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A railway depot turned into a lovely home

Posted on April 17, 2014 | Leave a comment

I love this house that Elle Decor featured on their website recently. Jeweler Federico de Vera revamped an abandoned railway station into this marvelous and very stylish home. Read the rest of the story here.

Railway station turned home

Mind you; it’s his weekend home. It inspires me to rethink my plans for our cottage. It’s lovely as it is, but can do with a bit of a spruce up. It’s still a bit too cluttered and I am not sure I can still fool myself into thinking the faux-wood paneling has a Mad Men feel to it. Maybe a lick of white paint on the wall for a start…

our cottage. I was thinking white for the walls and a darker colour for the window panes

And maybe a slate grey for the outside with white for the window panes and doors. And a red and white scheme for the shutters….

Flip that house, buy, revamp, and sell with a profit.

Posted on February 4, 2009 | 1 comment

The latest trend in real estate; house flipping . It means buying a run down property, fixing it up, and then selling it with a profit. A bit like some people do with furniture. There’s some pretty good cash to be made there if you play it right.

The trend has not gone unnoticed by TV producers in both the US and Europe. On both sides of the big pond a TV show called either Flip that House or Flip this House is part of many daytime schedules. It’s a half hour to an hour reality show following the transformation of different properties in mainly the US or the UK. Each episode features a different flipper, the person that bought the house, who is going to have it revamped and hopefully sell it for more then they put into it. In most cases these people are familiar with real estate and renovation, but sometimes the show features novices in this field of business.

The show opens with the purchase of the house. A short tour of the property and and interview with the new owner will tell the viewer what the plans are to make this house profitable. Viewers then learn the story of the actual renovation, the set backs along the way and will eventuallybe shown the result with dramatic before and after shots. At the end of each show an expert real estate agent reveals if all this hard labour will have been worth it by estimating the new selling price of the property.

Often the results are stunning. In some cases the new owner is trying too hard not to spend too much on it which usually shows in the end result. But in all cases, it provides great television!