A reader named Meredith told me about this Mid-Century modern house that her real-estate investment group Heaton Dainard flipped in Seattle, Washington. She says, “We went for a contemporary look, which is popular in this area.”

Here’s how the exterior looked before it got a makeover:

The interiors were pretty dated–doesn’t look like anyone had redecorated anything in the house in decades:

Whoever lived here before certainly loved color!

But what stopped me in my tracks was the kitchen:

I swear we had those same orange flowers on the walls of our kitchen when I was growing up (at least until my mom got around to redecorating it!). The wallpaper covered the entire room. We didn’t have orange and yellow cabinets to match, though.

Here’s how this Mid-Century looks now, after a head-to-toe remodel:

The house was meticulously staged to sell, and their efforts paid off. Meredith says the house sold before it was listed, and above the list price.

Have you gotten into the gray trend? I’m starting to think I’m the only one who doesn’t have a gray room in her house.

Hard to believe it’s the same house. The kitchen makeover is especially dramatic.

It’s always nice to see an older home brought back to life for a new generation of owners.

You can see all of the before and afters on Active Rain. Thanks to Meredith and Heaton Dainard, a real estate investment firm founded by James Dainard and Will Heaton, for sharing it with us!

Click Here to See More Before & Afters!

This living room really didn’t look so bad in the before photos–just a little bare (and I’m sure the Halloween decorations were only temporary!). But when I saw what designer Alison Royer did with it over at BDG Style, I was amazed by the transformation.

One of the first things I noticed was what a difference the new moldings around the fireplace made. Wow!

The fireplace looks so much more substantial now. Love it.

The view of the staircase from the living room is beautiful, too:

Aren’t those arched doorways fabulous? And I’m loving that white bench.

I’ll let you hop over to see the rest of the gorgeous photos, taken by Ashlee Raubach, on Alison’s blog BDG Style. I’ve been daydreaming over them all morning…

Click Here to See More Before & Afters!

These 10 makeovers were the most popular with my readers this year–click the “before” photos below to see the “afters!”

#1. An Old Bungalow Gets Its Charm Back

#2. A Dark Living Room Gets a Fresh Coastal Vibe

#3. A Beach House Kitchen Goes Classic Casual

#4. The Inn from “Nights in Rodanthe:” Rescued and Renovated

#5. Big Changes in a Small Cottage Kitchen

#6. Turning a Plain-Jane House Into a Craftsman-Style Cottage

#7. A Dated Kitchen Gets a New Look

#8. Nate Berkus Updates Billy Joel’s Beach House

#9. My Personal Fave, Because I Get to Enjoy It: My Sunroom!

#10. Bee Cottage: A Room-by-Room Remodel

What was your favorite before and after of the year?

Our sunroom is now one year old! It was finished last December, and we had to scramble to furnish and decorate before our family arrived for the holidays. We didn’t have much more than a card table, folding chairs, and some beat-up wicker dragged out of storage, but it didn’t matter. We were just so thrilled to celebrate our first Christmas in the new room!

We have some real furniture in the room now (yay!), and I had more time to play around with decorating it. It’s amazing what a difference it made just adding some red to the apple green that was already out there. Now all that’s missing is a little snow outside the windows.

One of the best decisions we made was to have it insulated and heated because now we can enjoy it even on cold, windy days like this. The project started as a simple screened-in porch that kind of got out of hand, as I explained in “Mr. & Mrs. Blandings Build a Sunroom.” Once we got the initial plans, we couldn’t stop adding to them. Funny how that happens…

Here’s how it looked last Christmas, when we had a little snow outside:

Here’s how it looked after we got some real furniture out here this year:

And now, with some red to warm it up for the holidays:

We adopted our sweet Shih Tzu Maizie right after Christmas last year, and this has been one of her favorite rooms from the beginning. She loves to find a sunny spot to nap in, so she usually ends up in my sunroom photos.

It’s a lot sunnier in here now that most of the leaves have fallen. I really need to get some kind of window treatments, but they’ll have to wait until next year.

One of the luxuries of working from home is being able to eat lunch out here every day.

My favorite treat in winter is my daily cup of hot chocolate–with whipped cream and chocolate chips on top. YUM.

