The Fish Room: "Before" Photos, Plans + Progress

October 19, 2017

The Fish Room: "Before" Photos, Plans + Progress

Do you remember the "Fish Room" from my lakehouse tour?

It's a weird little room that's narrow and super small, with two exterior doors (why?), one window (lake view though, lol) and a sink. The whole set up leads me to believe it was designed for gutting fish. That sounds weird, but everyone on this bay of Lake Superior fishes, so I think it makes sense to have a special fish gutting room? I cannot think of any other purpose for this odd little room THAT CANNOT BE ACCESSED FROM INSIDE THE HOUSE. Yep, you read that correctly. This room is attached to my house but only accessible from the outside world. Because of the shabbiness and the inconvenient access, this room has sat pretty much unused since we moved to the Lakehouse. I cleaned it, but I didn't even paint the walls - I just shoved in some paint supplies to keep them from freezing in the garage and then I managed to make this room look worse by spray painting on the floors and splashing resin around. It was kind of handy to have a heated space I could use for messy DIY projects, but my need for that kind of room has really abated.

To help you get your bearings, this room is located behind the fireplace in our living room; it's where we load the firewood into the firewood cubby (that part of the floor plan is genius).

The little bump out in the picture above is behind our TV, to the left of the fireplace (see more photos of our living room here):

I recently came up with the CRAZIEST idea for this room, which will help maximize the modest 1300-ish square feet of space we have. It's a long term plan (which we won't have the money for until after we do the roof and siding next spring), so I have some time to figure out the specifics.

This is my rough plan:

1. Tear down the fireplace wall and re-build a more modern, efficiently designed fireplace with room to mount the TV above it and - are you ready for this? - a SECRET door to access the fish room.

photo source: left | right

I'd like to keep our handy wood cubby system, so a hidden door would likely be incorporated to the left of our fireplace. I haven't seen anything exactly like what I want to do so I've just been pinning asymmetrical fireplace designs and working on my own sketches and ideas. I'm thinking that large panels of walnut could hide a door nicely - but with some kind of sleek stone/tile near the wood burning fireplace. The following fireplaces all look so different, but they're inspiring some ideas as I noodle on this...(if you spot an idea that could work, put a link in the comments, tag me on Instagram or send me a pic on Pinterest).

photo sources: left | right

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2. Seal off the weird second door (on the side of the house) in the fish room and re-do the drywall for a seamless wall. Let's get rid of the popcorn ceiling too! One fewer door means way more space for cabinets and storage...

3. Move the washer and dryer out there and build a DIY dog washing station too. I am so excited about planning a pretty laundry room! I'm dreaming of pale turquoise cabinetry - or maybe classic white/walnut, with a statement-making tile in my favorite color.

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photo sources: left | top right | bottom right

4. Add sliding doors and shelves where the laundry room curtains (hiding the washer and dryer) are right now, to create a massive, epic storage pantry stretching the length of the wall, floor to ceiling. I'd really like to get the same glass front doors we have in the bedroom.

We don't have a full height basement, so step four would be amazing!

We would then use the fish room as a mud room of sorts too, letting the dogs in and out there and further confining the mess, even better than my current solution. This plan would add so much function to our home: providing another entrance, carving out a proper mudroom, adding a massive walk in pantry/storage closet, making the laundry room less visible and also larger, and creating a place to wash the pups.

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Plus - SECRET DOOR. I can't stop using caps, I'm really excited. I've been pinning laundry rooms, mud rooms, fireplaces, and crazy good tile ideas.

photo source: left | right

But you won't need to wait to see me give this room some love! We're actually working on it right now, giving it the patented Dans le Lakehouse spit and polish, aka the Phase One Makeover. The kind of makeover where we use phrases like, "load bearing paint," and "don't we have something in the garage we can use?" Until my laundry/mud room dreams come to fruition, I'll be using this room as shared craft/sewing storage with my Mom. Our sewing supplies were spread out over multiple spaces in both of our homes, so we sold some supplies at a yard sale and streamlined a little, and now the plan is to house it all in one convenient space (and that space is, conveniently for me, my fish room).

