I have a confession to make: I’m bored to tears with white. There was a time when texture and color were okay, and i desperately miss those days. I recently found a place where every surface: every wall, floor, fixture, and cabinet door has interest. Like a breath of fresh air: hand carved details, custom wall finishes, hand hewn floors… I love it all. Check out the home tour in photos below.
The listing, at 2740 Abingdon Rd, Mountain Brook, AL is 4 bedrooms, 5.5 baths, and a sprawling 4337 sq. ft. The listing photos are the property of the Realtor, Brooke Wahl, at ARC realty and can be reached at 855-822-3469 for anyone interested in purchasing.
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The exterior:
A two acre lot feels big and is beautifully manicured, perfect for outdoor entertaining and family time. Sculptures are placed throughout the landscape, rolling hills, and stone gardens and patios. The pool is a tasteful addition and blends with the rest of the exterior seamlessly.
Exterior stone, chimneys, and descending rooflinesIncredible lush, sloping lawn with mature treesCurb appeal, view of the exteriorLeaded glass windows with stained glass inlays, sculptural detailed window crowns, blue stone patio, stone containers and wrought iron lanterns.Sweeping stone patios with a firepit and custom hewn log furnitureExtensive stacked stone garden wallsView of the outdoor entertaining area with large sculptures flanking the poolLarge sculptures outside Birmingham home flanking poolIncredible stone tiered outside patio terrace leading to incredible pool with bluestone paversPool with sculptures and blue stone paversBeautiful pool with bluestone paversOutdoor volleyball court between stone wallsEntrance walk leading up to the house
Special spaces:
I felt like Alice in Wonderland exploring this place, and the details are incredible. One of my favorite places? The art studio.
The side entrance leading to the art studio.Side patio leading to art studio, with custom iron railings, tiered stone patio, and custom hewn log furnitureInterior art studio, light and bright with tons of space and track lightingInterior shop and art studio
The interior:
Deep autumn hues wrap the entire interior in a warm, homey hug, yet it’s sophisticated and creative. Extensive recessed lighting, and warm wrought iron fixtures and chandeliers, ensure that it’s still bright even with the maximalist style and textured walls, ceilings, and floors.
Front entrance with rustic wood doors and inlaid leaded glass, textured walls with a sheen to maintain cleanliness, crystal lighting, walnut floors, custom wooden railings, and stacked pews.Custom leaded/stained glass windows, textured walls, wooden ceilings, stone floors, modern lighting, cast iron railing, and carved wooden crestProperly scaled, massive metal hood with an aged patina over 60 inch gas stove, flanked by wooden cabinetry with hand carved doorsTwo islands in a rich, multi-texture kitchen with modern and period lightingKitchen details: antique glass in cabinet inset with electric sconces and leaded glass grid windows and marbleRich drapes and sculptural details around a one of a kind wooden mantelLiving area with real wood paneling, beams, and modern lightingLiving space with wood walls and detailsIncredible arrangements, unique light fixtures, and professionally done draperiesCozy reading nook with textured walls and wooden builtinsLiving area looking through to the front hallStudy with walnut paneling, custom wood burning fireplace, textured ceilings, and soft golden lightingMajestic dining room with properly scaled art and furnishings and grand, tall leaded windowsLarge leaded grid windows surround an informal dining area, bathed in natural lightTwin beds upstairs in a guest bedroomMaster suite with crystal chandelierRustic wrought iron chandelier and sconces, textured walls, and wooden ceiling paneling in an alternate guest bedroomGuest bedroom with a view, out leaded windowsAnother unique large scale bedroomGuest bathroom with marble and glass shower, iron sconces, textured walls, and wood plank ceilingMarble tub surround with textured walls, built in shelves and windowMarble shower with benchAdditional bath with marble, planked ceiling, recessed lighting, textured walls, and iron sconcesHalf bath with custom carved vanity, textured walls, recessed lighting, and wooden builtinsCustom, carved vanityHalf bath with stone pedestal sink, textured walls, gilded mirror, and iron sconcesMarble shower with glass door and textured wallsGuest bath with marble, glass, wood molding, textured walls, plank wood ceiling, and iron sconcesLaundry room with beautiful wood cabinetry, custom door, and marble countersOffice nook with textured ceilings, hand carved light fixture, and leaded glass window with crest inlayHallway with textured walls, wooden floors, wooden hand railings, leaded and stained glass windows
What do you think? Are you ready to ditch those boring white walls for texture and layers of color?
