One year ago today Shannon and I bought a mid century modern home in North Carolina. One of the main reasons we moved there was because of all the affordable MCM homes we had seen when visiting, but when we started looking we realized that maybe living in an old ranch home wasn’t for us. They were all too dark, not well taken care of and just kinda a bummer. At some point we started looking at new construction, but we just couldn’t see ourselves surrounded by drywall and grey floors after decades of living in old buildings in New York.
We had just about given up when our friend (and realtor) Jane told us that a house we had driven past dozens of times was coming on the market. We couldn’t believe it. We had no idea what the inside looked like but from the outside it was pretty much the home of our dreams. A flat roof architectural marvel that cantilevers over a backyard with a pond and a forest that is only 15 min from the beach? Sign us up. Jane got us into the very first showing.
When we actually saw the house we understood why it was priced so affordably. The house had been recently turned into a failing AirBNB by a house flipper who used the cheapest of everything to repair it. In their defense they did save the home, because it had set abandoned for years, but they made some wild decisions. They painted over the bathroom tile and “color drenched” the office in black paint. They “invested” in a $10,000 hot tub instead of fixing the crawl space that flooded every time it rained. There were cracks in the brick and the house smelled exactly like you would expect a 60 year old, very wet house to smell like. The entire backyard was a snake filled jungle and a tree was lifting up the foundation. But those problems were our opportunity.
The day after we bought the house we got to work. We had had a crawlspace company come in and completely clean out the absolute nightmare down there. They removed decades old wet insulation, sealed everything up air tight and put in a dehumidifier. We reached out to the grandson of the original builders of the house, who is still a homebuilder himself, and he recommended a great contractor who completely redid the office and fixed a ton of the little mistakes the house flipper had made. We thought we were going to need a new door, but he was able to save it and painted it fire engine red.
By the time we moved in on Halloween the musty smell was all but gone, the office looked incredible and almost everything on the interior was done (except for the many small projects we have been fixing ourselves). Aside from redoing the fireplace with the help of our neighbor who happens to install tile for a living we haven’t done any big renovation projects since moving in. The outside was another story. The primary issue with the house was the flooding. We reached out to an engineer before we even bought the house and he told us that as long as we could divert the water away from the house and patched up the foundation cracks, everything should be great. The house was so well built that it wasn’t going anywhere.
So we began our massive landscaping project. It started with cutting down the giant pine tree that was uprooting the foundation, regrading the sides of the house so water flowed away and then installing some drainage to move the water from the front of the house to the back and down to the pond. It seemed like so much work but the tree guys removed the tree and cleared the back yard in two days and the landscapers were gone in under a week. The yard looked like a disaster but the flooding had completely stopped and the house has been dry ever since.
The final project to be completed was just waiting until spring so that we could plant new grass and try and make the place look nice. We installed sod and threw down a bunch of mulch in the back and even even made a little path to the creek through the forest that remains. We didn’t do much to the front yard but the area where we had to install the drains we covered with river rocks, planted a few Japanese maples, tossed in a couple of boulders and made a little zen style garden. Nearly everything we did to the house was functional, but we splurged for the rock garden.
One year later we are just about done with everything. We have a few finishing touches to do on the outside of the house and plenty of projects on the inside. We are finally starting to get art on the walls but we have a way to go with that. Eventually we would love to backdate more of the house and get the paint off those bathroom tiles, but we could not be happier with where we are now.
This year has been so much work but we are so lucky to be able to be stewards of a work of art like this house. We hope to live here for the rest of our lives and hopefully leave it in the next owners hands in much better shape than we found it.
Now go check out this gallery of before and after photos that I spent way too much time putting together.
