For Sale By Owner ~ Not Your Typical 1950's Ranch

8205 Chesterfield Drive

Knoxville, TN

$284,900
"Realtors Welcome"

.: Approximately 3,000 square feet (2,000 upstairs & 1,000 downstairs)
.: Four Bedrooms, Three Full Baths
.: Remodeled Kitchen with Granite Countertops, Kitchen Aid Stainless Steel Appliances (including 5-burner gas cooktop and convection oven and microwave combo)
.: Two Fireplaces
.: Family Room with large Window Seat
.: Large Dining Room
.: Private Office
.: Hardwood Floors
.: Approx. 1,000 sq. ft. of unheated space which includes 2-Car Tandem Garage, Storage Area, and Large Workshop
.: Full Finished Basement
.: Professionally Landscaped
.: Private Wooded Backyard
.: Great Location near Park, Walking Trails, YMCA, Schools, and Shopping

Shown By Appointment Only ~ Call Dan @ 865-850-9869

* We have two small children and must have a minimum of one day's notice

Owner Upgrades and Improvements ~

.: Updated Facade with Covered Porch, Stacked Stone, Hardie Shingles, and Stained Brick
.: Remodeled Kitchen with Custom Cabinets, Tile Floor, Granite Countertops, and Kitchen-Aid Stainless Steel Appliances including 5-burner gas cooktop and convection oven & microwave combo
.: Master Landscape Plan by Professional Landscape Designer
.: New Semco Wood-Clad Windows Upstairs
.: All New Exterior Doors
.: All New Light Fixtures Inside and Outside
.: All New Decora Light Switches throughout House
.: New Dual-Fuel HVAC and New Ductwork
.: New Roof
.: New 5 Inch "Large" Gutters
.: Refinished Hardwood Floors Upstairs
.: New Hardwoods, Tile, and Carpet Downstairs
.: Epoxy Painted Garage Floor
.: New Garage Door Opener
.: Open Floor Plan in Main Living Area
.: Closet Organizers in all Closets
.: Cabinets in Workshop & Wall Organizers in Garage
.: Private Office Upstairs with French Doors

BEFORE and AFTER - Transformation of the outside

The first photo is the way the house looked the first time we saw it in May 2005 when preparing to move from Georgia.  We looked at older "fixer-upper" houses like this one and we looked at newer houses.  We loved the location of this neighborhood, but really didn't want a fixer-upper because we knew we would be busy with other things.  So, when we came back again in July, this house was still sitting here.  No one wanted it.  But we could see past its ugliness and knew we could make her look much better. The large lot with the private wooded backyard, and the proximity to the park, downtown Knoxville, shopping, and restaurants won us over in the end.  We closed on the house at the end of August 2005. And this is how she looks four long years later. Better, huh?

BEFORE and AFTER - Transformation of the kitchen

The first photo is how the kitchen looked in July 2005 the second time we looked at the house.  {NOTE:  This is not my stuff and not my taste in decorating!}  Once we bought it, I spent many, many days cleaning up the nasty kitchen so we could at least function in there for a few months until we could start the remodel process.  In addition to the whole thing being filthy, the previous owners had done a really bad remodel at some point.  They took out the original metal cabinets and spray painted them what I lovingly refer to as "taxi cab yellow", put down a cheap peel-and-stick black and white checkerboard floor, and tiled the countertops with an ugly cheap black tile with white flecks.  The photo doesn't show just how horrible it really was.

And this photo is how it looks now.  We did the bulk of the remodel in early 2006, but my plan still includes doing a glass tile backsplash if we end up deciding to stay in this house.  The kitchen is much larger now because we closed off the old doorway into the former dining room {approximately where the refrigerator is in the "after" photo} and pushed that wall back two feet.  The former dining room is now a private office with french doors that open into the family room.

Another View of the Kitchen

Entry Foyer and Hallway

Family Room / Den (Upstairs)

Here are a few photos of the Family Room / Den.  This is the original formal living room at the front of the house (immediately to your left when walking in the front door).  When we did the big remodel to the facade of the house, we created two new roof peaks which resulted in a box bay window and the front porch.  On the inside, we turned that area into a window seat.  Originally, the wall went straight across at that window.  By adding the bay window bump out, it makes the room feel much larger and lets in a ton of natural light.  The french doors you see in the background of some of the photos lead into the private office we created.  The office was the original dining room. We added the two openings you see on each side of the sofa. In the original 1959 floorplan, the only way out of this room was to either go back into the foyer/hallway or go through the dining room and then into the kitchen.

