The Maple House

The Maple house is the house we owned before we built the one we are living in now. It was built in 1924 by a wealthy family in Waco. The walls are plaster and the roof was slate tiles (which, by the way, to replace that roof today would cost upwards of $100,000.00. Not a cheap house to build, especially back then. There is also a garage apartment where the "help" stayed. We rented it out to a college age guy that worked for my husband's business.

How did we find this house?

The Maple house is actually one street over and one block down from the Cumberland House. I always walked by when taking my child and dog for a walk. It's one of those houses that makes you want to see what the inside looks like when you see the outside because you know it has to be cool. Well, it came for sale one day, but it was overpriced, and seeing how we just moved cross country and went through a total home remodel, we were really in the market...or so we thought...

Anyway, a couple months later, the house still had not sold, but the owners were moving out. My husband was driving by as they were loading their stuff in a truck. He thought they might be ready to just be rid of the house, so he stopped and asked what they'd take for it. They gave him a tour of the home, and it turns out they were only the second people to ever own the home. (which means that most things were probably untouched, which is great news in the remodeling world: less junky renovations to tear out). To make a long story short, my husband came home that day and told me that we needed to buy this house. I thought he was crazy and that he might need a good slap upside the head...until I went and checked it out. It was a one of a kind house. I was sold. So, we purchased it and started remodeling right away and put the Cumberland house on the market 5 months after we bought it and renovated it. The original plan was to get them both on the market and whichever one did not sell, that's the one we would live in. Well, God had it in His plan to sell the Cumberland house in two weeks. It turned out we were on a stricter timeline than we thought with the Maple remodel. Crazy, yes.

Here are the before pictures of the Maple house:

This is the lovely yellow kitchen with flowered "wallpaper" that was really more like contact paper because it peeled off like plastic contact paper, which turned out to be a blessing, for those of you who have ever tried to take off wallpaper. Oh, and the double oven did not work.

This is the "jungle room" upstairs. It was covered in this jungle wallpaper that was terrible to remove. We ended up using a textured paint to cover all the imperfections left by removing the wallpaper. This room even had a chaise lounge covered in fabric that exactly matched the walls. I didn't even see it the first two times I visited the house because it was so well camouflaged. The windows here were all rotted out, so we had to replace them, which made the biggest difference in the feel of the room. It felt so much cleaner and cozier afterwards.

This is the very center of the house, the dining room. It was in good shape, but like every other living area, it was painted a dull, dark shade of gray. The chandelier was original and perfect for the house. Minimal work in this room.

This is the room we ended up using as the office. No structural changes needed here. Just major cosmetic cleaning up. Everything in this room was painted a yellowish cream. The color that seems to be the most popular color for walls and mouldings for houses built in the 20s and 30s.

"After pictures to come soon"