The SpoCottage

On black friday 2022, Lance and I signed papers to purchase Riplinger Funeral Home. The entire purchase includes the business, funeral home property, and a little gray house behind it. We turned around and sold the business portion because Lance does not have time to run a second funeral home, so in regard to the actual funeral home we only own the property. The property includes a sizeable three bedroom apartment above the chapel that we rent out to our business partner.

The little gray house quickly became my project. It's a small three bedroom, one bath house approximately 825sqft. and had been sitting unoccupied for 4 years. We discussed fixing it up and renting it on Airbnb. I found a painter (who didn't do a very good job) so every wall has new paint, he patched up the ceiling, and did some texture work. After that was finished I discovered a leak in the basement coming from the bathroom. Uh oh. We had to completely gut the bathroom as there was water damage and mold everywhere, including the subfloor. Since the guy had to redo the bathroom floor we decided to go ahead and replace the kitchen floor as well. We installed all new light fixtures, knobs and handles, light switches, and blinds.

We did install an automatic sprinkler system since we can't be there everyday to move hoses around to water the grass. We also had to replace the VERY old furnace and figured we might as well put central AC in as well. 

Then came the fun part for me as I got to decorate the whole house! I kept it all pretty minimal and simple, only playing up colors, patterns, and textures. I knew with it being a Bnb that most home-like finishing touches wouldn't be practical. I tried to maximize the number of beds in the small bedrooms so even though there's only 3 bedrooms it will very comfortably sleep 7, more if some sleep on the couches. My goal was it to make each room very calming and comfortable.

It does have an unfinished full basement which is where the washer and dryer are located. We may finish out the basement to have a master suite and small living room down there, but not for several years. The house has a decent sized yard and next year the plan is to install a six foot privacy fence and spruce up the landscaping.

It has been a fun project for me to do and now when it is rented, I have to go after each stay and clean it from top to bottom. It doesn't take too long because the house is small and I'm pretty sure it is cleaner than my house. Below are the before and after pictures of each room.

This is the itty bitty master, good bye to the purple walls. I love my poppy curtains, they pack a punch!

This is the largest bedroom which has a full-over-full bunk bed and a pull-out twin size trundle bed. There's also room for a crib which gets stored in the closet. Again, I played with patterns and colors to maximize the homy feel without "stuff."

No more green walls in this bedroom.

Before and after of the bathroom. Once it was gutted the contractor was surprised to find all the walls are made of plywood, not lathe and plaster, nor sheetrock. He also found hundreds of razor blades hidden behind the wall because back in the 50's people didn't know how to dispose of razors and medicine cabinets were equipment with a hole to the wall for disposal.....only to be discovered 70+years later.

The kitchen had fairly new cabinets and all appliances were in good shape. We only replaced the flooring, faucet, light fixtures, and cabinet pulls. Not in this photo is a beautiful scenic picture of Spokane mountains above the sink.

Not much needed done with the living room, just new paint. Having new blinds and installing appropriate curtains make all the difference! This house has a lot of fairly new windows so it has great natural light.

I forgot I marked up this photo, haha. I love the red striped curtains! They make the room feel bigger with the vertical stripes, the linen texture add appeal and not pictured in this photo is a large picture of downtown Spokane at night. It's beautiful! It also has pops of red so it brings out the curtains and pulls the entire room together.