Past Projects
Before & After …
| BEFORE | A LOT OF WORK IN BETWEEN | AFTER |
Check out the before and after photos (with A LOT of work in between) from some of our past renovation projects by clicking through the image gallery
The Story of Sanguinet
We were young, enthusiastic, and inexperienced. Some people use caution when they try something new. We decided to go a different route.
The interior was straight out of the 1950’s (NOT in a good, “retro” kind of way), it was trashed inside and out, and the layout was awful! To put it mildly, it was a MAJOR project and we had no idea what we had signed up for when we started.
But we don’t just give up when things get tough, so we got to work! We wanted to learn all the things we knew we didn’t know so we decided to get our hands dirty and stay involved in every step in the process.
The first weekend we had a dumpster delivered and showed up with our work boots and our gloves to clean the place up and do the demo work. It sure is fun the first time you swing the sledgehammer into the wall, but after a few hours of scraping popcorn ceilings (we probably still have asbestos in our lungs) with no AC in the middle of a Texas summer, the fun starts to feel a lot more like hard work. We did end up enjoying it in the end and we made some great memories in the process. I’ll never forget the three of us sitting in the garage sweating bullets, chugging water, and laughing at how out of shape we all were.
Like I said, everything had to be touched. I take that back, we did get lucky with the foundation. Even though it was built on a huge hill and had no sprinkler system the house had no foundation problems, solid as a ROCK! And thank goodness for that, because the money we budgeted for the foundation saved us when our inexperience cost us because the city required several things we hadn’t planned for…Temporary electrical service ($), design changes to meet egress standards ($), and adding and additional driveway & retaining wall behind the building line to replace the parking we lost when we enclosed half the garage ($$$). The worst part was you could barely park a Fiat in the space so it became a glorified trash can storage pad.
The house had a sad story. The woman that owned and loved it for decades had passed away and her family had lost the house to foreclosure from back taxes. While it sat vacant people had wrecked the house leaving trash, liquor bottles, drug paraphernalia, and broken furniture piled everywhere. The saddest part was this woman’s life, her memories (photo albums, keepsakes, letters from loved ones) scattered and destroyed. It was repulsive to imagine the low-lives that cared so little they were willing to spit on her memory like that.
The story does have a happy ending though. We worked hard and overcame the challenges, managing to restore the property from a broken house into a beautiful place for someone to call home. As we were getting close to the end of the project I got a call from my mom about the house.
She said my sister had just accepted a teaching position at TCU and asked how far it was from the campus. My sister wanted to buy something close so she could ride her bike to campus. It was one of those serendipitous things in life where the timing seemed to work out perfectly. We came to an agreement to sell the house to her before it was even completely finished (my mom and sister wanted to play designer, LOL).
After that experience, my passion for restoring broken properties and giving them new life was ignited. It felt amazing to give the house a fresh start and help my sister find a beautiful home. I wanted the opportunity to help other families by transforming run down houses into something special, built with great quality and care.
Even though it was quite a rollercoaster, I wouldn’t change it for the world. We learned so much and that crazy project was the perfect start to our amazing journey into the world of house flipping.
The Story of Pinehurst
This project was a major renovation with all kinds of crazy moments. Digging the 100 foot trench was a nightmare I hope not to re-live…
Click PINEHURST DRIVE (Richardson, TX) – STREET CONSTRUCTION & THE 100 FOOT TRENCH to see more pictures and read the story of this project.
For More Past Projects and pictures of our work, please follow our Instagram account @inspiredfw
STAY TUNED FOR THE NEXT RENOVATION STORY COMING OUT SOON!