This red brick wall used to be the exterior of the house. Something that has changed my life since we got this TV out here: a Roku box. I’ve mentioned it before and will say it again–love that thing. Love it so much we went back and bought one for the TV in the family room, too.

The Roku is basically a tiny box hidden behind the picture frame on the yellow table that lets us stream movies and music through the TV. Lately I’ve had it set to the Indie Christmas Music station on Pandora 24-7. Thanks to it, we were able to get rid of the ugly old boom box setup on the dog crate that I showed you here!

Maizie and I thank you for stopping by our sunroom and taking a look around. It’s nothing fancy, but it sure is a comfy place for us all to relax in!

P.S. You can see my family room decorated for Christmas and my dining room, too, if you missed it!

When I saw how Londen, who blogs at Sixty-Fifth Avenue, turned her nondescript little house into a charming Craftsman-style cottage with curb appeal, I was so inspired that I had to show it to you.

I have to admit that if I saw this house the way it originally looked, I never would have seen the potential in it that she did. Check out the before photo:

After a lot of creativity and work, here’s how it looks now:

Wow! Hard to believe it’s the same place. Love it!

You can read all the details about the transformation and see more photos at Sixty-Fifth Avenue. Also be sure to check out her version of a Pottery Barn playroom. So cute!

Hooked on Before & Afters?

• A Beach Cottage Remodel
• Mid-Century Kitchen Gets Staged to Sell
• A Vacation Home’s Rustic New Look

Frances Schultz, a contributing editor to House Beautiful magazine, describes her home as “a humble 1920s stucco cottage in East Hampton, New York, with asymmetrical, elfin-size rooms and low (eight-foot) ceilings.”

She dubbed it Bee Cottage “because bees are drawn to beauty and are industrious, social, and focused. It’s about being present, in the moment. Just be(e), honey.” Love that. Let’s take a look!

Frances writes in HB, “My first decision was to preserve its cheerful, cozy spirit. No knocking out walls or ceilings or rearranging the floor plan.”

To give you an idea of what the house looked like when she bought it, here’s the living room before:

And here’s how the living room looks now:

The upstairs study has both a desk she can work at and a daybed for visitors:

The bedrooms were so tiny in the house that she combined two of them to make one spacious master. Here it is before:

And now:

In this little arched niche, she added a mirror and turned it into a kind of vanity:

Love the built-in drawers in the upstairs hallway:

The Guest Bedroom and Bath:

She says that she went against the decorating dictum that you shouldn’t use high-gloss paint on imperfect walls because she likes that reflective quality it has in small rooms.

Here’s how the kitchen, which was a 1960 addition, looked before Frances got her hands on it:

Look at how charming that same galley kitchen looks now:

Tom Samet, a decorator and friend, helped her along the way. I love this little seating area they fit into the kitchen:

There’s a butler’s pantry that was being used as a laundry room. I’m guessing this may have been the kitchen before the other one was added on. Here it is before:

And now:

The pool looks so elegant with these fountains that she added:

Frances Schultz was a guest on “The Nate Berkus Show” recently and photos of Bee Cottage were shown as part of his “House Proud” segment. Did anyone catch that? She also demonstrated her recipe for pumpkin soup.

House Beautiful magazine has featured all of the before and afters of the cottage as part of an ongoing series. You can see photos of her dining room, which doubles as a library, on Frances Schultz’s website. (Thanks to Maggy for helping with this one!)

Love Cottages? Click Here to See More I’ve Featured!

One thing I like about Better Homes & Gardens is that it’s one of the more “realistic” shelter mags out there. They frequently feature the types of houses that a lot of us regular, non-celebrity folks live in. It doesn’t look like every room in the magazine has been created by a high-end designer. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but we can’t all afford Martyn Lawrence Bullard.

This small kitchen makeover that they featured is a good example. It’s in a 1935 Cape-style cottage in upstate New York, and as you can see by this next photo, its beginnings were humble:

See that basement door on the other side of the fridge? They moved it around the corner to make room for more counter space (the floorplan is pictured here).

The homeowners really wanted black soapstone for the countertops but couldn’t afford them. They went with a laminate look-alike instead. (This is what I mean by realistic. You don’t see laminate in many shelter mags, do you?)