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The beautiful thing about this particular renovation, is that our house flooded. Yes, I said the GOOD thing. Bear with me. Hang on. I’ll explain.
This post may contain affiliate links. Please see the full disclosure at the bottom of the post.
Before
I’m so embarrassed. This is the living room before the flood:
The poor living room in need of help (and at the bottom of the honey-do-list) before the flood.
We had lived in our old house for several years and, aside from the fact that we were packed in there like sardines, we didn’t have the time or energy to get to some of the upgrades on our ever-growing-wish-list. We have a STUFF problem. As in, we have too much of it. Without builtins, there was stuff everywhere, with no rhyme or reason, just looking cluttered and awful. For me, this creates stress, and no matter how clean the house was, I never felt settled.
So, then the clouds parted, and the rain came. Well, not actual rain. The hot water supply line under the master bedroom sink broke in the middle of the night (directly above the living room) and completely destroyed the living room and most of the contents.
The Flood
Imagine waking up in the middle of the night to a hot, steamy room. “Is the shower on?” Nope. No shower. But, I stepped down into ankle deep water to investigate, UPSTAIRS. Not good.
Wet living room ceiling from bathroom flood upstairs.
Wet living room ceiling from bathroom flood upstairs.
This offered up an opportunity for a few things, since we have fantastic homeowners insurance. I’d like to take a moment to give a shout out to my homies at USAA who made the insurance claims process painless. The contractors were so relieved when we said we had USAA. That was enough to solidify my belief in their awesomeness.
Demolition
The first thing that happened was the ripping out of the all of the sheetrock and flooring in the living room. Which made it look really weird. But, also awesome. Why? Two words: Popcorn ceilings. Even one room without those would be amazing and it was on my list of stuff to make happen.
Ceiling Sheetrock removed from living room ceiling.
A week and a half of industrial blowers and dehumidifiers later, the living room was dry and ready for REconstruction.
Wet Sheetrock removed.
Reconstruction
So, honestly, the hardest part of a renovation is getting started. My favorite way to kickstart the process is to walk into a room with a crowbar or a sledgehammer and start swinging. Then Rainman sighs, and says, “so, that’s the next project, then?” But, in this case, we HAD to do the renovation, because it flooded. YAY!
So, demolition complete, the living room was ready to start rebuilding. Keep in mind, I knew this was not our forever home, so I took some design chances I probably wouldn’t duplicate now.
Sheetrock
The crew came in and put in sheetrock (we paid an additional $250 to have the ceiling flat finished instead of popcorn which felt a lot like extortion, but it was worth it).
Roughed in Sheetrock, ready to be finished.
Tips: When we were “interviewing” contractors we asked if we could make changes to the insurance-approved punchlist after the fact to make sure they were on board. Many contractors will work with you, using the existing insurance payout, plus your add ons, to do upgrades. They will also give you credit for things you do yourself to help pay for some of the upgrades. Why not do upgrades when you have free labor? For instance, in order to put up the sheetrock the fan had to come down first. After the sheetrock was installed, the fan had to go back up. There was a $150 charge approved by the insurance company for an electrician to take it down, and another $150 to put it back up. Rainman installed the damn fan in the first place. We arranged to do that (and several other things) and applied the credit to the upgrades we were having done elsewhere.
This inspiration post is JUST for the wainscoting and molding, although we did install builtins, completely redo the fireplace and surround, and install beautiful flooring. I’ll cover the others separately.
