When Nova Scotia native Stacey Haines and her husband, Steve, set out to buy a house in their adopted city of Greensboro, North Carolina, they knew exactly what they didn't want. "We didn't want a ranch house, and we knew we didn't want new construction. And we didn't want to spend a lot of money," Stacey says.
After four months of seeing all the wrong houses, an agent called about a little place that needed work. "We stepped inside, and immediately I knew it was the one," Stacey, a photographer, says exuberantly of the tiny clapboard cottage she calls home. "It looked like it belonged on a beach in Nova Scotia. I wanted to pick it up and take it there!" With little hesitation, the couple snapped it up.
Though charming, the 1,200-square-foot Cape did require updating. The wall colours were tired. The wood floors were worn and grey. And the home's layout, with its many small rooms, made for tight spaces without a lot of light.
"We could see the problems, but we didn't have a lot of money to fix them," recalls Stacey. So husband and wife set out to do the work themselves. First they refinished the wood floors using a rented sander. Then Steve knocked out the dining room wall to brighten and enlarge the space. A friend finished the rooms with crown mouldings.
From there, attention was turned to the kitchen. "The walls were decorated with that 1980s blue stencilling." Stacey says. "And the cupboards were sponge-painted in a dull pink." Turning to yard sales, thrift shops and dollar stores, Stacey and Steve revived the room, overing the dirty-looking grey linoleum with black-and-white tile and painting a dresser, now used as a kitchen island, white. To brighten up the walls and cupboards, Stacey used paint in a clear bright green, something she now describes as a happy accident. "The paint looked a lot more yellow than I'd expected. But it was so cheery, I left it."
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