Rehab Addict

Having sold her Minnehaha house, Nicole is ready for her next big property. After discovering a house she can purchase for $1 in an historic neighborhood in desperate need of help, she sets out on her most ambitious project yet. While waiting to cut through the red tape on the Dollar House Project, Nicole tackles her friend's horribly small bathroom.

With the Dollar House project an official 'Go', Nicole's first project is a major one: lifting the house to fix the crumbling foundation. Even though this means the brick chimney has to go, Nicole finds a way to reuse the old brick and begins to add a little character back into the living room.

Moving to the interior of the Dollar House, Nicole demo's her heart out and focuses on the disgusting kitchen space and adding a half bathroom to the first floor (evicting a few pigeons along the way). Once the new space is framed out, everything seems to be falling into place? until the water is turned on and Nicole finds out she has some leaky pipes.

Restoring the first floor of the Dollar House continues as host and interior designer Nicole Curtis uncovers hardwood floors throughout the living and dining room areas. The dining room hutch is still intact, but there's a whole new fireplace mantle to build. Nicole also takes on a DIY project to prove that a pile of scrap wood can become a thing of beauty.

Heading up to the second floor, Nicole takes on the bathroom, one of the house's dirtiest and grimiest rooms. She brings it down to the studs, adding clean lines with white subway tile and re-purposes an old dresser into one of her signature vanities. Since the house was lifted, the front porch has been floating in space, so Nicole tears it down to begin rebuilding a new one, giving the house an inviting and classic look.

Ever closer to finishing up the interior of the Dollar House, Nicole works in the bedrooms to put up all new walls and ceilings as well as remove the black and white linoleum flooring and patch up a burn mark in the hardwood. The staircase needs attention as well, so Nicole repairs some broken treads and comes up with a cool idea for how to turn an odd space into a storage closet.

Moving back outside, Nicole begins to clean up all the debris from the yard and comes up with a plan to use salvaged materials from the house to create a cute little back yard area. For the front entryway, Nicole exposes hardwood floors and dumpster dives in her own dumpster to find a light she can use.

All that's left to finish on the Dollar House is the exterior. The whole house needs the cedar shakes repaired and the fascia covered in aluminum for protection. As Nicole looks to the neighboring houses for inspiration as she finishes the front porch, she must also make a decision on what color to paint the house.

Working in St. Paul for the first time, Nicole finds another house in an up and coming neighborhood that needs her attention. Fighting the onset of colder weather, she must first tackle an exterior makeover, figuring out how to clean up the front yard and replace the icky yellow and brown paint job. Inside, she begins the difficult task of cleaning out all the left over junk so the plumbers and electrician can get started.

Nicole begins work on the interior of the Case Ave house and is faced with a living and dining room full of gorgeous woodwork and original pocket doors that have been painted over the years. It'll take hours and hours of sanding and stripping, but Nicole just can't leave them the way she found them. Once she sets her mind to something, there's no stopping her.

Nicole takes the dark and dim front entryway and opens it up, removing soffits, repairing original stained glass windows, and hunting for salvaged parts to rebuild the fabulous staircase. She must also find a way to repair the front porch floorboards to keep them from falling off the foundation.

The bedrooms and bathroom on the second floor desperately need Nicole's attention. She must deal with water-damaged walls, old carpet and vinyl covering the hardwood, and a tiny, dirty bathroom that needs an updated shower. Nicole saves as many original fixtures as she can and proves that there's plenty you can do to turn a space around without buying new.

The Case Ave house is almost complete, and Nicole has saved the most difficult task for last - figuring out a functional layout for the cramped kitchen. To save the original cabinets, she must get creative in order to find a way to make them fit with modern appliances. With a few left over pieces from around the house, Nicole finds new ways to repurpose them in the basement.