1989 Renovation of My Church Hill House - Part II

Today we are going to see the "after" photos of our 1989/90 Church Hill Renovation in Richmond. My husband and I were 25 and 29 when we did this project - and neither of us had any experience in anything to do with houses. We had both grown up in historic/old houses and had similar ideas of what we wanted - but that's it. Our contractor was young too and we all learned a lot from this project. Our total budget for the renovation was $108,000! Can you believe that? I can't believe we did it. We didn't have much to spend on the interior after the renovation, but it looks pretty good with the family hand me downs and thrift shop finds.

Welcome to the renovated 2702 East Broad Street - (all photos are from 1990/91 and the quality is not that good...)




There was lots of gray in this house. It was beautiful soft gray - not dreary at all. In fact it was the base line color - with pops of pink here and there for fun. All of the halls were light gray and a couple of the rooms were gray - the keeping room and one bedroom. Can you see the parsons console against the wall - I wonder what happened to that? I don't have it anymore.


We got lucky on the floors. They were in good shape (many of them had been covered with carpet) and so we just stripped, and sanded and then polyurethaned them. We left them unstained - they were heart of pine and were a really pretty color on their own.


The living room was high gloss gun metal gray - hard to tell in this photo.


The dining room was geranium pink - it looks redder in this photo than it did in real life. It was pretty pink!




Keeping room next to the kitchen


We did this kitchen on a shoestring budget. These are Home Depot knock down cabinets that the painters stripped and then painted high gloss white. The counter tops are formica in dark green and the appliances came from Sears (I don't even think we bought a new fridge - that one was a hand me down from my parents).


The back stairs emptied into the kitchen. Behind the kitchen was a large mudroom with the washer/dryer, cabinets and lots of storage.


Upstairs hall with hand me down curtains from my grandmother.


The curved wall (behind that is the master bath - you can see the tub peeking out).


Master bath - again on a shoestring budget, I chose gray tile for the floors and shower (sadly, I don't have a photo of the shower by itself, but you can see the top of it in the mirror) and a cast iron tub. The counter tops were gray formica.


Courtyard view to the backyard


Looking from the backyard towards the front of the house. My husband and I rebuilt both of exterior stairs and redid all of the landscaping ourselves too.

We loved living in the Historic District of Church Hill in Richmond. And we loved this house. It played a major role in the design of my current house. The houses share many features: row house design, 3 windows over 2 with a side door, entrance hall similarity, living room- dining room -kitchen stack layout on the main floor and interesting architectural detail.






More to come - a side by side comparison of the two houses and the way the first influenced the second, and some history of Historic Church Hill in Richmond.

100th post! 1989 Renovation of my Church Hill House in Richmond - Part I

To celebrate our one hundredth post on the Whitehaven blog, I decided to post about the 100 year old row house that my husband and I renovated in Richmond in 1989/90. My husband bought the house in 1988 before we were engaged. And so when we became affianced and it was apparent that we were going to live in this house, I figured out we had to completely gut this thing. Here's why...

The house in the sad condition it was in on closing day when purchased by my husband (then boyfriend)- hang on here folks!


The exterior brick had a coat of pinky red paint on it - we stripped that off (see first photo above for the "after").




Dining Room


Living Room


Future Kitchen


Courtyard view to the back yard

Okay - you get the picture - it was a dump. But it had great bones and some fun architectural features - like the columns and a curved wall. This was the way the lady left it when she moved out - who does that? Anyway - when we got engaged we had to figure out what we were going to do with this thing - and I voted for gut it. Guess what we did?

It's really not the best idea to renovate a 100 year old house in the first year you are married - that's a lot of stress. We got married in October 1989 and moved into this house in October 1990.

We first pulled out all of the old plaster and lathing (you preservationists out there don't freak out - we had to do it, it was in terrible shape) and then we put in new studs where we needed them.


DH with the old plaster - nice light fixture too.


Entrance Hall stairs - above with the red carpet, below carpet pulled up.




Future home of back stairs (see the diagonal line on the brick? That's from the original back stairs).


Upstairs Hall - we took out the wall you are looking at to let in light.


25 year old me smiling b/c we are ripping out all of the yuckiness!

After the ripping out, the house became an orderly worksite -




A pretty curved wall




An enfilade - but I didn't know that then.


Future Master Bath - it was originally a bedroom.



The back stairs that we found while ripping out and then rebuilt.





There was wall in front of this window making a trunk room, but we took it out to let in more light.


Living Room



The doors we bought to replace the front door(seen below) that was not original. They had to strip the doors and then we just varnished them - no stain. We took the door frame back to it's original size and restored the transom (can you see where it would be in the photo below?).




Here's my "after" teaser. This is the front doors after the renovation. To see the rest of the house "after" come back tomorrow. Also tomorrow, I'll tell you the final cost of the renovation - it will shock you. Stay tuned!