Reviving a 100-Year-Old Home: How One Freelancer Transformed a Family Heirloom

Hello, I am a freelance marketer who moved to Gangneung without ties and started living in a rural area for about a year and a half. Previously, I worked as a brand marketer for a furniture company in Seoul for over five years.

While working, I proposed everything from offices to living rooms, bedrooms, children’s rooms, and even lifestyles with pets to others. Yet, I found out about myself that I was a typical kangaroo tribe who could not be independent of my parents even after my thirties. After thinking about living independently in a space resembling me, I decided to live in a house.

I will introduce the space I have worked on from one to ten.

House Information

| House approximately 818 square feet
| White, Brown, Natural Style
| Spent roughly $60,000

During the Interior Work

| A house where four generations lived for 100 years

After looking at about 100 properties for two months, my first impression of this house was a “half house.” I heard the former owner’s grandfather built it by hand, and four generations lived there for 100 years. I remember that the entrance was on the side of the building, and behind it, the backyard with magnolia and persimmon trees was hidden like a secret garden along the corridor-like path.

Although it was an old house with many places to fix, I felt I had finally found my house, so I made a pre-contract the next day and contracted two days later. So I got the house key two days after I first saw this house.

After the purchase, I completed the first demolition to check the internal condition, such as the ceiling rafters. I began to visit the interior companies while imagining the appearance of the house I wanted inside and outside for several months with only the frames of the house left. After setting the following concept, I contacted the companies I had listed up while creating a request form with over 20 pages that included the overall concept, detailed concept for each space, desired range of progress, available budget, and desired move-in date.

The overall atmosphere is heavy but warm feeling of dark brown and white centered space
The main concept is a house without fluorescent lights

| Changing the Structure

Our old house, without proper blueprints, originally consisted of four rooms, a combined kitchen and living area, a corridor, a boiler room and bathroom, and a storage space. However, after extensive discussions with the interior design company, I decided to transform the house into a layout that would suit my needs better.

The photo above shows the blueprint of the changed structure. The modifications are as follows. This information might be helpful for those who wish to delve deeper into enjoying housewarming.

• A portion of the room closest to the front yard was converted into a foyer and vestibule, with the remaining space combined with the adjacent room to create a guest room.
• The oil drum storage was transformed into a bathroom exclusively for guests, allowing them to use it comfortably.
• The narrowest room was turned into a dressing room and bathroom, then connected to the master bedroom.

| Happening During the Remodeling

I remember an incident that happened a week before the deadline of our already challenging old house remodeling project. It was a day the construction had to be paused for about three days due to heavy rainfall all day long, following the change of seasons from spring to summer. When the work resumed and I arrived at the site, I found that the septic tank, which had been buried underground, floated up to the surface, leaving the front yard in complete disarray.

Opinions among the experts varied, but it was concluded that the empty septic tank floated up due to buoyancy caused by the tremendous amount of rainfall, leading to the collapse of the dirt ground. This not only resulted in additional costs but also extended the construction period. I was so exhausted then that I could only respond with a hollow laugh. Looking back now, I realize it was a blessing in disguise (?) as it allowed us to replace the septic tank piping with new ones completely.

| Two Home Decorating Tips

1. In interiors dominated by deep brown & white tones, adding furniture and accessories in pastel shades can create focal points without making the space feel solemn.
2. Utilizing the space under wardrobes and beds to keep visible areas tidy can significantly enhance the overall aesthetic of your interior.

| Recommended for Homes with Pets

The furniture I recommend the most is the Move Sofa from Iloom. This furniture is especially recommended for those who live with pets like me. First of all, it comes in a modular form, so it’s possible to configure it to suit the character of the space, and its clean design is what I like the most. It’s not too bulky, and above all, if you choose a life-waterproof fabric that is resistant to discoloration or scratching, you can always use it as if it’s new. Sometimes, when my dog ​​friend, who lives in Seoul, comes here to play, the sofa transforms into a guest room for dogs. It seems that dogs also recognize how comfortable the full base type sofa, which is fully cushioned, is.

