A Kansas City Real Estate Blog by Realtor, Sarah Snodgrass

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

Ever read the Before and After section of Design Sponge? It is so fun, and I am especially fond of viewing the exterior renovations. This particular story was submitted to me by a reader living in Johnson County. She noticed that this ranch for sale just off Johnson Drive has a striking similarity to an exterior renovation featured on Design Sponge. Good eye, Ashlee! The house is very affordable and would be a great candidate for a design sponge style makeover. I am not sure I would go as modern as they did in the renovation, but it is exciting to see the changes and what is possible. If you are looking for a quality home to renovate and add value to, call me! I love this kind of stuff, and I know about a slew of great makeover candidates for sale in KC right now. Also, if you want your stylish before and after renovations featured on my blog, send me your (low res) images.

above: The house for sale in KC right now

above: Design Sponge BEFORE (check out the similarity to the local house!)

above: Design Sponge AFTER (what a transformation!)

Wayne Coyne really is as eccentric as he seems if his house is any indication.

The whitewashed futuristic bathroom featured on Design Milk. Pitchfork has some background and a video. Below is a photo by Joseph Mills from the architecture firm, Fitzsimmons Architects, who handled the project. I love this place – what beautiful use of light and materials. It’s far-out, but in a tasteful and modern way. Plus, I love that Wayne is investing the love, time and money into a blighted area of urban Oklahoma City. We should all take a cue from him instead of wasting precious resources pushing the boundaries of our cities ever farther.

Yesterday I held an open house at 1008 W. 70th Street in Kansas City. The home is located in the popular subdivision of Romanelli Gardens, which extends from 67th on the north to Gregory on the south, and Wornall on the east to Ward Parkway on the west. I created a map in Google Maps so you can visualize. There are about 615 homes in the subdivision, all of which were built from about 1925-1940. Though the subdivision is now about 80 years old, these homes are all well-kept, updated, and each have their own unique beauty. Occasionally while walking my boxer along the Trolley Track Trail, we’ll wonder over to Romanelli Gardens for a change of scenery – its quiet streets are a great place to view the diverse scenery of the homes, the landscaping and the mature trees. Most homes in the area are Tudor-style homes, but you can also find other styles (or a mish-mash of styles) such as colonial revival; many of which have original brick and stone detailing. Below is a photo I took at my open house. I fell head over heels in love with the iron detailing on the front door. This type of door and detailing is common among tudors in the area.

p.s. This was my busiest open house ever. Probably due to the tax credit, the buyers are out in droves and they all said they wish there were more homes for sale. Unfortunately, inventory is down, but I think we will see a spike in listings pretty soon.

I happened upon an edition of Better Homes and Gardens magazine from 1954, and inside was a story about a (modern) steel framed ranch home. The excitement was that, with the use of the steel supports, the interior could flow into the outside with large expanses of glass and continuous materials as you will see in the photos below.

In a related note – my pick of the week is a home just listed in Prairie Village. It is a mid-century modern style ranch home near Mission and 79th Street. This house was built around the same time – in 1956; and while I do see some similarities, I also note many differences. For example, the home in the magazine layout has glass walls leading outside and stone, while the pick of the week seems to be a more traditional wood-frame ranch with modern lines, stacked stone fireplace and vaulted ceilings.

This is a wonderful guide to residential architecture, found on the Anderson Architecture Website. It has photos of 15 different residential architecture styles with brief descriptions of each style’s outstanding features. The styles and development of our cities must have coincided because this grouping of photos and architectural styles greatly resemble that of Kansas City. For example, I could find a very similar Queen Anne in the historic Northeast, the Neoclassical along Ward Parkway, the Italianate in Westside, the Bungalows in Brookside and Midtown, Arts and Crafts and Prairie styles in Sunset Hill and Brookside, Tudors in Brookside and Waldo, the Shingle Style in Hyde Park, and so on.

Photo credit - hisdalearchitecture.org praire style home.

My Pick of the Week is a home in Fonticello Gardens, a subdivision located off 69th Street, just west of Roe Ave in Prairie Village. What an incredible little jewel in Prairie Village and greater Kansas City. While colonial style homes abound, there is nothing quite like this authentic cluster of brick colonials. It appears the development began in 1956 and the architect may have been a woman by the name of Garland T. Bowers, though I cannot find any record of her. My pick of the week is a spacious, traditional, well-built home, and, though it is not brand new, I think its size and features would please many new-home buyers as well as those looking for the quality and charm of years past. This one will be gone before we know it.

New mid-century ranch listing in Prairie Village with a cool contemporary look. Check out the photos and listing page. Nice kitchen renovation with an updated look, while remaining harmonious with its architectural style.

(This property is listed in the local Heartland Multiple Listing Service; Listing Company: Reece and Nichols Country Club Plaza; Listing Agent: Sandy Murphy)

Many friends and readers who knew and read about my recent kitchen renovation have requested that I share photos of the finished product. I have been delaying because it isn’t quite finished; however, the realization has set in that it will take time to find the perfect fabric for curtains and just the right artwork to adorn my walls so I have given in. Most people think I am crazy to paint my kitchen pink (especially my friends in the real estate business), but I don’t care. I love it – I think it is happy and whimsical, and I love the 1950’s retro look. If only I could snap my fingers and magically transform my mismatched appliances into the Big Chill retro appliances to match my retro look. Oh well, everything works and that is what is important.

The before and after pictures below are from a home I recently sold in Leawood. It was a newer home, but my clients wanted a sleek, more modern look so they had the cabinetry stained. I think it turned out fantastic. This is such an easy and cheap way of completely changing the look of your kitchen, baths, staircase… Anywhere that has an outdated stain color or with paint that needs updating. This work was completed by State of the Art painting, Beverly Tovar, (913) 238-9170.

BEFORE

AFTER

AFTER

This is the coolest thing. I have just spent the last hour picking colors for rooms that I don’t own or need to paint, just for the fun of it. I dearly wish I would have found this website about 6 months ago before agonizing over new kitchen paint colors and living room colors for my house. The colorjive site allows you to download a photo of a room you want to change, then choose different colors from a vast color pallette and switch out the wall colors. You can even choose Benjamin Moore or Sherwin Williams paints. The only challenge is that your photo has to have pretty balanced light, or the paint colors catch on the shadows and bright spots and your new color doesn’t fill in correctly. Here are some before and afters examples of what this site can do.

before

after

before

after

Colorjive

Check out this old tax assessor’s photo of my home in Brookside from 1940:

It was very easy to obtain – Mister Snodgrass just emailed his request to an assistant in the Landmark’s Commission and she promptly emailed this photo to him at a minimal cost of $5.00.We were sent a much larger size than I have featured here. Should you desire more information, such as the builder, architect, the way it originally looked, or even the name of the first owner, we have a wealth of resources at our disposal from both the Kansas City Public Library’s resource page on researching the history of your house and the city of Kansas City’s web page on historic research.

My retro barstools arrived, and they look perfect in my newly pink kitchen with polished chrome hardware. Check them out below. Photos of the finished kitchen will be coming soon. We are still putting on some finishing touches such as curtains and artwork, but the pink cabinets are finished, all the trim and walls have been painted (thanks, Sherwin Williams for your vintage modern color palettes), and the hardwoods have been refinished. It is looking so cute and retro!