another mediocre view of the old roof.

Roofing makes a mess. We moved that white tarp to keep debris out of the shrubbery as we tore down the two layers of old shingles.

Buena Vista in Progress 3

We had some problems with a leak below the new sliding glass door in the guest bedroom. We had to remove the slider and rebuild the whole deck (luckily it was a small deck).

Buena Vista in Progress 2

We also did some extensive remodels for the kitchen and master bed/bath. The first thing we did was rip out that wall that made the kitchen so tiny so we could combine the office and kitchen. It also gave the kitchen an outside view with the new sliding glass door. These first three show the new cabinetry and layout for the kitchen.

There is now some actual cabinet space and some countertops.

This side of the kitchen will get a built-in microwave and built-in oven.

We more than doubled the size of the master bath and gave it some nice new cabinets for sinks.

We also separated the shower from the bathtub and put a jacuzzi tub in. (OK, it's not in yet, but that is where it will go.)

Buena Vista in Progress 1

One thing we did was put in some large energy efficient windows and sliding glass doors throughout the house. The first three are the back wall to the living room.



This is a guest bedroom which needed a new sliding glass door.

This is the first floor sliding glass door. The old slider was blocked off by a desk and the area was used as an office. We fixed that.

Buena Vista Before

This was the largest project I did. It lasted over a year. My great aunt lived here for many years and didn't have the opportunity to do any remodels. This first one is looking into the kitchen. It is abysmally small.

This is the rest of the kitchen.

This is the living room with a view down a half flight of stairs to the first floor with the kitchen on the left.

This is the living room looking out to the back deck.

This is the fireplace in the living room.

This is the master bedroom and its dull master bath.

Faulkner After

This is a pretty nice turnaround for this house.

Faulkner Before

My second project was on Faulkner. Here are a couple of pictures of what we started with.

Glade Street After

This is the final product for the kitchen and bathroom.

Glade Street in Progress

I am going through my files and publishing some of the pictures of the projects I worked on while running my own business. Here are a from Glade Street.


We had to solve some remarkable plumbing problems at this old house. The old pipes had rusted all the way through, so we had to make a new plumbing line to the street. I'm not going to lie, learning to use this rented backhoe was pretty fun.