Third House - Before Pictures • The Vanderveen House

Our third house was a 1990s split level on a 1 acre lot on a quiet street in Ingleside, ON. We bought it in November 2013. When we first saw the house we thought it was dark, dirty and outdated, but it had lots of potential for improvement. We knew we didn’t want to live in this house forever because we had plans to build a house, so we figured that an outdated house would give us the most potential for making a profit when we sold.

The house is a split-level, so after going up the first set of stairs is the kitchen, living, and dining areas. The kitchen was a lot of orange. Oak cabinets, orange paint, orange light fixture, and oak trim made the kitchen feel very outdated. There’s lots of cabinets though and we loved the granite counters.

There was nothing wrong with the dining room other than the dark paint. And there was a funny half wall between the dining area and living room that made it feel small and closed off.

There was nothing wrong with the living room either, other than it was dark because there was no ceiling light fixture. The hardwood was also pretty worn out because the previous owner had dogs in the house.

The stairs were very dirty and worn, and the railing was very shaky.

The two kids bedrooms upstairs were a lot of pink paint and oak trim.

And more oak trim in the master bedroom. The bedrooms are all really good sizes, all they needed was some paint and new flooring to update everything.

The upstairs bathroom had recently been renovated so there was nothing for us to do in this room.

On the main floor is a living area that we use as our toy room. It had laminate flooring and a fireplace that looked really outdated, and very poor lighting.