When Joe Bradley and his girlfriend, Heather Qurter, moved into their two-bedroom home in Upper Arlington in June 2013, they knew they would be making some pretty big changes to it.
Bradley, who works in medical sales, has always had a passion for home renovation; moving into a new house simply meant the challenge of making it feel like home.
“You’re not going to go into a house and say, ‘This is exactly how I wanted it.’ I love using the bones and going, ‘OK, we can do this,’ and you get to come up with creative ideas,” Bradley says.
The one-story house was built in the 1960s and had a kitchen without much room to maneuver and a bathroom with some serious space issues. Bradley’s sister, Jacqueline, a real estate agent, showed the couple the home.
“We bought the house knowing we were going to have to rehab it,” says Bradley, who graduated from Upper Arlington High School and lived in Los Angeles and Chicago before returning to his hometown. “We could have made the kitchen work, but the bathroom was a space issue.”
The master bath had excessive cabinet space that left room for only a very tight shower. “The showerhead came about up to my neck,” says Bradley, laughing.
Now the bathroom has a luxuriously large shower with a fog-free mirror for Bradley to use for shaving – and just the right amount of cabinet space. The tiling and cabinetry were also redone.
The kitchen, however, posed larger challenges.
“The sink wasn’t centered under the kitchen window; it just didn’t look right. The fridge was in the walkway, so when it was open, we had no room to stand and it blocked the doorway,” says Bradley.
Moving the refrigerator and dishwasher allowed them to center the sink underneath the window. Removing the peninsula and adding an island permitted better traffic flow.
Bradley and Qurter also decided to create a niche for the microwave and updated the windowsills.
“They didn’t go with the style we were going for, so we took out the marble windowsills and put in a backsplash,” Bradley explains.
New cabinets from Heartland Home Cabinetry improved the look of the space, but aside from those, Bradley credits everything to Qurter.
“She was really behind the rest of the design. She found a lot of ideas on Pinterest and the Houzz interior design app. The app is great because we could click on everything we saw and see exactly how much it cost,” says Bradley. “Everything we decided on was a group decision, but the designing was all her.”
The actual process of remodeling their home took about two months.
“We had only lived here a couple of weeks when I started gutting the kitchen myself – ripping up the floors, changing the cabinets. We finished mid-August of last year,” Bradley says.
“The biggest challenge with remodeling, I think, was just not having the kitchen space – finding ways to not eat out every night, making microwave meals. Grilling out helped. Just using the living room as a kitchen was the toughest thing.”
Now Bradley and Qurter enjoy their renovated rooms. Content with most of of the interior, Bradley has plans to update its exterior aesthetics and make minor upgrades inside.
“We’ll probably paint the house, add more crown molding. I feel like there’s always something you can do to make it feel nicer.”
Bradley offers advice to homeowners thinking of renovating: “Try your hardest not to do the rehab while you’re actually living in the home,” he says. “And have an idea of what things cost – what things really cost, once you add in the expenses (of) a plumber, contractor and electrician.”
Lauren Andrews is a contributing writer. Feedback welcome at laurand@cityscenemediagroup.com.