On a side note, what’s your feeling about open shelves? Seems to open up a small space like this, that’s for sure. But I’m not sure if I could live with them. If you have them, let us know how well they’re working for you! A BHG reader left this comment about hers on their website:

Everything in my kitchen is dusty within a day or two, and soon gets the greasy film as well. I see open cabinets everywhere, and I wonder if people really like them after they have used them a while.

The other side of the room has the sink. Here’s how it looked before:

And after, with some closed-cabinet storage on this side of the room:

I’m not loving every choice they made in this kitchen–the lighting isn’t my favorite–but it’s inspiring to see how they remodeled it with a small budget. And it’s a much happier, brighter space now, that’s for sure.

My favorite part of the makeover has to be the breakfast nook. It was stuck in 1975 before:

Those windows really didn’t go with the traditional Cape cottage style of the house, but they managed to give them a new look without replacing them:

It’s amazing what a difference it made when they added trim around those skinny windows and painted them white. Love it!

What do you think of this makeover? You can see the rest of the photos and read more about the details and how they did it at Better Homes & Gardens. The story was designed and produced by Donna Talley; photos by Bryan McKay.

Click Here to See More Before & Afters!

If you’ve been watching this season of “The Rachel Zoe Project,” then your eyes probably popped like mine did when she moved into her big new house recently. Rachel and her husband Rodger Berman usually go for minimal, modern spaces (like their condo), so it was kind of surprising to see them choose something more traditional.

Her new styling assistant Jeremiah Brent was given the arduous task of decorating the place in only 10 days before they moved in. It was like some kind of crazy “Design Star” challenge. Here’s how it looked in the real estate listing before they took it off the market by leasing it:

And here’s how the house looks on the show:

The entry hall and staircase as it looked the day Rodger saw the house for the first time:

The living room before:

The living room after Rachel and Rodger moved in:

Dining room:

Is anyone else missing Brad (her former assistant) this season? I liked him.

Here’s how the kitchen looked before they moved in:

And now:

Love that windowseat that runs across the entire wall:

Baby Skyler’s nursery, which hasn’t been shown on the show yet:

Rachel and Rodger’s new bedroom:

I know a lot of you are watching the show because every time it airs hundreds of readers search for her new house on my blog. Not to mention the fact that the post I wrote about her former home is still one of the most popular.

The next episode of “The Rachel Zoe Project” is on tonight at 8 p.m. (ET).

You can watch the big reveal when Rachel and Rodger saw their redecorated house for the first time in this clip from Bravo (they might make you watch a commercial first):

More photos on the Bravo website. There’s an interview with Jeremiah Brent, as well as additional photos, on CasaSugar, and more information about the property itself on RealEstalker.

P.S. Check out Rachel Zoe’s former home in Beverly Hills and her one-bedroom condo on Sunset Strip.

When I saw this photo of a porch overlooking the beach in Traditional Home magazine, I liked some things about it but wasn’t so sure about a few others. I sat and stared and thunk on it a bit. Here’s how that went:

1. The rug still has creases in it like it was just unfolded for the photo shoot.
2. Bugs me when they’re at an “artistic angle.” Wish I could straighten it.
3. Cute dogs!
4. I’ve never seen deck flooring like that. It kinda looks fake…
5. Are those doors navy blue like George Banks’s tux?
6. Love the ceiling color.
7. Wish I could be sitting there right now with those views!

Then I turned the page and forgot about it. At least until I came across the listing for this beach house on VRBO and was like, hey, I recognize that porch!

I got out the magazine photo to compare the two:

What a difference a magazine photo shoot makes! The porch in the listing isn’t nearly as colorful, with gray porch decking, solid black doors (no hint of navy), and a plain white ceiling. No rug, either, angled or otherwise.

In this listing photo you can see how different the flooring really is:

Looks like there must have been some digital tweaking involved here. Not that I think there’s anything wrong with that, since this is a magazine and not a real estate listing, like we saw here–I just found it interesting to see how they changed things up. (It’s possible they made the changes for real but the listing photos are old, I guess. But I kinda doubt it.)

Here’s another example of how a professional photographer (in this case, Colleen Duffley) and some styling changes can make a room look like a million bucks. The bathroom in the VRBO listing is nice enough:

But in the magazine, wow:

The little touches of blue and green make a big difference, don’t they? The better lighting doesn’t hurt, either!

