Nicole Curtis of ‘Rehab Addict’ Shares Renovation Struggles With Her Possess Property

Nicole Curtis, finest recognised as the star of HGTV’s “Rehab Addict,” now has a spinoff display, “Rehab Addict: Lake House Rescue,” where by she renovates her personal particular enthusiasm challenge.

The backstory: Curtis experienced purchased this lake residence in her hometown of Lake Orion, MI, simply because it was slated to be torn down.

“I saved this minimal lake cottage from demolition eight decades ago,” she describes. Supplied her renovation chops, it seemed like a very simple venture.

“I believed there wasn’t any job that I could not tackle,” she admits. “I imagined this lake property would be a breeze.”

The problem? She’d designed the cardinal homebuying blunder of paying for the house sight unseen. The moment she laid eyes on it, it was apparent that this task wouldn’t be a “breeze” at all. We doubt she’d ever make this variety of impulsive selection ever again!

But Curtis has saved chipping absent at it about the many years. In the next episode of this a few-aspect series, “Old Elements Are the Ideal Sections,” she shows how this lake home is at extensive last coming collectively.

Discover out how Curtis navigates what may possibly very very well be the most difficult, longest renovation of her life—and discover some great tips that prove that just about nearly anything can be fixed if you consider tough enough.

Increase a 2nd story underneath

“The inside was just 700 square feet when I acquired it,” claims Curtis.

The basis was not sturdy sufficient to keep an additional tale, so “We made a decision to lift it up for a new basis, deliver on a new very first ground and basement, and just take the current cottage and make it my second and third flooring,” she states.

It was not easy, but the small cottage now has five bedrooms, enough area for the entire household and then some.

Repurpose the sleeping porch

Quite a few outdated houses constructed prior to air conditioning turned prevalent had “sleeping porches” off the bedrooms. The sleeping porches experienced windows, which could be remaining open so people could slumber easily and catch the summer months breezes at evening, alternatively of currently being cooped up in a stuffy bedroom.

Because the transformed lake dwelling has air conditioning, Curtis decides to make the prolonged, slim place into a beautiful bathroom and dressing area. It’s a matter of elegance.

“Bunk beds sound so scary to me,” suggests Curtis. Is there a mom out there who has not experienced nightmares about a little one falling off the best bunk?

Curtis finds an attention-grabbing way to make the top rated bunk as safe as feasible. She purchases an old, leaky boat and cuts it in half, securing just one 50 % to the wall, and placing the other 50 % on the flooring down below it.

It is virtually difficult for the kid in the top rated bunk to tumble out, and a excellent offer of time and work is invested on securely fastening it to the wall. The final result is good!

Glance for excellent wood below painted floors

“The third-flooring floors? They ended up painted,” Curtis cries. It is tough to explain to what problem the floors are in when they are coated with numerous coats of paint. But right after stripping a tiny patch, she finds that underneath all that paint, the floors are in fantastic form.

Of study course, it will consider some major stripping and sanding to get them back to their original sheen.

Speaking about 1 of her crew, she admits, “Steve’s minimum favored issue is to strip paint off 100-12 months-outdated floors, but that’s accurately what we’re likely to do.”

But ahead of doing work with outdated paint, be confident to take a look at for guide, she cautions. Likelihood are superior that there is some harmful compound in there. In this case, the flooring are clean.

Make customized windows to link previous with new

In the most important bed room, there are lovely, straightforward sq. windows—there just are not enough of them. Aged pictures expose that there were being at the time a lot more home windows, but for some explanation, the earlier house owners included them up.

Curtis decides that somewhat than replacing and resizing all of them, she’ll develop new windows that search just like the previous types.

It is a lot of perform, but “I in fact did it without shedding any fingers,” she states proudly.

“People do not notice a good deal of the time, they’re like, ‘Why are you obtaining customized windows built?’” adds Curtis. “Now you are going to see why. It tends to make all the change in the earth.”

How is this lake dwelling on the lookout by the episode’s conclusion?

“Everything I at any time imagined when I initial established foot in in this article eight several years ago is now listed here,” announces Curtis by the episode’s stop. “It has been so considerably fun reworking all these first spaces of the 1904 cottage into residing areas for my family now.”

But she’s not rather completed yet—the new downstairs is still mainly just studs. We’ll locate out next week how Curtis carries this eight-12 months challenge throughout the complete line.