I'll be sharing the progress we've made soon, but I wanted to give you a better look at the "before" first and share my long term plans because I'm bursting at the seams with excitement over them.

Okay, tour time...

This overhead fluorescent light? Already gone!

The janky cabinets that refused to close and the even jankier sink? Gone! I actually contemplated keeping and painting just that one cabinet with the sink but, in the end, everything in here was just too old and damaged to salvage.

Old stained vinyl floor? Gone! Well, sort of. We're just covering it up for now (I've been sharing sneak peeks on my Instagram stories!), but we'll rip everything out when we renovate for real.

Here's a sneak peek of the new DIY plywood floor:

There's the one door (the one whose days are numbered):

And then, three feet away, there's the other door (the one we're keeping):

It's a short tour because it's a tiny room, but I can't wait to share the transformation of this room with you - follow me on Instagram to catch my progress updates.

Our Two Week Reno + The Huffington Post Feature

Pinch me. I was interviewed by telephone for the Huffington Post's Stylist Home section last week! Click here to read the story but, before you do, I just wanted to clarify a thing or two. Michelle Manetti wrote a fabulously flattering piece that totally made me blush! But I think I might not have been clear explaining a couple of things.

Our two week timeline:

I think I made it sound like our whole townhouse went from ugly to pretty in two weeks. What I meant was, we made it livable it two weeks.

When we bought the townhouse, it was hideous (you can see the before pics in the townhouse tour). Hubby had two weeks off from work and, with the help of my parents, grandpa and Hubby's dad, we set about making the townhouse livable. It's in this two week period that we did the biggest projects: ripping up carpet and installing hardwood floors, painting the main floor and upstairs, re-doing the main bath, etc. BUT, after two weeks the space still looked pretty dismal:

Our bedroom had nothing but new hardwoord floors, fresh paint and our bed and nightstands.

The guest bedroom had no furniture yet (we bought that later), except an armoire and pieces of the guest half bath.

Our main bathroom had a lovely new tub, tiling, vinyl floors and vanity but no marble counter-top, sink, mirror, etc., yet.

The guest bath had nothing yet. Sorry for the blurry pic!

The office had curtains, new flooring and paint. My desk (with a crappy desk chair) and expedit were set up so I could get to work.

The dining room was a storage room. You can kind of see me (by the stove) unpacking and my dad installing a light fixture in the kitchen.

Why the kitchen wasn't gutted:

I don't think I was clear in the article that two weeks was just for the bare bones issues. So we could move in and, you know, flush the main bath toilet (old owners couldn't) and take a bath without barfing. We didn't tackle the kitchen until the following year and it was money, not time, that prevented a full gut. There's only so much money you can put into a small townhouse and see a good return on the investment when it comes time to sell. And we only had so much money to funnel into this home. A realtor agreed that a full gut wouldn't raise the price enough to make it worth it - we would have out priced the market and not gotten our investment back. So our patented spit and polish (re-finished cupboards, new counters, sink and herringbone backsplash) was on the menu.

Here's what we lived with for a while (I used stick-on tiles to hide the ugliest ones):

When we called in the pros:

We did almost all of the the work ourselves, with our families lending a hand. But the bath tub we left to pros. We imagined sending the bathtub crashing down the stairs during removal or accidentally building a new tub on a weak sub floor. Because I splurged on a deep, soaker tub, getting the pros was especially important to make sure the floor could hold the added weight of the water (the thing is deep).

But the vanity, vinyl flooring, etc., was all DIY. As was every other single thing in the house.

You can see in the photos just how much more work came after that initial renovation. And, as Michelle says, we're still tweaking, framing walls and dry-walling (in the laundry room), and decorating. So, check out the article here and, please, please, please, take a look at the "after" photos here so these images aren't burned in your brain. I hate sharing ugly pics!

