Did you know that in junior high school, one of the things I wanted to do when I grew up was to be an interior decorator? Obviously, my love of decorating whether it’s a house or a person runs deep.
So I am excited to be able to share old and new photos from our ranch house remodel-interior and exterior shots.
Quote of the day: “If there is one door in the castle you have been told not to go through, you must. Otherwise, you’ll just be rearranging furniture in rooms you’ve already been in.” Anne Lamott
This house was built in 1978. I obtained photos from when it was sold in 2020 and then compared them to what it looked like when we purchased it. Plus you get to see how it looks right now when it’s lived in and decorated.
Insider detail: I am a “real” blogger. I show you photos of how it is in real life. I don’t pick up and clean before the photos. So it’s not perfect, but then again, neither am I.
Much of this ranch house remodel of the interior was done in 2020 including the kitchen. It was also updated with tile throughout the main part of the house.
When we were looking at places, the 2 main details we needed were:
1-Being able to fence the backyard for Piper.
2-Find a way to create a large (and I mean XL) master closet.
This style/model of house in Sun City, Arizona is called the Annapolis and is part of Phase 3 of our retirement community.
Just wait until you see how it’s changed.
But before that, if you’re new here, let me welcome you to Sun City, Arizona, the original retirement community.
Welcome to Sun City, Arizona
We didn’t plan on moving to a retirement community when we moved to Arizona. It just happened when out of all of the houses we looked at, the one we liked the most was in this community.
Since moving here in 2019, we have grown to love the community. It was established by Del Webb and one of the original model houses from 1960 has been transformed into a museum where you can learn all sorts of facts about this area.
One of the funny things we learned with this house search in Phase 3 is that Del Webb got into a fight with the gas company.
Therefore, NONE of the houses in this phase have gas. All Phase 3 homes have just electricity.
He also got into a disagreement with the plumber’s union. Because of that, they came up with this system where all the plumbing ran through the wall instead of the floor.
That meant all the showers were prefab, and the toilets were wall-mounted.
I’ve discussed many aspects of our retirement community if you want more information.
And if you’re just here for the ranch house remodel interior photos, I even have some from our previous house when I discussed the galley kitchen.
The Exterior Changes of this Ranch House
Cliff notes about the history of this house. I was able to obtain the photos from my realtor from when the house was sold in 2020, it was flipped at that stage, and then a woman lived in it for 2 years before selling it to us.
Here is the Annapolis house from the outside.
You can see between these years that the house was stuccoed and painted.
They also removed the bushes in the front of the patio. It’s hard to see but behind the front bushes, is a wrought iron railing leading up to the front door. This was also removed.
The bushes in the front of the house were changed to Oleander bushes. The palm tree trunk areas were reframed with brick.
We have been in the house only 2 months now, but one of the first things we did was to remove the Oleanders by the sewer line.
We had heard that their roots could penetrate the sewer line and that’s the last thing we want.
I don’t have all of my decor in place yet, as we are still figuring it out. But that “F” on the front post? That used to reside in our hallway at our last place as seen when I discussed my favorite art.
You should definitely sign up for the emails below. Besides the free eBook, my email family gets personal tidbits of what’s going on in my life along with other happenings, sales, information, giveaways, extra photos, and interesting articles. In fact, I’ve shared a ton of my house remodel info in them.
Ranch House Remodel-Interior Entry & Living Room
As you enter the front door, this is the entryway/living room.
The entryway was wood plank as well as the door being wood.
Then you can see that the living room was carpeted. The area farthest away was meant to be the dining room because there is a door to the kitchen at the far end on the right.
This kitchen entry was closed off in the 2020 renovations so this room was delegated as the living room.
For our newest ranch house remodel of the interior, we didn’t change much in this area except for the coat closet.
The coat closet is across from the front door and was small. We extended the closet to be a coat closet and linen closet using barn doors that slide in front of each other. These are the doors we purchased from Home Depot.
It’s now a 10-foot-long closet that you see when you first walk into the house.
We used the same furniture that we had at our other place. You can see how it was arranged at that place, however, the bigger couch was purchased about 2 years ago.
The Kitchen of our Ranch House Remodel-Interior
You can date a house by many details, right?? That wood paneling was such a cool thing in the 70’s.
To the left of the fridge is access to the living room/dining room. When the original flip happened, that was closed off and that wood bookcase area was removed to be open to the living room.
