Harold's Renovation Blog: #103: Regrets From Our Beach House Reno

It turns out that restoring a vintage stove isn’t all cupcakes & rainbows, so this week we’re revealing some of the quirks that you can’t see from a pretty picture. We’re also spilling the beans on several mistakes, regrets, and missed opportunities from our beach house renovation. What tile choice did we screw up? Where did we go wrong on the exterior? And how are we going to correct things moving forward? Plus, why we’re spending a chunk of money to make our house smell better. SO NOT GLAMOROUS.

You can download this episode from Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Stitcher, TuneIn Radio, and Spotify – or listen to it below! Then use this page to check out any links, notes, or photos we referenced. Note: If you’re reading in a feed reader, you may have to click through to the post to see the player.

What’s New

In case you missed it, here’s the original story of finding the pink stove
Also, can you spot the red light that’s always on in the photo above?

And here’s Ol’ Pinkie right after we moved it in last October, when it “popped” on us while plugging it in. What a relief that it’s (mostly) better now!

Beach House Regrets

I’ll do my best here to represent the mistakes that we discussed in the episode – but the episode is definitely worth a listen for a much more clarified and detailed rundown. Save yourself from these mistakes and just tune in for that 15 minutes!
Ok but first here’s a view into the hall bathroom, which is where we put the blue accent tile in the shower… which is hidden right behind that door. Code required us to put the light switches on the left-hand wall (otherwise they would’ve been deemed too close to the shower itself), forcing the door swing to go this way (I don’t think we’d want to walk into the shower as opposed to the vanity anyway) but we sure wish we had thought to use that tile in the downstairs bathroom where you’d see it right from the door. Oh well, at least this view is still pretty!

Here’s the downstairs shower, which is attached to the mudroom/laundry room. See how that tile could have been appreciated by everyone walking by thanks to this layout? Lesson learned.

And you’ve heard several times about the breakfast nook-turned-pantry (like in Episode #74: The Big Fight We Had Over A Fridge and Episode #85: What We Got Wrong In Our Beach House Kitchen). We just got kinda caught up in how charming a breakfast nook would LOOK (like the inspiration pic below)…

image source

… but when we truly thought about how well it would actually FUNCTION…. well, that it was a good reality check.

Thankfully we love the resulting pantry! You can also see how we built the walk-in pantry shelves here.

Here is one of the few shots of our little master bathroom sink. Although one of Sherry’s interior designer friends walked in and said “I LOVE THAT LITTLE SINK!” (which was a pretty nice thing to hear after being so convinced it’s stupid small) it’s still something we’re planning to fix… eventually. For now the shower and the tub still make that room one of our favorites, thankfully.

For reference, here’s the sink in our last home’s guest bathroom that still totally charms us. We just feel like it works better in a tiny, vintage-tiled space than our slightly bigger and more open beach house bathroom.

The photo below shows how rough the porch on the pink house still looks. So it’s easy to see why we regret not already taking care of it… but it’s on our list to do soon! Still gotta stain that front door too…

You can see and hear us talk more about the wooden steps on the side and the back of the house in Episode #99.
The photo below (from way before the laundry room was finished) is the best view of how high the plugs were originally placed for the washer and dryer. We didn’t really notice until the appliances were delivered that they would stick up well above them – and interrupt the area where we wanted to add a shelf.

So we had our electrician drop the dryer plug about 6 inches so it would sit just under the back lip (the other plug got covered by the storage cabinet). They’re still very easy to access without moving the washer and dryer (the shelves aren’t screwed in, they just rest in the bracket, so you can pop them off and easily reach all of the hookups right behind the top of the washer & dryer). Here’s where can read more about this laundry room makeover.

I don’t have any great current shots of our thermostat placement, but in some of these pictures from before we moved in you can see how we had them put near corners of walls (as opposed to being smack dab in the middle of the wall, where we’d later want to hang art and would forever curse their existence). Upstairs we put it right outside the entrance to the master bedroom, giving us plenty of room for art on that wall. Note: these pictures are from before we swapped the stock ones out for our beloved Nest E Thermostats.

Downstairs the thermostat is near the light switch in the dining room (it’s the thing covered in blue tape below). Again, that placement left us plenty of uninterrupted wall space for art.

refinished pine floors dining room

In the photo above you can also see the transition between the living room and dining room that’s higher than we’d like. No one has tripped on it or anything, but we do wish it were as seamless as the one in the other doorway (see how the smaller doorway’s threshold is sunk into the floor and completely flush?)
Just like we did in the episode, let’s end on the high note of how much we love the back bedroom. We worried about adding the wall with the pocket doors, but it has been the perfect solution for bedroom privacy at night without losing allllll the light from that window in the daytime – all while still giving us access to our own “private” staircase in the back.

We’re Digging

Above are some of Sherry’s favorite photo prints from 527 Photo on Etsy, which has tons of beautiful travel photos for sale (an 8 x 10″ print is only $30!). There are over 400 listings in her shop, so here are the ones that caught Sherry’s eye the most: 1 / 2 (this is the one we bought for our living room) / 3 / 4 / 5 / 6 / 7 / 8 / 9
And if you want to nerd out with a fun yet informative podcast, try listening to Every Little Thing wherever you listen to our podcast. Personal favorite episodes are: How Old Is Winnie The Pooh?, Public Toilets: To Sit or To Hover, and How To Get Paid To Clap On TV.

If you’re looking for something we’ve dug in a past episode, but don’t remember which show notes to click into, here’s a master list of everything we’ve been digging from all of our past episodes.

And lastly, a big thank you to Universal Furniture for sponsoring this episode. You can enter to win $5,000 in new living room furniture at UniversalFurniture.com/YHL now through August 13th. Remember, YHLHAP podcast listeners have won the last two Universal giveaways, so it could be you this time!!!