# Wallace whole-home remodel, Taylor, TX > A whole-home remodel in Taylor where almost everything changed except the thing that mattered most: the original steel casement windows on the front. - Project type: Whole-home remodel - Location: Taylor, TX - Builder: Flenn Custom Homes and Remodeling, Georgetown, TX ((512) 677-3992) - Page: https://flennhomes.com/portfolio/wallace-whole-home-remodel/ - Location: Taylor, TX (Williamson County) - Type: Whole-home remodel - Structure: 75% of the original structure sound; one failed section at the rear repaired - Scope: Roofline raised · original steel casement windows restored · new covered front porch · kitchen · primary bath · hall bath · flooring throughout · rear patio - Collaborators: Carmen Miller (Designer) ## Is it really the same house? That's the reaction to the before-and-after on this one, and it's a fair question. I worked on this house for months and I've genuinely lost my picture of what it looked like when we started. ## We started underneath, and mostly got good news The bones of this house were **seventy-five percent good.** That's an unusually kind number on a house of this age, and it's the number that made the whole project make sense: you don't gut a structure that's sound, you work with it. The rest was a section at the back that had failed. We chipped out the concrete, supported the structure above it, and poured it back in the bedroom. Not a dramatic repair. But if you find it after the finishes are in, it becomes one. This is why we look underneath before we talk about tile. On this house it meant good news and a contained repair. It doesn't always. Either way you want to know in the first week, not the fifth month. ## The windows we didn't replace The front of this house, and the side of all the living room windows, had its original steel casement windows, the crank-out kind. So we were able to keep these windows on the front. The easy call is to pull them and put in new vinyl. Nobody would have complained, and it would have been cheaper and faster. We took them out, cleaned them out, replaced a lot of the glass, re-glazed them, de-rusted them, derustified them, if that's a word, repainted them, and put them back. I'm glad we did. They don't make them that way anymore. Those are one-of-a-kind windows, and once they're in a dumpster the house can never have them again. Everything else on this project we could rebuild. Not those. ## Working with Carmen The design on this house is Carmen Miller's, and she did a phenomenal job. I'll say plainly that a lot of what makes this house work is hers, not mine. We raised the roofline, popped it up, and put a metal roof across the front with the columns set at an angle. Brick masonry came inside the house, with shiplap paneling in the kitchen behind a little eat-in area and a sliding farm door. Wood flooring throughout. In the primary bath, above-counter sinks over a silver cabinet Carmen found on Facebook and repurposed. Large-format multicolor tile, twelve-by-twenty-four and eighteen-by-twenty-four pieces, with a backsplash that reads sharp against it. In the hall bath, beadboard wainscoting and a checkerboard floor, with a tilt mirror. And a red door, to wake everything up and tie it together. We also brought some steel in to support. It was close to being purely decorative, but the material belongs in this house and it was a nice way to tie back to those front windows. ## The chandelier If you look closely at the wheel, the chandelier in the dining room actually came from my home back in southwest Missouri. It came out of the junk pile. There were some old wagon wheels that had been laying there rusting since I was a kid, and I knew where they were. I made one trip back. I asked my mom and dad if I could have them. They said, "Well, sure. It's junk to us." So we took it back, got it all cleaned up with the rust, and installed some lights on it. It's just a nice little touch. ## The parts that were a pain The in-wall plumbing fixtures in the primary bath were a booger to work with. They're not forgiving, very little tolerance, so we had to play with them to get everything to line up. Getting those fixtures spaced properly against the bowls, and the bowls cut and placed properly, took real time. The beadboard is more work than drywall, plainly. And there's an order you can't shortcut: flooring goes down before the cabinet, because the cabinet sits on it like a piece of furniture. A house full of design details takes more thinking and more processing than a house without them. Every one of those decisions has to be worked out on paper before anybody's holding a tool. But at the end of the day it's those little features that make a world of difference; you just have to be willing to spend the time on them. ## The result A house in Taylor that looks nothing like it did, still wearing its original front windows. A small patio out the back. One of the most rewarding projects we've done, mostly because the before photos are the only reason I can still remember where we started. ## Details and materials Original steel casement windows restored, reglazed, derusted, repainted · raised roofline · front metal roof with angled columns · covered front porch · interior brick masonry · kitchen shiplap paneling · sliding farm door · wood flooring throughout · repurposed vanity cabinet with above-counter sinks · in-wall plumbing fixtures · large-format multicolor tile (12x24, 18x24) · beadboard wainscoting · checkerboard tile floor · tilt mirror · wagon-wheel chandelier · rear patio · structural concrete repair at rear bedroom --- Have an older home in Taylor worth remodeling instead of replacing? Request an estimate at https://flennhomes.com/request-an-estimate/ or call (512) 677-3992. Lifetime Warranty on Craftsmanship: We provide a lifetime guarantee on the quality of our craftsmanship. If any issues arise related to the work we perform, we will address them promptly and professionally.