Windgrove Pre-Flip Review

From the street, the house has good curb appeal and sits high on the lot. We are not fans of driveways that pass by the front door, but this one is better than most. The walkway on the right leads to the walk-out basement door.

There is a nice screened-in porch on the back of the house, always an added bonus. The stairs and gutters are dilapidated, but that is expected in our world.

This view shows that the house is a 4-sided brick structure, another desirable feature. No obvious problems with the structure, but we should probably plan on replacing the roof. At the far left, you can see the doorway into the basement area.

The front entry starts to show that the house is dated, but again that comes as no surprise since it was built in 1971. Painting the brick and siding will be part of the plan. The second entry door between the garage and the main entry serves no useful purpose and will be eliminated.

There is a small foyer as you enter, and then this galley kitchen is immediately to the left. The cabinetry and appliances are not up to today’s standards, but we always assume that a new kitchen and new baths will be part of every renovation we undertake. The popcorn and stippled ceilings will also have to go.

From the other end of the galley kitchen you can see a problem. There is a stairwell smack-dab in the middle of the house, separating the kitchen from the living and dining rooms. We’d like to relocate that stairwell to an out of the way place, if it is both feasible and affordable. That would allow us to do a full open-concept remodel.

Here’s a nice feature. At the end of the galley kitchen is an extra large keeping room with a fireplace. Our thoughts are to extend the kitchen part way into this room with the addition of an eat-at island. There will still be enough space remaining for seating and a TV, or a dinette table, or whatever you want. There’s also a set of french doors leading out to the screened-in porch.

Between the keeping room and the garage, is that extra entry door off of the front porch and a small closet. Since this second front entry isn’t needed, we will look into making this the laundry area. The door on the right leads to the two-car garage, which still has a car in it that we need to do something with.

Looking the other direction in the area between the keeping room and the garage, we see the current location of the laundry. This area will be repurposed with a full bath, pantry, and a mudroom. Additions any new buyer should love.

The other side of the stairwell opens into the dining room, and this picture is from the dining room looking toward the living room. The wall between these two rooms should be easy to remove, and the green shag carpeting will have to go, not to mention the popcorn ceilings.

This photo is from the living room looking back toward the dining room. Once the wall between them is removed, it should help open it up some, but it is going to need more. If we can’t move the stairwell, then we will have to open the entries from the keeping room and the foyer both as wide as possible.

This is the hallway bathroom, and it serves a dual purpose as both the guest bath and the master bath. This is the view someone would see when entering from the hallway. Along the right wall is another door for access from the master bedroom.

Most of it was out of range of the camera lens, but in the preceding picture, you can catch a glimpse of the gold shag carpeting in the front half of the two-stage bathroom. Here in the back half, you can see the shower head poking out of one of the wallpaper flowers. We plan on closing off the hallway door and making this a dedicated luxurious master bath. This will be possible since we are adding a new full bath off of the keeping room.

This is the view into the master bedroom from the hallway. Nothing special or unique here. Once we get it cleaned out, add new windows, new flooring, and remove the popcorn ceiling, it will be better than new.

This is from the rear corner of the master bedroom looking back toward the door. The door to the hallway is open, and the closed door to the right of it is the entrance to the now shared bathroom. When we are done, this will have a barn door entrance to the new private master bath. Off to the left are the his and hers closets, and yes, the larger one will be hers.

There are two secondary bedrooms on the main floor of this house that share a small Jack & Jill bathroom. This picture was taken from inside the bedroom and shows its entrance into the green-tiled bathroom.

Here is the third bedroom, taken from inside the room, showing its entrance to the Jack & Jill bathroom. All three of the bedrooms on this floor will have the popcorn ceiling replaced with our cross-hatched bead-board ceiling treatment. We hope you didn’t want the pink walls, because we plan on painting them.

This is the view of the shared bathroom when entering from the pink bedroom. The door you see is the entrance from the other bedroom. One thing to note is that all the doors in this house are solid wood.

Yes, everything in this bathroom will be replaced. You won’t recognize it when we are done. We’ll also see if we can make it a bit larger. If not, we’ll at least replace the door that opens into it with a pocket door.

Now it’s time to see what lurks in the basement. This is the dingy stairwell in the middle of the house. We’d like to move it, but if that is not possible, then we need to make it much more cheery.

Upon reaching the bottom of the stairs, this bedroom is immediately to the left. The 1970s paneling doesn’t help, but it is a very large room with a nice-sized closet. The yellow arrow is pointing to the wall in the hallway, where about a foot of the wall has been cut away — a sure sign of prior water damage.

Further down the hallway is third bathroom in the house, but it will be the fourth after our renovation. This one sits directly below the hallway bath on the main floor. Therefore, some of the upstairs plumbing comes into play here, making the ceiling quite low in spots.

Replacing all the tile and fixtures in a bathroom is standard operating procedure for us. We don’t care how much you adore the blue tile, it will be going away. We’re also going to see if we can reroute some of the plumbing in the ceiling to provide more headroom.

At the end of the hallway is the fifth and last bedroom. It is extremely large and might be better suited as a flex room. The yellow arrow in the lower left corner again shows where sheet rock was removed due to water damage. The other arrow is pointing at something growing on the back wall. Yep, we’ve got mold! There’s probably nothing we can do about the load bearing pole and dropped ceiling that hides the duct work.

Here’s the view from the back corner (by the mold) looking across the room and out another door into the unfinished portion of the basement. Just to the left out that door is a set of french doors leading outside to the walkway that is visible from the street. A great way for kids (or adults) to bring their bicycles inside for safe keeping.

Now we venture out into the unfinished portion of the basement to see what awaits us. This house is built on a full basement, with about 2,100 sqft of space down here. With about 750 sqft of it finished, that leaves more than 1,300 sqft unfinished and available for future needs.

Yikes! A lifetime’s worth of obsolete junk that was never disposed. We counted 17 sets of mattresses in the house, with most of them down here in the basement. Mattresses present multiple problems because they never get too old to absorb water, and they require special disposal handling. This is just going to add to our mold problems.

It looks like we need to plan on numerous dumpster loads, plus the labor to haul it all out. We also need to find the source of the water damage, hopefully there are not any foundation problems hidden behind the walls. When we factor in the cost of mold remediation, on top of replacing all the rotted framing and sheet rock, it’s going to add up. However, we can see a lot of potential down here.