OUR RENTAL HOUSE - PART ONE

When our daughter was one year old we decided to downsize our house significantly and build a house with a basement rental suite. We planned to live in this house for a year at the most, and build a new family home while keeping the smaller house as a rental. Life happened and we ended up staying there for 3 years! It was the longest we had ever stayed in one house, along the way when we realized it would be a little longer than planned we did a few updates to personalize the house.

The house was designed to be modern but neutral, so that it could work with anyone's taste. I worked with 3 paint colours throughout. For the walls I selected Elephant and Oyster from the Sarah Richardson Para Paint collection. I really wanted the kitchen cabinets to go up to the ceiling, but for a rental house it didn't make sense to spend a lot of extra money on cabinetry. I had the painters paint the walls behind the cabinets white, which made the kitchen feel brighter and taller. Our goal was to work within the standard builder allowances and not to do any upgrades! This proved to be very challenging for us, and in the end we did end up having to upgrade the flooring to a durable laminate and paid a small amount to change the bathroom lighting fixtures.

When we decided to personalize the main floor, we didn't change very much to the main living area. In the living room, we painted out the wall behind the tv white and adding some wainscoting. In the kitchen we brought in super white granite counter tops. We were unable to reuse our sink and upgraded the sink for a larger double sink with a drainboard. I loved the drainboard and would recommend it to anyone planning a new kitchen project!

A quick picture I had taken before the old counters were removed.