Apartment Renovation Project

Five years ago I took a big leap and bought a 130 year old, multi-family, fixer upper. I say it was a leap because at the time I had no real experience in renovating, no experience at all with rental properties, no one doing this alongside me sharing in the cost and the responsibility. Still this dream was so strong in my heart that I knew I had to go for it. And while I have shared quite a bit about the process and the renovations over on Instagram it felt like it was about time to finally get a blog post put together.

In this series of posts, I am sharing before and after photos of each of the three rental renovations. Next up, the renovation of the 1200 square foot apartment that I have lived in for the past five years.

I bought this property as an owner occupied rental. I suggest this option to almost anyone looking to get into investing in rental property. There are a few reasons for this that I will share more about in an upcoming blog post.

This project was an actual dream come true for me. Having the opportunity to turn this run-down apartment into a home that felt 100% like me is something that I will forever be grateful for. This space has served me so well since I have been here. Eventually I will move, rent it out to another person who I can only hope will love it as much as I have.

Starting with the kitchen, I decided to get rid of the built-ins. As you can see they had already been partially replaced with cabinets from the 80’ or 90’s so I decided to take them out and put new cabinetry in. Looking back, I may have tried to restore this instead but I was on a pretty tight timeline with this project so some of those larger restoration projects got taken off the list pretty quickly.

While I lost the character the built-ins had, I knew I wanted my kitchen to still feel like it belonged in an old home, filled with character. To add back some of that character I installed the wood shiplap. Then added freestanding furniture and plenty of vintage and thrifted items in the space.

The other side of the kitchen also came with plenty of charm from the arched alcove. There was no way I was going to lose this but I knew it needed a little work to really make it stand out and shine.

I did this by adding textured subway tile and some lighting. I also replaced the cabinets, added a new sink and fixtures, and a small dishwasher.

The bathroom was another one of the bigger projects in this space and required a little bit of moving plumbing around to make the bathroom feel more functional and inviting. Climbing into that dark shower built into the wall was definitely not something I wanted to do.

I closed off the cutout for the original shower and pulled it out into the room a bit. I could do this by relocating the toilet to the other side of the sink, after also closing off the original closet. While I never like to lose storage, the pros of rearranging things in here definitely outweighed any cons of the lost storage. I carried the classic subway tile mixed with warm wood tones into this space as well.

This next one may be my favorite “before pic” of them all. To be honest, I totally took the Step Brothers poster as a sign I needed to buy this house (I even saved the poster for proof). But as much as I loved the poster, it couldn’t stay in the bathroom.

Hidden behind that poster were some beautiful, large windows. For privacy, I frosted the windows and then DIY’d some decorative screens. It was also a bit of a project to bring the original tub back to life. There was a lot of cleaning and scrubbing, then some painting, and the replacement of the fixtures. Totally worth the work though considering the countless hours I have spent soaking here.

The dining room was another of my favorite rooms in this project. The fact that there was a fireplace (even if it was non-functioning) was another one of the things that sold me on this house. And while this room was in pretty rough shape, I knew it had so much potential.

I can’t even imagine this room without the floor to ceiling fireplace anymore. This was one of those projects that was a Pinterest dream for years and I still pinch myself every so often as I walk by it. I knew I wanted this room to be filled with wood tones and texture and have a large table for game nights and dinners with friends. (I’m including a holiday photo here because this room is basically made for Christmas time.)

My bedroom is actually the newest part of the house, by a long shot. Like 120 years newer kind of shot. This was an addition put on about 15 years ago, when the previous owners converted a carport to a bedroom. And let me tell you, originally walking into this house it definitely felt exactly like a carport was converted into a bedroom.

Since the space was long and narrow (and lacked closet space), I immediately knew I wanted to add a wall to both break up the space and create a large open concept closet. I DIY’d the entire closet with industrial piping and cedar. Check out the full blog post on How I Created a Boho Farmhouse Bedroom.

Do you have a renovation project on your mind but aren’t sure where to start?

Follow along @thealteredabode for more renovation inspiration.