Stairwell Before and After

You might have seen the bits and pieces of my super-cheap stairwell makeover already, but I thought you might like to see how everything came together. We have one of those homes (you can see before photos in the Townhouse Tour) that looked so bad when we bought it that even looking not-bad, looks good. So what might seem like a simple makeover is a major improvement for us, especially when you consider that we spent very little money.

Here's the before. And yes, the mess is included. Because the stairwell looked so ratty, it was easy to rationalize not tidying up. I would shove things there, instead of putting them away. It looked terrible and was a major trip hazard. Plus, the paint was dingy and chipped, the railing was faded and worn, the mirror and art I randomly hung did nothing for the space, the light fixture appeared dis-coloured and the carpet was a major eyesore.

Various problems . . .

And now:

What changed:

I painted the walls
I painted the railing & hardware for about $1.00
I hung my DIY framed bakelite brooches (finally, they have a home)
I made a graphic, black & white painting for the space
I cleaned the light fixture and replaced the mis-matched light-bulbs with the same kind which made what I thought was a problem (discoloured glass) no longer a problem
I tidied, de-cluttered and donated bags full of unused items to charity

I still want to paint the light switch cover and steam clean the carpets (which are less noticeable now that the walls are a lovely greige, making the line between wall & carpet a little less obvious):

Since replacing the carpet was out of the question, painting the walls a greige shade make the carpet stand out less.

Grrrr . . . with white walls, switch plate covers have never been an issue - I plan to paint this one.

But even with just a little freshening up, the entrance to the basement looks less tired, less dated and just, well, prettier. More like part of the home, and less like a space we enthusiastically ignore. The rest of the stairwell still needs art & accessories, but it already looks so much better painted:

Main Bath: "Before" & "Now"

Whew. 99.9% of this bathroom is done. Woot woot. My hubby just made a door for the medicine cabinet, so I fianlly took some pics. Still to do: change the light switches, paint touch ups, some art above the towel bar (?), and new light fixture (this one is being demoted to the guest half bathroom). If someone has an idea for a cute light fixture, I'd love suggestions. The mirror is a place holder. At some point, I'd like to make a grey-stained wood frame for the mirror with a Scandinavian vibe. Scroll down for info on what was changed. In a nutshell: all of it.

"Before"
Take a nice long look . . .

"Before"

Ewwwww

Now

Picture my mom & I took in Hungary

My mom thinks our tray looks like a fast food tray. We bought it in France, to
set metal hairspray and shaving cream cans on.
Marble can stain easily and a rusty can is its worst enemy.

Handmade in Finland,
nobody in my family wanted it but I thought it was cute . . .

Goodbye light fixture. Soon.

What we did:

Hired pros to remove the old tub (I pictured it tumbling down the stairs with me running ahead of it like in the cartoons), install the new soaker tub and white tiles. It was a package deal which saved money. We were “upsold” on the soaker tub—it is, apparently, a good feature for resale. But I wish I had also splurged on more unusual tile—even just subway. The plain rectangular tile we have was oodles cheaper. At the time, cash was tight. I at least wanted the plain tile installed in a brick pattern, but the salesmen talked me out if it. Sarah Richardson just recently installed the same kind of tile in an unusual pattern on “Sarah’s House” and it looked great! I have vowed to trust my own judgment from now on. It was hard, being so green at renovating and having an expert tell me something won’t look right. Has anyone else been talked into/out of something they really loved?

Live and learn. The rest we did ourselves. We removed everything! It was grubby, gross work. The cabinetry and floors and toilet were filthy. But we didn’t do the sledgehammer demo people tend to like on television. We carefully disassembled everything which made cleanup easier.

With everything gone and the tub and tiles in, we installed vinyl flooring (removing the old stuff first), a new vanity with marble countertop, new toilet and everything else (if it looks really similar to the guest half bath, that’s because it is). We recently made a new door for the medicine cabinet. I’ll post more specific details about that project later. Couple more things to do, but I don’t even care. I just love a bath in a brand spankin’ new and CLEAN tub.

The Nitty-Gritty: