The ‘After’ Photos of This Colonial Fixer-Upper Are Jaw-Dropping

Elizabeth and Whit Brown’s home in Florence, Alabama, is full of surprises. Towering columns and a porch outfitted with white wicker are textbook Southern Colonial. But inside is an unexpected and personal mix of old and new, traditional and modern. The biggest surprise? The fact that they pulled off this makeover entirely themselves.

They bought the Southern colonial house in Florence, AL, (sight unseen for Whit) knowing it would be a massive slow-and-steady project. Over three years, they scraped wallpaper, wired light fixtures, tiled backsplashes and floors, spruced up kitchen cabinets, scraped more wallpaper, and pulled out yards and yards of pink and blue carpet. Elizabeth hunted through secondhand shops for most of their furniture, and Whit built the rest, including their dining room table and kitchen island.

When it came to decorating, Elizabeth didn’t let the old-house details tie her hands stylewise. A coat of white paint (Benjamin Moore Chantilly Lace) now covers most of the interior, modernizing the dentil molding and wainscoting while maintaining a sense of the architecture. “I wanted to respect the original character,” Elizabeth says. “But then, because I used white almost everywhere, I could do whatever I wanted in terms of furniture.”

And that she did. In the dining room, glass bubble chandeliers offset more traditional elements and black unifies mismatched chairs. It’s this mix of eras in a single room that highlights Elizabeth’s eye for secondhand and thrifting. Case in point: two classic midcentury pieces, the sideboard and black Pantone style end chairs, are situated beneath ornate dentil molding and ceiling medallions; two decorating styles with major differences (ornate versus streamlined), yet blend seamlessly in Elizabeth’s hands.

Whit built the large farmhouse table and installed a second electrical box in the ceiling so they could hang the two chandeliers to suit the long, rectangular room. The Browns love to entertain (they once had 40 guests for Friendsgiving), so their dining room had to work for a crowd. Elizabeth hung art in a loose, horizontal arrangement to span the wall.

Despite all the DIYing it took to bring the house up to date, Elizabeth and Whit had no doubt that they could make it theirs. “I could just see it,” Elizabeth says. “I could see past the dust and the cobwebs and the wallpaper, and I just knew that this house had so much potential.”

Revamping the kitchen was first on the to-do list. “We liked that it’s a cozy kitchen; it just needed some brightening,” Elizabeth says. They replaced the appliances, updated the existing cabinets, and tiled the backsplash, but it’s the turned-leg island table Whit built that really opened the space.

Chrome Bertoia stools, another mainstay of midcentury modern decor, pull up to Whit’s butcher-block island. The original cabinets look brand-new thanks to this DIY hack: Whit replaced the panels of upper cabinet doors with glass panes secured with small brackets. Subway tile that runs to the top of the cabinets looks both classic and modern.

On the other side of the kitchen island, one of the home’s four fireplaces warms the space with its original brick facade. A collection of silver platters decorates the mantle, while simultaneously serving up an easy-reach storage solution for trays too pretty to hide in cabinets. A vintage porcelain vase filled with bright red florals echoes the color in the kitchen’s rug.

In the living room, a vintage floral sofa that could go dowdy in the wrong hands looks fresh paired with a boxy burl wood table. The blue sofa was one of Elizabeth’s lucky thrifting finds. “I bought the sofa before we even closed on the house,” she says. “It’s down-filled so really good quality, and I knew that floral was going to look amazing in an all-white room.” She updated the sliding glass doors by removing decorative muntins and painting the frame glossy black.

When Whit and Elizabeth moved in, a second living space had pink wallpaper, baby blue carpet and trim, and a random sink plumbed in the corner. They eventually turned it into the “fun” room with a wet bar and pool table. Affordable IKEA cabinets are topped with a remnant piece of granite from a local stoneyard. Dark gray walls complete the chic but masculine look Elizabeth wanted.

The wainscoting and cast-iron claw-foot tub are the only parts of the guest bath Elizabeth and Whit kept. They reglazed the tub’s interior and painted its exterior flat black. They stripped the wallpaper, replaced the vanities and fixtures, and laid a new herringbone tile floor themselves.

New hardwood floors weren’t in the couple’s budget, so they had pine plywood cut into 8-inch-wide planks, laid them in varying lengths, then sanded and painted them white. The vintage decor in the bedroom is an ode to the home’s beginnings.

Like nearly every other room in the house, the primary was wrapped in dated wallpaper. White paint and neutral carpeting provide a fresh backdrop for a collection of thrifted furniture and art. Framing the four-poster with art makes it look even more substantial.

The backyard is designed for entertaining with a lounge spot and a dining table to seat 12. Elizabeth wanted the coffee table, built from basic 2×4-inch boards, to be big enough to fit a cheese board or to put your feet up after dinner. Plenty of greenery keeps the space looking fresh.