There are a number of small ranches in our immediate neighborhood. They were built in the late 1950s. Maybe 1200 square feet, full basement. Three bedroom, bath and a half. I'm very familiar with them as my good friend who used to live across the street from us owned one.

Down the block, there is an identical house. The former owner, a totally charming older gentleman with a lovely Irish brogue, sold the house some years ago and the new owners totally rehabbed it. Never saw the inside but from what I saw on the outside, it looked like they had made some great improvements.

Late last week we saw everything being loaded into a moving van. This morning there's another moving van, moving stuff in. I looked it up on realtor.com and wasn't surprised to see it had closed last Friday. I was stunned to see the price.

https://www.realtor.com/reales...L_60004_M75519-90942

Oh wow, that does look really nice!

I am assuming the 1200 sq ft is just the main floor right? So the lower level must add 1000+ sq ft as well. Really nice!

But, yeah, that's quite the price tag, whether for 1200 sqft or 2400!

I grew up in a house just like that. Same windows in the bedroom, so many of them in our neighborhood. This house has had amazing things done to the inside!

The house sold for $275K maybe three or four years ago. It was a good deal at that price, but was in original condition. It's amazing how they reimagined the house from the original...

Great new front door with a MCM look.

The kitchen was a separate space, walled off from the dining room and with an entrance from the living room. The island is located where the walls used to be. The range is on the wall where the table for an eat-in kitchen was typically located. There used to be a tiny pantry in that area, too.

They vaulted the ceilings.

The powder room used to be a walk-through. One entrance from master bedroom with a second door from the kitchen right by the back door/stairs to basement. They walled off that second door and made it a mini ensuite.

They took out the tub and made the full bath a shower only.

All new interior doors and closet doors.

Basement was completely unfinished and now it's got finished floors and walls. They just spray painted the ceiling black. Seeing a fair bit of that in basements in our area. The ceilings tend to be on the low side and people don't want to further reduce the height by putting any ceiling materials in.

Tons of landscaping work in the yard, including the patio areas.

They didn't miss anything....

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They didn't miss anything....

Indeed!

I would love to know how much it cost them to do all that work.

Re spray painting the ceiling black, I wonder why black. I thought it looked fine that way, but wouldn't it feel bigger with a lighter color?

I've seen both black and white, but black seems to be more common. Maybe it does a better job of hiding the conduit, wires, etc. that may be in the floor joist bays.

You can see they oversprayed onto the ducts...

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Maybe it does a better job of hiding the conduit, wires, etc. that may be in the floor joist bays.

That's a good point, a light color might make all those things stand out more and look worse actually.

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Originally posted by ShiroKuro:

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They didn't miss anything....

Indeed!

I would love to know how much it cost them to do all that work.

Re spray painting the ceiling black, I wonder why black. I thought it looked fine that way, but wouldn't it feel bigger with a lighter color?

Painting all the ceiling area black is a very popular trend in basement refinishing. It looks good, but leaves you access to the plumbing, wiring, ducts. It's a very good idea.

Love the house, inside and out.

That's a very interesting and well-executed update of a midcentury vintage ranch.

I presume they employed a structural engineer to determine how to raise the ceiling in the open area without unduly destabilizing the house. The short joists tying the rafters closer to the center of the roof are a feasible solution if done right, but the lateral loads on the walls are somewhat shifted compared to conventional framing with the ceiling joists running the entire width of the house.

The new open floor plan makes for a less cramped space, but reduces the amount of wall space where furniture and storage can be easily located. We also have a lot of pictures, needlework, and paintings hanging on various walls in our house that I would miss if there was nowhere to hang them.

I've seen the black ceiling treatment in restaurants where it does a decent job of making roof trusses and overhead utilities less noticeable. I'm not sure how I would like it with low ceilings in a basement. One disadvantage is the extra lighting load because of the lack of reflected light off the whole surface. Those shining lights in the photos are a testament to that.

All in all, I'm pretty impressed with what they did and I like the idea of single-level living, but I'd want to get answers to a few questions, decide how my furniture might fit the rooms, and actually experience the spaces before I could say I'd want to live there.

Big Al

Ha! Found the listing for my friend's old house. Well, sort of. The people who bought it from her put it on the market some years ago when they thought they were moving to Las Vegas. They took it off the market when they decided to stay put.

It's the same floor plan as the renovated one, though they added a full bath in the basement. But you can still get a good feel for what was changed, especially with walls that came out.

Cay's house is on a corner lot, and her garage is connected to the house with a breezeway.

https://www.zillow.com/homedet...-60004/3315793_zpid/

I might like this one more than the first one.

Very nice. I’d love a one level house for the future. But where would the grand piano go in that house?

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where would the grand piano go in that house?

This has been my question with 90% of the houses look at And my piano isn't as big as most of the WTFers' pianos!

P.S. random comment: I don't think very many people know that you can get listing photos removed once you buy a house. We did that after we bought our house in 2019, and the people who bought our house last year did the same.

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the people who bought our house last year did the same.

No. No they did not.... Why did I think they did.


I wish they would though!

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Originally posted by Mikhailoh:

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Originally posted by ShiroKuro:

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They didn't miss anything....

Indeed!

I would love to know how much it cost them to do all that work.

Re spray painting the ceiling black, I wonder why black. I thought it looked fine that way, but wouldn't it feel bigger with a lighter color?

Painting all the ceiling area black is a very popular trend in basement refinishing. It looks good, but leaves you access to the plumbing, wiring, ducts. It's a very good idea.

Love the house, inside and out.

We did this when we finished our basement years ago. Same reasons listed here - the ceiling was already kinda low and we didn't want to lower it any further. Access to the pipes and ducts has proven to be a boon! We've had a few small leaks from the icemaker line that would have been a royal PITA if we had a drywalled ceiling and would have ruined ceiling tiles if we had a drop ceiling. With the open ceiling, all we had to do was dry the water up off the carpet, fix the line, and touch up the paint.

We chose to go with a very dark brown - the same shade as the darkest IKEA builtins, which we used for the entertainment center. We put funky track lighting and pot lights up but really embraced the dark cavelike basement aspect (we have no windows at all down there) by painting the walls a deep shade of purple as well. I love it and would definitely recommend the "painting the joists route" to anyone considering finishing their basement. Here's a really old photo - please note the flash makes the walls look a lot more intensely-grape-purple than they actually are.