Customizing
I painted my accent color first after Rainman drew me straight lines based upon where I pointed. That way I was sure I liked the height. I also wanted to make sure my awesome industrial airplane canvas fit where I wanted it mounted (I am notorious for prematurely hanging things on walls still under construction and dressing un-finished builtins).
Roughing in paint before wainscoting and hanging the airplane art.
Designing the Board and Batten Layout
The artwork fit perfectly, so I was able to give him the go-ahead to draw out the grid for the boards. Now, here’s the customization part: depending on the scale of your space (we were dealing with standard eight foot ceiling height) you may want a tighter grid, or something more spaced out. You may want wider or thinner boards. We drew out our boards and I liked the look. We used 1″x6″ pine boards for a majority of the grid.
Crown molding going up on one wall to make sure we like the width of the crown “stripe.” If you look closely, you can see the grid for the board and batten penciled in.
We tried really hard to avoid going over light switches or outlets, but we did hit a few. Because the outlet was in an area that would be covered, we just did a cut out for it. Ditto for the dual light switch.
Board and batten grid going in. Before paint and finish work.
The grids were installed using finish nails, via a finish nailer and compressor. My husband got these Bostich nailers and compressor as a gift from his father like 15 years ago and they all still work great. We ran the vertical boards against the door frames and in the corners first, then the top and bottom horizontal boards (we used a wider baseboard), then the verticals (between the top and bottom), then the boards in between the verticals.
First round of caulk and paint.
We did quarter round to cap the wainscoting and a white quarterround to finish it out against the flooring, also.
Board and batten grid on the long wall.
I apologize for the grainy photos (these are pre-blogging days and were on my phone). You can see the grid before we started the finish work. Above, the first layer of crown molding has gone up.
Finishing Touches, Crown Molding, and Engineered Brazilian Hardwood Flooring
The additional white quarter round against the flooring really set off the deep color in the gorgeous engineered Brazilian Cherry Hardwood. I absolutely love the contrast of white against wood.
This shot shows the second detail layer below the crown and how the wainscoting looked. This is not a crown molding installation how-to. There’s a fantastic tutorial available from the Familyhandyman.com if you’re new at this. Rainman’s tool of choice on this (that we’ve used over and over) is The Dewalt Compound Sliding Miter Saw. We’ve used it to do an entire house of molding (at the old house) and it still does EVERYTHING we need at the new house.
So, this is an awful, grainy photo again. But, it shows how we continued the trim against the builtins. The top of the builtins was open. We capped the builtins with crown (so it continued around the room) and the detail piece tied it in beautifully.
Two pieces of molding really add depth to the ceiling.
Here’s the final crown stack up, with only two pieces.
Crown molding stack-up.
And them labelled, for guidance.
The finish work was time intensive once all of the crown and wainscoting was up. All of the molding took two layers of caulk (around every edge of the grid and to fill nail holes) to really be finished and THREE layers of gloss white paint. But, it turned out beautifully.
The Finished Product
Beautiful new ceiling, builtins, fireplace, tile surround, new brazilian cherry engineered wood, wainscoting, and crown molding.
This was one of the listing photos of the living room. The white wainscoting and molding REALLY punch up the color contrast and finish the room beautifully. See the finished Old House Tour for more great makeovers.
Check out more of our DIY projects here. Thanks for stopping by!
*Legal stuff:
I am honest about my experiences with different products and write because I enjoy it. I do however, have the opportunity to earn money for my writing, also.
Slavetodiy.com is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to amazon.com. Amazon offers a small commission on products sold through their affiliate links. Each of your purchases via our Amazon affiliation links supports our cause at no additional cost to you.
If a blogger links to an Amazon product (with a special code for affiliates embedded in the link), and a reader places an item in their “shopping cart” through that link within 24 hours of clicking the link, the blogger gets a small percentage of the sale. Amazon links are not “pay per click.” If you click on the product link and stay around Amazon and purchase something else, however, I will get a commission on that sale.
Slavetodiy.com is also a VigLink affiliate advertiser which works similarly.
