Open the center of the home.
Remove the wall between the kitchen and dining room to create better flow, gathering space, and a more useful kitchen.
3574 Strathmore Drive · Duluth, Georgia · Personal renovation
The house didn’t need more square footage. It needed a better plan.
The right neighborhood was already there. The strategy was to make the existing home support family life now and create lasting value for later.
Purchase$430K
Renovation~$110K
Formal appraisal$560K
Est. renovation ROI18%
Plan3 / 2.5 → 4 / 3.5
The starting point
Location, schools, and enough legitimate space to solve the rest.
The home was close to downtown Duluth, with restaurants, parks, strong schools, and future rental potential. But the listing’s 3,000-square-foot claim counted the garage. The actual home was closer to 2,800 square feet, including the basement.
Instead of chasing more square footage, I focused on making the existing footprint work harder: a kitchen built for gathering, a true guest suite, and a primary suite that made everyday routines easier.
The transformation
One footprint, reworked from top to bottom.
The renovation reshaped the kitchen and both upstairs bathrooms, then turned the basement into useful living space with a bedroom and full bath.
01
Kitchen
A more open center for everyday life.
02
Bathrooms
Better layouts and finishes upstairs.
Primary bathroom
Upstairs bathroom
03
Basement
Underused space became a true guest suite.
The strategy
Create value through better function, not unnecessary square footage.
Create a real guest suite.
Use existing legal-size basement windows to add a bedroom and bathroom for about $20K. It was the clearest immediate value move.
Spend where life improves.
Reconfigure the primary bathroom and place laundry in the closet, while saving through painting, reused hardware, existing carpet, and deferred powder-room work.
The result
A home that hosts better, lives easier, and appraised above the all-in basis.
The five-month renovation created a fourth bedroom, a third full bath, an open kitchen, an improved secondary bath, and a more functional primary suite. When an HVAC failure and burst pipes redirected roughly $15K of the budget, lower-impact basement finishes were simplified rather than compromising the core plan.
“You don’t have to find what’s perfect. Find the right area, enough legitimate square footage, and a plan with room to work.”Estimated renovation return is calculated as the $20K difference between the formal appraisal and the combined purchase and renovation cost, divided by the approximate $110K renovation spend. Figures are approximate and exclude financing, transaction costs, and any allocation for market appreciation.
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