A home refreshed

Before Jill and Will Geisdorf bought their home on Field Road in Sarasota, they were renting a hip little downtown cottage close to restaurants, nightlife and all the cultural amenities that two busy young professionals could want.

Then, it all changed, said Jill Geisdorf, who is an interior designer with Chic on the Cheap in Sarasota. We were going to have a baby, and almost overnight, our priorities switched to a nice big yard, a house in a family neighborhood, good school district, close to shopping all of those kinds of things.

Will started looking at real estate listings online, and we both began seriously talking budgets. It was clearly time to put down roots.

Will Geisdorf, who works for an investment research firm in Venice, found a home, in a desirable West-of-the-Trail Sarasota neighborhood. He believed they could afford it because it was a foreclosure property, and because the 2,000-square-foot house was built in 1958 and looked it.

It had the original terrazzo floors, old windows, a very old roof, nice yard (somewhat overgrown) on a third-of-an-acre lot, three bedrooms, two baths and a workable floor plan, even though the kitchen was small and closed off from the rest of the house. A bonus was that a previous owner had installed a swimming pool.

They bought the house last June, started renovating immediately while still living in their rented cottage, and moved into their new old house in October, just 11 days before Quinn Geisdorf was born. The blue and white nursery was ready.

We realize there is work in this place to keep us in home-improvement projects for years to come, said Will. But it was a great buy for the neighborhood, and Jill was pretty sure that for $75,000, we could bring the house up to what it should be to fit our needs and lifestyle.

They would end up spending closer to $100,000, which designer Jill will tell you is pretty typical when homeowners set a budget for a major renovation. Actual costs average 15 to 25 percent over the homeowners initial estimate. And some things are a downright luxurious splurge with homeowners disregarding the price tag.

Our splurge was the custom walnut kitchen cabinets and quartz counters, said Jill.

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A home refreshed