1989 Renovation of My Church Hill House - Part II

Today we are going to see the "after" photos of our 1989/90 Church Hill Renovation in Richmond. My husband and I were 25 and 29 when we did this project - and neither of us had any experience in anything to do with houses. We had both grown up in historic/old houses and had similar ideas of what we wanted - but that's it. Our contractor was young too and we all learned a lot from this project. Our total budget for the renovation was $108,000! Can you believe that? I can't believe we did it. We didn't have much to spend on the interior after the renovation, but it looks pretty good with the family hand me downs and thrift shop finds.

Welcome to the renovated 2702 East Broad Street - (all photos are from 1990/91 and the quality is not that good...)




There was lots of gray in this house. It was beautiful soft gray - not dreary at all. In fact it was the base line color - with pops of pink here and there for fun. All of the halls were light gray and a couple of the rooms were gray - the keeping room and one bedroom. Can you see the parsons console against the wall - I wonder what happened to that? I don't have it anymore.


We got lucky on the floors. They were in good shape (many of them had been covered with carpet) and so we just stripped, and sanded and then polyurethaned them. We left them unstained - they were heart of pine and were a really pretty color on their own.


The living room was high gloss gun metal gray - hard to tell in this photo.


The dining room was geranium pink - it looks redder in this photo than it did in real life. It was pretty pink!




Keeping room next to the kitchen


We did this kitchen on a shoestring budget. These are Home Depot knock down cabinets that the painters stripped and then painted high gloss white. The counter tops are formica in dark green and the appliances came from Sears (I don't even think we bought a new fridge - that one was a hand me down from my parents).


The back stairs emptied into the kitchen. Behind the kitchen was a large mudroom with the washer/dryer, cabinets and lots of storage.


Upstairs hall with hand me down curtains from my grandmother.


The curved wall (behind that is the master bath - you can see the tub peeking out).


Master bath - again on a shoestring budget, I chose gray tile for the floors and shower (sadly, I don't have a photo of the shower by itself, but you can see the top of it in the mirror) and a cast iron tub. The counter tops were gray formica.


Courtyard view to the backyard


Looking from the backyard towards the front of the house. My husband and I rebuilt both of exterior stairs and redid all of the landscaping ourselves too.

We loved living in the Historic District of Church Hill in Richmond. And we loved this house. It played a major role in the design of my current house. The houses share many features: row house design, 3 windows over 2 with a side door, entrance hall similarity, living room- dining room -kitchen stack layout on the main floor and interesting architectural detail.






More to come - a side by side comparison of the two houses and the way the first influenced the second, and some history of Historic Church Hill in Richmond.