by Furnishly | Mar 9, 2022 | Design Inspiration, Style
When Rob and Angie Nelson decided to settle down near family after years of moving throughout the U.S., the two knew that they had their work cut out for them. Fortunately, their extended local family includes HGTV stars Dave and Jenny Marrs. In the latest episode of “Fixer to Fabulous,” the Marrses renovated Rob and Angie’s cramped 1,100-square-foot Arkansas ranch into a modern two-story dream home.
Built in the 1970s, the interior of the house was dark, outdated, and closed off. The exterior was similarly run-down, with an antiquated green paint job and a mismatched wooden front deck. Rob and Angie hadn’t viewed the inside of the house before purchasing it and, upon seeing it, requested an open concept renovation. With a $300,000 budget, they were also hoping for a larger overall home that could comfortably fit both of them and their teenage sons (making a second bathroom a necessity).
To help with the tight space issues, Dave and Jenny kicked off an unrecognizable exterior overhaul. They expanded the house on both the left and right sides, and built an additional level for bedrooms and an extra bathroom. They also added another garage to the side of the house, more suited for a family of four. By the end of the renovation, the home clocked in at 2,800 square feet.
When building the second floor, Jenny and Dave had to get rid of the original roof, which allowed for them to add in more appropriate black metal roofing (a solid contrast to the new white paint job on the front of the house). The upper exterior of the house also featured a complimentary darker wood.
“We added in this wood siding to add a little bit of warmth and texture, just that modern feel,” Jenny explained.
Their team also tamed the overgrown weeds in the front of the property and tied the modern aesthetic together with minimalist landscaping.
On the inside, the original layout of the house looked drab and closed-off, with the bulk of the issues in the entryway and living area. Jenny and Dave immediately knocked down several walls to help make the living room into the open concept heart of the home. The second floor addition allowed for a higher ceiling in the living area, creating an airy atmosphere. The renovation also added in more windows, which brought in lots of natural light.
Jenny and Dave stripped the dark wooden floors of the first floor and replaced them with lighter, more open herringbone flooring. The new flooring matched the new staircase and blended in with the fresh white walls. The flooring and stairs also matched the highlight of the space: the brand new, see-through wine room and aquarium.
“It’s not a huge room, but it’s enough storage for 150 bottles of wine,” Dave estimated.
The wine area was practical in use but also served as a “statement piece” with the addition of the 1,000-pound saltwater fish tank, as requested by Rob. For a personal touch, the Marrses had their children pick out the resident sea creatures (including several clownfish) for their aunt and uncle’s new home. To finish off the modernized space, Dave and Jenny added white and gray furniture, a wall-mounted TV, and a new fireplace.
“We’ve lived in amazing places, but they never were [our] actual home,” Angie said. “So now we’re here and it’s home, and we’re happy.”
“Fixer to Fabulous” airs new episodes on Tuesdays at 9/8 central on HGTV and Discovery+.
by Furnishly | Mar 8, 2022 | Design Inspiration, Style
How do you make an identical space unique without breaking the bank? That’s the question that “Rock the Block,” HGTV’s star-studded competition series, attempts to answer with the help of some of the network’s savviest talents. Hosted by Ty Pennington, “Rock the Block” pits four teams of HGTV stars — Leslie Davis and Lyndsay Lamb (“Unsellable Houses”), Dave and Jenny Marrs (“Fixer to Fabulous”), Keith Bynum and Evan Thomas (“Bargain Block”), and Egypt Sherrod and Mike Jackson (“Married to Real Estate”) — against each other. With a budget of $225,000 per pair, each team is tasked with renovating one of four identical houses in Charleston, South Carolina.
In a recent episode of “Rock the Block,” the teams remodeled the entryway and living room areas of their respective houses. For the foyer and living room, all teams were careful not to put too much of their budget into the project, keeping the renovations between $15,000 and $35,000. Standouts for the challenge were the Marrs space and the Sherrod-Jackson space. Both teams, according to episode judge and “Rock the Block” Season 1 winner Jasmine Roth, reworked the areas in unique ways that helped change the layout and square footage of the homes.
The Marrses put most of their attention into the living room, a light and neutral space that was built around a new fireplace. The living room flowed freely into the kitchen (which the teams renovated in the previous episode) and utilized simple wooden features (including light wooden shelves) to blend the two areas together. A white couch helped tie the whole room together without dominating the space.
In an effort to balance their vintage and modern house, the couple also added a small powder room back into the living area (after removing a bathroom in the prior episode). They found room for the powder room by repurposing some of the house’s porch space and increasing the overall square footage. The couple kept the entryway work pretty minimal and added a simple, handy cubby space in the foyer so that potential homeowners could hang their belongings as soon as they stepped inside.
Like the Marrses, Sherrod and Jackson made a stylish fireplace the focal point of their living room. The coastal and historic house utilized white furniture with darker, more dynamic accents (including a driftwood-styled table and ocean-themed accessories). While the main wall color was white, they added dark accent walls by the fireplace and the entryway to make a bolder home. They also replaced the original windows of the living room with beautiful french doors, combining luxury with practicality and livability.
Sherrod and Jackson knew that they wanted to add some sort of storage space to the entryway area. They bumped out the foyer wall by three feet to create a hallway leading from the house to the garage. At the foot of the hallway, they added a mudroom. The couple also added a small bathroom to the area, which provided a much-needed dark blue pop of color with tiled walls.
“I know it’s just a hallway, but at the end of the day, it makes the whole house connected,” Roth said, “And I think that that’s a lot of added value.” The addition proved to be a simple way to make the house stand out while keeping the renovation within budget.
