If you’re new here, I’m sharing how we renovated a beach house and then rented it on Airbnb. Some of the rooms in this house needed only a facelift — new paint and new furniture — but we decided to completely renovate one of the bathrooms. This process took SO long . . . it’s hard to believe how much work went into it and how many delays we experienced. Here’s what the bathroom looked like when we bought the house. The vanity and toilet were fine, and we could’ve just painted the…
If you’re new here, I’m sharing how we renovated a condo in Bethany Beach, Delaware, and turned it into an Airbnb. It was a long process and took us an entire year, but I’m happy with the results! Today I’m sharing another bedroom renovation. This bedroom is upstairs, and since we already have a bunk room for kids, we figured this room would be for adults. Here’s what it looked like when we bought the house. (The furniture conveyed with the house.) I love the lines of the ceiling and…
Welcome back! Today I’m sharing how we updated one of the bathrooms at the beach condo. This house has two bathrooms, and we did a huge, expensive overhaul on the other bathroom that took weeks and weeks of my time. (Post on that one coming soon!) So for this bathroom, we wanted to make it look better without spending a lot of money or time. Here’s what it looked like when we bought the house. The room felt dingy and uninviting. And the shower was so old fashioned! It’s one of those full-piece…
When we bought our beach place, the primary bedroom was pretty yucky . . . like all the bedrooms! The mattress was horrible, and the carpet was SO stinky. And check out the old-school wallpaper border above the bed! Like the rest of the house, our first step was to get rid of almost all the furniture and paint the walls and ceilings Cloud White. Boy, that was a tough week! Then we paid a local company to pull up the carpet and replace it with LVP, and we paid our local electrician to check all the outlets, add can lighting, and…
I’m back with another room transformation from our beach house in Bethany Beach, Delaware. The house has three bedrooms and two bathrooms and is up on pilings, so there’s not an option to expand the living area. Instead, we decided to turn one of the bedrooms into a bunk room with a pair of bunk beds. We wanted a style that would work for kids or adults, and we wanted to maximize the space. When we bought the house, the room looked like this. (The house was sold furnished.) I love all the visual space, but…
We finally have our finished photos from the beach place, and I’m so excited to share each room with you! First up is one of the easiest transformations — the fireplace. As you can see in the photos below, when we bought the place, the fireplace was pretty blah. It just wasn’t my style at all. And I felt like the black metal was pretty depressing, especially when compared to the beach decor. I was itching to do something . . . anything! Once we decided on the colors for the condo, I used the couch color and the…
I’m very happy to say that our renovations at Bethany Beach are finished, and the property on the Delaware shore is open for bookings! What a relief. After months of hard work and lots of miles logged in our cars, I’m so thankful that we can share this calm beach house with our guests (and enjoy it ourselves, too!). I’m planning to do a step-by-step post for each room, showing the before and after and everything we did during the renovation — would that be helpful or interesting? I could also talk…
After we sold our rural cabin, we put the proceeds into a cute-but-tired beach house on the Delaware shore. We found an adorable house in a Key West style (elevated on pilings) and took the plunge! But the house was in terrible shape. It smelled awful, the furniture was unpleasant, and the flowery couch was always mildewy and slightly damp. Yuck!! Here are some of the photos we took on our walk-through. Did you notice that the mirror in the living room is framed using the same material as the couches? Wow. We took possession of the…
I have two more lessons learned, and I’ve saved the biggest ones for last! These are a little bit unexpected, perhaps, and I’m curious to hear your thoughts. If you’re an Airbnb host or a guest, what do you think about these ideas? Have you experienced these issues firsthand? 4. Allow dogs. I was dead-set against this one, but John insisted. And now I have to admit he was right! Probably 80% of our guests brought their dogs. We had a few very minor issues — one dog chewed the armrest on one…
After we finished the cabin in late 2020, we rented it on Airbnb. It was a good side gig for us for a while, but then the extra work became overwhelming. (We both have full-time jobs, we have four kids, and the cabin was two hours from our home.) If we had set up the business differently from the beginning, I think it would’ve been much easier for us. Now that we’re planning to open a new Airbnb in a few months, I’ve been thinking about the lessons we learned and how we…