It’s a beautiful beach house, which the homeowners dubbed “Lollygag.” You can see the rest in Traditional Home and on the rental website.

Click here to see more Beach Houses!

A reader named Lisa wrote me about her beach house renovation on Sea Island in Georgia, saying, “I love New England and Virginia architecture. When we spotted this home on the island in 1999, my husband and I were smitten! As an artist and a frustrated architect I always felt the house had so much potential.”

When I saw the photos of how it looks since they completed their renovation, I asked if I could share them with you. I’m a sucker for a traditional, shingle-style house, and I like that hers looks more like a home than a showplace.

Here’s how the exterior looked when they bought it, before it got a facelift:

Their architect was William T. Baker & Associates (I could spend hours looking through his portfolio). He has written a couple of books, and Lisa’s home will be featured in a new one coming out next year. Can’t wait to see it!

Even though it’s a big house, she says she wanted each room to feel cozy and inviting. That made this two-story great room a bit of a challenge, but all of the woodwork and warm colors keep it from seeming too grand.

She had slipcovers made to update this furniture recently, and here’s how it looks with the new fabric:

“A lot of the homes on Sea Island were inspired by Addison Mizner, who designed the original hotel on the island The Cloister in 1928, so a shingle style home is not very common down here,” Lisa explains.

The original fireplace in the family room was two stories high, “A tall, skinny stretch of tabby (a local finish, which is a mix of cement, shells, and sand). They only had the square opening for the fireplace–no mantel or anything,” Lisa says. Now it’s much more traditional and down to earth.

The artwork over the mantel is something that Lisa painted as a gift for her husband Derek when they were dating.

Lisa says that she loves the traditional houses in old movies, and you can see that old-movie influence in rooms like the kitchen.

The kitchen has a Viking stove and an Aga. She says the Aga “really is the heart of a home.” The Viking is there for her guests who prefer to cook on something more familiar.

The painting over the Viking stove was done by Lisa herself of their marsh view. She says it’s just propped there so she can remove it when cooking something too messy.

This is the Keeping Room by the kitchen:

Looks like a comfortable, sunny spot to hang out in!

Lisa’s studio:

I think I could work in a room like this. No problem.

Her son’s room:

Her daughter’s room:

“I like to do most of my own decorating but have a decorator (Gerry Burge of Allenbrooke Carpets and Interiors) who has the most fabulous stash of fabrics and a magical way of putting them together,” Lisa says. “She is wonderful and lets me do my own thing–just gently nudges me if she thinks I am heading in the wrong direction.”

I really love her master bedroom. That’s her beautiful Kuvasz pup Marley lying on his bed next to hers.

I can imagine these rooms as the sets for a classic old movie starring someone like Katharine Hepburn or Barbara Stanwyck.

The wallpaper is from Pierre Frey and has timeless look to it.

Lisa says she owes a lot of the credit for how the renovation turned out to her builder Frank Serafini and his talented artist wife Renee who works with him. (Look for Renee in the September issue of Romantic Homes!)

The master bath is just as pretty:

All the bedrooms have balconies with scenic views.

Instead of the beach, the balconies look out over the marsh, which Lisa says is beautiful and constantly changing–both seasonally and throughout the day.

“The light can be breathtaking. Since it is a tidal marsh, it can go from all lush green grasses with only a few tidal pools to 85% water in a matter of hours,” Lisa says and has the photos to prove it. Here’s a sunset view–gorgeous!

There’s a screened porch, too, with a fireplace for cool nights:

And a terrace with a pool for sunny days:

Here’s how the back of the house used to look, before the renovation:

And here it is now:

“My ‘look’ is not really ‘in,’” Lisa says, “but I don’t really want it to be! I just want our home to have a certain feeling and to be a reflection of our family. I am not trying and have never wanted to try to impress anyone. I just like to create an atmosphere…a warmth. I want my family and friends to feel that they can plop down anywhere and feel at home.”

I love Lisa’s approach to creating a home. It’s always fun to see where my readers live and hear their house stories. Many thanks to her for giving us the tour!

P.S. If there are any other readers out there who would like to show us how you renovated or decorated your home, send me the photos. I can’t post them all, but I’ll choose a few to feature in the weeks to come!