“Rock the Block” airs new episodes on Mondays at 9/8 central on HGTV.
by Furnishly | Mar 2, 2022 | Design Inspiration, Style
Two newlyweds, just months after their Napa wedding, turned to “Fixer to Fabulous” renovation experts Jenny and Dave Marrs to transform their outdated ranch. They’d saved $200,000 to make major changes to their all-brown first home that’s stuck in the past. The couple detests brown, giving the home designers a chance to give the home a full facelift inside and out, with personalized touches throughout.
The front of the home features a courtyard which, at first glance, feels outdated, but has major changes coming. The couple quickly noticed that neighbors spend time outside having cocktails on their patios, and the courtyard would mean some serious neighborhood bonding over their favorite wines.
“A pergola will create some shade and give the courtyard some character,” Jenny says. They planted vine that would eventually wind up the edges of the courtyard too. “They put down roots, so we put down roots for them,” Dave says. He focuses on giving the home “architectural features” that serve as a consistent motif throughout the home. In this case, archways from the exterior inspired a barrel-shaped shower in the bathroom.
The trim contributes to the modern vineyard theme, which Jenny says adds character, on the new all-blue exterior as well. The renovators sought out wine barrels to custom make an outdoor table in the courtyard too. The pergola in surprising modern black contrasts the blue and white exterior paint.
The focal point of the home, once you walk through the courtyard’s new french doors, is the massively remodeled kitchen which previously suffered from some seriously outdated cabinets and flooring. The new countertops are quartz, and the skinny island is black walnut, one of Dave’s favorite materials to integrate because of its unique and pronounced grain. Dark accents frame the in-home windows that separate the kitchen from the living room, a surprising architectural addition to the room that increases visibility.
But their golden retriever is the one who inspired the most unique kitchen feature. A built-in dog food and water bowl has its own faucet for refilling the water with ease, complete with a matching quartz finish. Dave jokes, “You want me to run plumbing for a pot filler for a dog?” But finally agrees with Jenny, that “it’s cute.” She was intent on personalizing the home for their stage of life, which currently involves their dog as their only and most important child. The off-blue kitchen cabinets continue the blue theme from outside, staying true to the idea that the whole house should feel cohesive.
It may not be a Napa vineyard, but it’s close enough for this new couple to live up newly married life to the fullest, creating their own stories.
“Fixer to Fabulous” airs new episodes on Tuesdays at 9/8 central on HGTV and Discovery+.
by Furnishly | Feb 16, 2022 | Design Inspiration, Style
Homes of the ’70s were filled with some keep-worthy design trends (terrazzo, macrame, etc.) as well as ones that, well, are better left as a thing of the past (ahem, bathroom carpeting, ahem). In a recent episode of HGTV’s “Fixer to Fabulous,” couple Amy and Andy presented their renovation vision for their ’70s home to hosts Dave and Jenny Marrs, with a desire to update and preserve. And so, the experts went forth to modernize the home while honoring the retro style of its original era.
Amy explained that her adult children visited frequently, so the Marrs thought the kitchen was a logical place to start to ensure they designed the perfect space for hosting.
The drop ceiling and poor lighting gave the space a cramped and unwelcoming feeling, and old-fashioned barstools, countertops, and cabinet styles begged for an update. The Marrs also focused on a common pain point in kitchens — the fridge door opening into a main walkway, blocking the flow of traffic.
The renovation ended up solving all of these problems, and then some. The Marrs made the kitchen bright and welcoming, integrating a fun but subtle color palette featuring black, gold, gray, and wood that created a mixture of dark and light. They added a waterfall edge on the new kitchen island — meaning the sides of the counters extend to the ground — and the terrazzo-style counters were made from glass recycled from salvaged bottles and jars.
The Marrs added open shelving to display various colored dishes, which contributed to a retro vibe, and they painted the metal brass to save money. For the cabinets, black uppers and light birch wood lowers were installed that provided an eye-catching contrast. Funky lights over the island brought a throwback-yet-modern feel, drawing the eye upward towards the ceilings that were heightened when they removed the drop ceiling.
While the front of the house featured some charming details, there were plenty of outdated ones, including the iron storm door with intricate designs, off yellow paneling, and faded brick. But nothing that the Marrs couldn’t handle.
The home’s exterior became all black, featuring painted brick and “gorgeous new front doors that set the stage,” Jenny explained, with vertical wooden slats. “It doesn’t look the same, it’s so much better,” Amy said when she saw it for the first time. One of the overarching themes the Marrs executed throughout the renovation was not being scared to play with contrasting colors, such as the brown and black exterior, and the daring move paid off.
The porch was framed with the painted black bricks, creating a more purposeful front porch, with the gray concrete pad framed in. The yellow paneling was replaced with vertical black-painted panels, and the faded brick was no more. They installed a globe light that aligned with the ’70s vibe, and they added white rocks that contrasted with the black exterior, proving that landscaping color schemes aren’t just important but essential to overall curbside appeal.
“This is how the ’70s wishes it was,” Amy exclaimed, to which Jenny said, “We really did preserve the house.” Who says you can’t have your retro house and live in it, too?
“Fixer to Fabulous” airs new episodes on Tuesdays at 9/8 central on HGTV and Discovery+.
by Furnishly | Feb 14, 2022 | Design Inspiration, Style
Olivia Harvey
Contributor
Olivia Harvey is a freelance writer and award-winning scriptwriter from outside Boston, Massachusetts. She’s a big fan of scented candles, getting dressed up, and the 2005 film adaptation of Pride and Prejudice starring Keira Knightley. You can make sure she’s doing okay via Instagram and/or Twitter.
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