Monty and Kimberly Ross have only lived nine months in their St. Albert home, but they've already sold it at a considerable profit.
The Rosses knew when they purchased their 20-year-old home that it would be a work in progress. Now, after months of sweat labour and an investment of $40,000 in materials, they are moving.
"Oh, yeah! We got a return for our work," was all the Rosses would say about how much money they made in their house flip.
Their efforts, and interior decorating abilities, were recognized by HGTV's national show Urban/Suburban, which will air a segment about their home next September.
If the former owners visited, they might have trouble getting their bearings in this renovated four-level split because the Rosses moved walls, appliances and plumbing. They changed the flooring and painted everything, from the outside stucco to the inside walls until nearly every room in the house was different.
When they purchased it, their home was by no means a fixer-upper. It was a solid home in a good neighbourhood and the Rosses make it very clear that while the changes they made added value to their home, most of the renovations were done to make the space suitable for their own needs.
"We have three small children under four years of age. We wanted to take out the wall between the kitchen and the living room so we could watch the children when they were playing in the living room," Kimberly Ross said.
Concrete counters
The shape and size of the kitchen has not changed because the Rosses utilized the same number of square feet, but they shifted everything around. They added a new backsplash but managed to keep all the old cupboards. One new pantry was added, but unless you study the moulding very closely, it almost matches the original cabinets.
Structural changes included the removal of the wall adjacent to the dining room and the removal of the half-wall beside the stairs to the third level of the house.
"By removing the dining room wall we opened up the whole house," Ross said, as she explained that the exterior walls were not changed and the windows and patio doors remain as they always were.
Kimberly Ross is an artist and an interior decorator with her own company, Complete Renos, so she tried new techniques in this house to see how they would work. The biggest experiment was mixing and pouring concrete for counters.
The concrete is smooth and cool to the touch and pretty because it is filled with interesting sparkly things like broken blue glass and even mirror chips.
"She broke the mirror, so I won't have bad luck," said a laughing Monty, adding that even though the counters are beautiful, and in his opinion another of his wife's works of art, they may not repeat the experiment again.
"They were very heavy. We got to personalize them, and I like that, but they were also very heavy," he said.
The couple was up half the night making the counters.
"It was raining so we had to hurry and we couldn't leave it so we were up at midnight in raincoats with a concrete mixer pouring concrete and making the counters," Kimberly said.
Six months pregnant at the time, Kimberly nonetheless helped lift at least one counter with no adverse effects and now the wide counters provide a perfect lunch bar behind the kitchen sink.
Patterned flooring
The kitchen flooring remains the same as when the Rosses purchased the home but they let their artistic natures go wild on the living room/dining room floor.
The floor consists of two differently coloured oak boards. The blonde-coloured inside boards are laid out in diagonals to form a series of V-shaped patterns. The boards are one by four inches and are cut in varying lengths to form the triangular shapes. The outside perimeter is made from wider, dark-coloured planks.
"We did it like a puzzle and once we started it all went together," said Monte, adding that he used a simple chalk line to keep the pattern in line.
"The outside planks are hand-scraped white oak and we put them in because they are the latest thing. They are dark but the kids can run across them and they never show the footprints. This is the best floor ever," said Kimberly.
Other easier housekeeping changes included moving the fourth-level laundry to a third level closet. Now Kimberly doesn't have to go all the way to the basement to wash clothes.
And when it comes time to relax, the Rosses have a new gas fireplace instead of the former wood-burning one.
"We put in the gas fireplace so we can flip the switch instead of having to build a fire," Kimberly said.
The Rosses haven't found the next home of their dreams yet but one thing is certain, it won't be a ready-made, move-in and hang-your-hat-up type house.
"We like a house that needs work," Monty said.