Window Seat in Family Room

Dining Room

This is our current Dining Room.  The original dining room was your typical closed-off, small room in a 1959 house.  It was on the front left-hand corner of the house with a pocket door leading into the kitchen (directly behind it) and a cased opening leading into the formal living room.  As mentioned in the post about the kitchen, we closed off that pocket doorway and moved that wall 2 feet so we could enlarge our kitchen.  And we turned the former dining room into a private office, adding doors in the cased opening.

The old formal living room became the new dining room.  And we used the den (at the back of the house) as our family room/den.  We just didn't need 2 living areas upstairs AND a living area downstairs.  Having one upstairs and one downstairs is plenty.

After living with it that way for a while, we decided we're really not formal people and were not using the dining room.  So we flip-flopped the dining room and family room/den.  Now the family room/den is the room in the front of the house with the window seat addition.  And the dining room is at the back of the house and is open to the kitchen.  That's what works for us.  It is a huge room which allows plenty of room for extending the table for extra seating or even adding an extra table.  Currently, we use the extra room as an upstairs play area for our kids.  They're both under the age of two, so we have lots of stuff that requires space (activity saucer, swing, play mat, trucks, balls, books, etc.).  Depending on your personal preference and lifestyle, these two rooms could easily be flip-flopped again just by moving the two overhead lights.

Here's a little background about what we did to this room.  Originally, there would have been a solid wall between the kitchen and this room - the dining room (originally a den in 1959).  The previous owners took down that wall and put up two half walls with an opening in the middle.  When we did the kitchen remodel, we took out those walls completely and removed the header across the ceiling so that it would be one clean, continuous surface.  We added recessed lights and the sconces over the buffet.  We added the two openings on each side of the buffet to create a more open floor plan and raised those openings as high as possible.  We also raised the original doorway coming from the foyer.  Additionally, we opened up the wall where the stairway is located.  That's where you see the white railing. The dining room light is our homage to an original light located in the kitchen.  It has a pulley and can be raised and lowered to the desired height.

When the Dining Room was in the Other Room

This is how it looked when we had the dining room at the front of the house in the "original" formal living room.  It's the room that now has the bay window, window seat addition and the one we now use as our family room/den area.  And that's a VERY pregnant me in November 2007, just a couple of weeks before giving birth to our first son.  You can see a little of how it felt to use that room as the dining room.  It gave it a more private feel, and thus a more formal feel.  You can see the kitchen in the background, through the doorway.  We loved the way this room looked, but just didn't use it very often because we treated it more like a special occasion room.  I had even spent hours and hours doing a venetian plaster technique on the walls with this beautiful tuscan orange color.  Yes, I know... not necessarily everyone's taste.  But I loved it.  It was a very warm room.

Upstairs Hall Bathroom

This is the upstairs hall bathroom.  Although we have not done a complete remodel on any of our three bathrooms, we have done some small updates to make them more comfortable.  For instance, in the two upstairs baths, we added ducts and vents for A/C.  Originally, there was no A/C in the bathrooms and the only heat came from those old wall heaters.  We also painted, installed new medicine cabinets {the original ones had fluorescent lights on each side and only one plug outlet}, added two-arm lights over the medicine cabinet, and added a plug to the wall.

For this bathroom, our future plans included moving the doorway out to the hallway and consuming the linen closet.  That would allow plenty of room for a double-sink vanity AND a small linen closet.  All of this without having to move any plumbing... which always adds to the cost of the remodel project.  In the photo below, you can see the linen closet just outside the bathroom.  And in the last photo, there used to be a cabinet built into the wall that was almost 3.5 feet deep.  A complete waste of space because you couldn't reach anything in the back.  It was built over the staircase leading down to the basement.  We ripped it out and opened up the stairwell, which made a huge difference.

Guest Bedroom in Basement

Mudroom Entry Area from Garage

Basement Bathroom

Laundry Area in Basement