#home-renovation

#home-renovation

Before it became a calm, light-filled family home, this 1930s house in Harold's Cross was the kind of place you might have easily overlooked.

To heat the home, I wanted hydronic floor heating. This is a system that uses warm water in PEX to heat the home. However, hydronic systems are uncommon which makes it difficult to find an installer. I managed to get one quote and it was about $120,000. No thanks! I decided to take on the project myself. It took an immense amount of planning and a lot of labor, but I got it done for about $18,000.

Kelce is simply replacing "9 windows and 6 doors" at her two-bedroom, two-bathroom home in Orlando. The breathlessness with which TMZ reported the news echoed across X, where people responded to the story with perhaps even more fervor than when Kelce's son Travis and Taylor Swift announced their engagement.

Set on nearly a quarter of an acre, the remodeled Spanish-style home has a Hollywood pedigree that includes prolific producer Frank Konigsberg and, before him, playwright John Wexley of "The Last Mile" fame. Berkus and Brent bought the property in 2015 for $2.36 million, records show.

I believe in reusing and preserving anything you can. Why throw out beautiful windows and replace them with ugly vinyl? The long windows that open onto the frontyard from the living room and master bedroom retain their thick, leaded glass. And built-in drawers and shelves throughout the house have been smartly incorporated in the home's reconfigured open floor plan.

As much as I loved the new white-on-white aesthetic of our kitchen, I admit that it felt a little plain. That curvy linear mid-century pattern really drives the point home that we love retro design.

Updated for modern living, this remodeled home in Highland Park has stayed true to its 1930s Spanish Revival beginnings. The open living and dining room features a brick fireplace and the original hardwood floors. A courtyard sits off the master bedroom.

There wasn't anything particularly inviting to the eye. It was a de facto pool house and held most of our storage. Things just started to spill out, the pingpong table was covered with clothes and boxes, the fake Christmas tree was sitting in front of a bookshelf. What was once a sanctuary became a way station. We needed some help.

I don't think we slept for two months straight. But, you know, we made it work. They knocked down walls, changed layouts, installed a wall-length, accordion-style glass door, all to transform a once-congested design within the modern Spanish-style home into a wide, open-concept living space.

"Other than central air being added at some point along the way, this room appears to have not been touched for quite some time," Brielle says. But, of course, old homes come with their quirks. "It has slanted ceilings, uneven floors, picture rail crown molding, attic door access, holes in the walls, and peeling windows," she says. Still, Brielle "immediately fell in love with all of its character and could not wait to transform it into [her] sanctuary."

I never planned to get into the business,

Raising the roof is a major structural change, but for some homeowners, it can be a practical way to gain space and modernize a home without relocating. Whether the goal is higher ceilings, an added level, or turning unused attic space into livable square footage, the idea to raise a roof on a house often comes up when a home no longer fits everyday needs.

When Mandy Moore re-renovated her Altadena home last year, she and her husband Taylor Goldsmith inevitably tapped AD100 talent Sarah Sherman Samuel: the actor's longtime designer who also worked on the couple's midcentury home in 2018. True to her signature flair for whimsy, Samuel brought in lots of playful elements featuring warm colors, bright patterns, and contemporary silhouettes. Blessedly for us, many of these are also readily available through the designer's collection with retailer Lulu and Georgia.

A carpenter slid a newspaper between the floorboards during a home renovation in the 1940s - then a common fix for uneven planks. About 80 years later, another renovation at the home in Fargo, North Dakota, revealed the brittle pages, still wedged beneath the wood. At first, the discovery seemed unremarkable. "They used to do this back in the day," said Vincent Vincent, the contractor who pulled up the boards last month. "I find many things like this."

There's a point in all my renovations that I look around and think, "What have I done?" - and I have to be honest that after the crew tore through the front room of the 1883 shotgun-style house my husband and I lovingly dubbed Cherry Pop, there was a real moment of oh noooooo. With wood-paneled walls (painted purple and putrid green), a drop ceiling with a 1980s ceiling fan, and stick-on faux parquet flooring,

She's set to call Thrushcross Grange home in the upcoming adaptation of Wuthering Heights, but Margot Robbie's IRL coastal California home (and Australian getaway!) is just as breathtaking as the two grand homes featured in Emily Brontë's classic novel. The Australian-born actress now lives full-time in Southern California, and within the past decade, she has bought and renovated three homes with her husband, Tom Ackerley, in the Venice and Los Angeles area. Below, a full look at all the homes that 35-year-old Robbie has owned since her rise to international fame in the early 2010s.

Picture this: you're knee-deep in renovation dust, crowbar in hand, when something unexpected tumbles from behind century-old plaster. A yellowed envelope? A strange metal box? That moment when your heart skips because you realize you might have just found something extraordinary. For some lucky homeowners, these discoveries turn out to be worth thousands of dollars, transforming a simple home improvement project into an unexpected treasure hunt.

After 17 years on RTÉ's flagship home renovation show, and narrowly escaping a heart attack, the architect says he no longer 'loses any sleep' over critics

Interior designer Ali Michel bought a cottage in Austin in 2024. She renovated the 1930s home with her dad, working with a budget of $80,000 for the whole house. Michel balanced high-end touches with more affordable Ikea pieces and DIY projects. Buying a house you know you'll have to renovate can be intimidating. It was slightly less daunting for interior designer Ali Michel, though, as she could use her professional expertise while renovating the 1930s cottage she fell in love with in Austin.

When the couple bought this basement flat in 2019, it hadn't been lived in for several years. Ru and Holland described it as "pretty wrecked" and a "very damp and dark basement that hadn't been properly dealt with since the 1980s." "It was the cheapest place on a super nice street in Seven Dials, Brighton," Holland continues. "We lived in it, with the rats under the clattered floorboards and decaying, mouldy walls for five years until we were able to remortgage and redesign our home.

Berkeley's historic homes have plenty of charms, but knob-and-tube wiring isn't one of them. Modernizing these antiquated electrical systems can add tens of thousands of dollars to the cost of home improvement projects, especially HVAC and appliance upgrades. That concern is what led to the creation last November of Mr. Poppy Electric, a Berkeley-based electrical contractor firm founded by longtime friends Tenzin Soepa and Andrei Smith, both Berkeley High School graduates.

"This is our first home together as a blended family. I really wanted it to look and feel special for everyone," Cheylene writes. "When designing the rooms, I kept three things in mind: Keep it durable (a must with three boys!), keep it thrifty (we didn't want to spend too much), and keep it FUN. It's all still a work in progress, but we feel very much at home here."

Stephen Hutyra was scrolling Facebook in November 2020 when a post caught his attention. It showed a couple in England who'd built a small pub in their backyard. Their design was simple, but inspiring. The 42-year-old program analyst, who lives in the small town of West, Texas, immediately started imagining what it'd be like to have his own. "We have a saying that everything is bigger and better in Texas," he told Business Insider.