You can see the 2020 flip job was extensive in the kitchen to modernize it. Even the popcorn ceilings were taken down.
When the woman lived here for a couple of years, she added the microwave, fridge, and cabinet handles.
Notice the door at the far end of the kitchen was removed. This door leads into the office/laundry room and to the garage door.
It was an awkward door because you couldn’t open it and the garage door at the same time-they would hit into each other. So part of our ranch house remodel for the interior was to remove not only the door but also the framing around it to open it up.
We also were able to find the same tile as the rest of the house at Floor and Decor so we had that placed in the office area.
Did you recognize that I changed out the fridge from our other house because we loved our original fridge as I wrote about here?
Kitchen Looking Out To Patio
There were originally 2 sets of double sliding doors out to the patio. I have NO idea why.
When we bought the house, we asked for that white cabinet on the left. If you look back at the “Now” kitchen photo you might notice it at the end of the doorway to the office. I use it as our pet cabinet and it camouflages the mess in the office area.
The doorway and area at the far end of the photo where the niche is now gone because it was part of our renovations to become the master closet.
Instead, we hung a barndoor to the left of that door which now goes straight into the master bedroom instead of a hallway.
Yes, I’m in the process of painting the patio doors black.
The Master Bedroom
This is where a load of the renovations were happening before we moved in. If you remember the two things we were looking for, one of them was a larger master closet.
We were able to do this by stealing space from the guest bedroom, hallway, and linen closet. You’ve seen the final result of my closet in my emails, but I will no doubt blog about it soon.
The 2020 flip job didn’t do much in the master bedroom except to paint the doors. They did change out the door handles but not the other hardware. Instead, they painted those which bugs the heck out of me. One of these days, I hope to change it out.
Part of the original ranch house remodel interior was to change out the fans in the rooms. While I don’t mind the aesthetics, the light is dismally bright.
Funny detail: In all of the updates the people made during the 2020 flip job, they left the light by the door into the master (and guest) bedrooms. These lights were a nod to the 1970s and we asked that they be removed. They didn’t go with our modern vibe.
You can see the change in the doorway from the main part of the house. The hat rack is covering up where the door used to be.
BTW, one of the things we had renovated was to have the popcorn ceilings in the bedrooms taken off. While the 2020 flip job had them removed in the kitchen and living room, they left them in the bedrooms.
The closet door is closed in the upper photo, but I always keep it open, below.
The Master Bathroom in our Ranch House Remodel
Back in the 70’s, the master bathrooms in our community only had one sink. When we moved here, we figured we would get used to it. And we made it work at our other place. But as we looked at houses during this time, we saw a house of this same model that had enlarged their bathroom to have 2 sinks. I took a photo of it even though we didn’t like the rest of the house.
But we knew we wanted to incorporate enough space to have a 2 sink vanity into our ranch house remodel interior details.
Can you see how the toilet is attached to the wall vs the floor? This was because of the issue with the plumber’s union I discussed at the beginning of the post.
When they flipped the house in 2020, they added a modern vanity (still only 1 sink), mirror, and lighting. They did remove the glass doors to the shower as it had a shower curtain and rod on it instead.
You can see the prefab shower that was in both of the bathrooms. Another result of the fight with the plumber’s union back in 1978.
That just had to go.
There was a LOT of dust and remodeling in this part of the house. We had the toilet changed out to a traditional type so the floor had to be jackhammered.
Then we stole 3 feet of space from the guest bedroom which is now the tiled shower. By moving the shower back 3 feet as well as the toilet, there was room for this 2 sink vanity from Home Depot.
I also wanted a ton of medicine cabinet space which is why we went with this type of medicine cabinet that we found on Amazon. Having mirrors on the inside of your medicine cabinets is pure heaven.
Wait There is More
Phew…that was a long one.
Since it was getting so long, I left out the photos of the office/laundry room. I included those photos in the email from today instead.
Insider option: If you don’t get my email and you’d like to see the photos of the office/laundry room, email me at Jtouchofstyle@gmail.com and I’ll send you the link to them.
Did you like what you just read?
Consider buying me a coffee as a thank you. The best gift you can give a content creator is the gift of sharing or supporting. You could share this article on Facebook, or Pinterest or even email it to a friend. Thank you so much for your support!!
Don’t Miss a Thing
I hope you have enjoyed what you’ve read here, and I look forward to you signing up to be part of my email family.
You can receive an email each time I post. My emails are a place where I share more personal happenings along with special offers.