Take a Look Around the Space

| Feel the Four Seasons in the Foyer and Hallway

Shall we start looking around the house now? I’ll show you the entrance, hallway, kitchen, master bedroom, dressing room, and guest room in order.

The main attraction of our home is the hallway space that opens up to the backyard when you open the front door.

I wanted to live feeling the change of the four seasons through the window, not the small screen in the cell phone, so I made the corridor exactly as I wanted it to be, with whole glass, gallery windows, and sliding sash doors leading to the backyard.

This is what the gallery window looks like up close. I put an evergreen pot outside to complete the big picture I dreamed of. I also decorated a tree, waiting for the upcoming Christmas. Next year, the tree will grow, and then the number of ornaments to decorate the tree will increase. I hope it will gradually become a house that resembles us, not a home like a model house set from the beginning.

| Kitchen/Studio with a Feeling of Wood

The next space I’ll show you is the kitchen and workspace.

The kitchen is made of pine boards for the ceiling, and a very thin layer of oil stain was applied to preserve the unique feel of the wood. Because it’s not a large space, the kitchen tiles and sink were unified in all-white for a clean look, and pastel-colored small furniture and accessories were selected as highlights.

The kitchen ceiling is low, so installing upper storage cabinets above the sink was impossible. I blocked the space initially in the foyer and secured as much lighting as possible with fixed windows at the top. I also placed a storage cabinet at the bottom to compensate for the lack of storage.

The kitchen is where I, working from home, stay the most these days. Since I chose an extendable dining table, it’s a workbench, a table for me, and a dining table for guests, changing its size and layout as needed. The extendable dining table is what I highly recommend to single households like me living in small spaces! 

| Master Bedroom

The bedroom in our house is a unique space with varying ceiling heights and the most protruding wooden structures. We paid a lot of attention to woodworking to maximize these features. Since the area where the bed goes has a shallow ceiling and protruded beams, it was filled with a flatbed without a headboard to give a sense of openness. We also adopted a wood color lighter than the house’s main color to prevent the overall atmosphere from becoming too solemn.

The bed frame I use is a double King size, and the mattress is a Queen size. Using a larger bed frame than the mattress has the expected advantage of placing items like a table lamp and books on one side of the bed and the unexpected advantage of serving as a step for my pet dog, preventing strain on its joints.

Since our house has no separate living room, the bedroom is also where the sofa is, serving as a relaxation space. The pastel-toned sofa serves as the focal point of the interior.

Before moving to this house, I had already adopted a rescue dog named “Munui” from an animal shelter. I personally believe that sleeping in the same space with a pet is suitable for both of our emotions, so I chose furniture like sofas and pet cushions that are particularly pet-friendly or made of such materials. I chose a lot of furniture from Iloom because it’s a brand that deeply considers pet life to the point of having a separate pet category.

| The Dressing Room Responsible for Storage

The dressing room that continues from the bedroom is the only standardized space in our house. Due to the characteristics of the old house, it was tough to create a separate storage space, so unlike other rooms, I didn’t keep the shape of the ceiling and put a modular wardrobe that fits perfectly with the ceiling to secure the maximum storage capacity.

I didn’t realize until I started to make a living that if you just store things well so they’re not visible, that becomes one part of interior design. The house structure runs just above the entrance to the dressing room, so the entrance is so low that even I, short, have to stoop to enter. But I think of it more as the charm of an old house than an inconvenience. The system wardrobe is also from the Taylor series of Iloom.

| A Guest Room for Friends from Seoul

The guest room was originally two rooms separated by a sliding door in the middle. I sacrificed one room to create a new foyer and anteroom, so it’s smaller and less functional than before, but for now, I’m using it as a comfortable resting space for friends visiting from Seoul. In the future, I plan to use it as a large dressing room or my personal workspace.

Wrapping up the House Tour

I think a house is the best means to show my taste as an image without further explanation and a space where I can continually question my identity. The more it feels like me, the more comfortable it is, and the more I want to stay and return to it.

Thank you to everyone who took a close look at our house. If you’re curious about the more detailed record of how our house came to be now, from choosing the area of Gangneung to finding a space that resembles me, I think it would be good to check out my blog series “Weekly Hongjedong.” I’ll end here. Have a great day!