This Week's Find: Renovating Piece-by-Piece in Brookland

• September 22nd 2014

by Lark Turner

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This Week’s Find is a great lesson in how a do-it-yourself renovation can turn out wonderfully. But owner Judy Elofson didn’t know what she was getting into when she bought the home in Brookland sight unseen in 2005.

“My friends checked out the house and told me it was sound,” she said. “It was a little bit on the dilapidated side.”

Elofson started in the kitchen, which needed an overhaul. She extended the 10’ × 10’ room onto the existing sun porch, now an open concept kitchen and living room featuring stained glass she made herself and hand-applied stonework.

“I went to a class at one point to do mosaic glass and just took it from there,” Elofson said.

Next — in part because she felt guilty for appropriating so much space for the kitchen from her sunroom-loving cats — she converted an outdoor deck into a screened-in porch. The sunroom and porch quickly became her favorite spots in the house.

“The sunroom is beautiful at certain times of day, because of the way the sun comes in on the westerly side,” she said. “The deck is usable almost all-year-round.”

Elofson also added stonework to the fireplace in the home’s formal living room, which she did herself. The upstairs half-bath needed an overhaul, so she converted it into a full bath with a marble sink. On the first floor, a Jack-and-Jill bath connects two more bedrooms.

More work is evident in the home’s landscaping, which, once again, Elofson undertook by herself.

“When I moved in it was just grass,” she said. “I think I yanked every piece out of there.” In its place, Elofson put in flagstone and large plants to grant her more privacy. It was the first major landscaping on her block.

“It’s a lovely little neighborhood, everybody is very friendly,” Elofson said. “When I first started working on the yard, all my neighbors were coming around every day to see what was going on.”

But now she’s moving closer to the city, in part for the benefit of a shortened commute. But also because, she says, “I need a new project.”

Check out more photos and details below:

• Full Listing: 1612 Kearny Street NE (map)
• Price: $635,000
• Bedrooms: Three
• Bathrooms: Two
• Year Built: 1927
• Listing Agents: Mark McFadden, Washington Fine Properties

This article originally published at https://dc.urbanturf.com/articles/blog/this_weeks_find_renovating_piece-by-piece_in_brookland/8997.