Mountain Cabin Airbnb Before Tour

Tell all ya friends and neighbors!

A little dated, but great bones (something often said about me) here is a before tour of our newest project – a mountain house for our own family to enjoy that will also serve as an Airbnb!

Oh boy.

OHHHHH BOY.

This project has been almost a year in the making.

We got us a big ol’ project on our hands and this one, while nervous, I am very excited about.

A month ago we bought an Airbnb in the mountains of NC right outside of Asheville and demo starts in less than a week. The good news is the main living areas don’t need a ton of work (just cosmetic updates) but the basement is going to be a beast!

But I know you’re here for the photos, so let’s get into it.

Exterior and The Specs

Here it is! When I first saw this listing photo, I was immediately drawn in.

Here are the specs in its current state:

• Roughly 1230 heated square feet, with another 1200ish square foot unfinished basement
• 3 bedrooms
• 2 bathrooms

After renovations, here’s what we will have:

• 2500 heated square feet, including the finished basement
• 4-5 bedrooms
• 3 bathrooms

When you drive up the mountain, this landing is where you pull in.

I’m not going into full renovation plans yet since we are still working on those, but I’ll give ideas here and there.

This is technically the front of the house, although it backs up to the rest of the land that we have that’s just essentially an uphill mountain.

We want to extend this deck all the way to the left so we will be able to put a hot tub out here eventually.

Let’s go inside!

Interior

The overall vibe we will be going for is modern, cozy, and slightly Scandinavian feel. Lot of black, white and neutral wood tones.

Entry/Dining space

That door you see is the main front door off the porch. This area is both the kitchen and dining space.

Laundry

The laundry is right off the entry/dining space and is super small and if you can believe it, our plan is to make it smaller.

Which wouldn’t make sense for a house we would be living in full time, but since this is a rental, we will just be putting a stackable washer and dryer in here OR will be moving the laundry to the basement.

Kitchen

Walking right into the kitchen, this is what you see. It’s super weird and the layout feels real cramped. It’s just not the best usage of the space.

Also above the sink, that’s not a window to the living room. It’s a mirror. SO weird.

There’s also this wall that “houses” the kitchen, but it doesn’t go all the way to the ceiling so that bad boy is coming down and we will be adding in a galley kitchen which I’m excited about.

We used a galley kitchen in Arch since it’s a shotgun house, but the more I see galley kitchens, the more I love them!

Living room

Honestly, I don’t love the wood trim and white walls for my own home, but I think as a mountain cabin, we can make it work!

I am IN LOVE with the wood detail on the ceiling and that’s not going to change. We will most likely modernize that fireplace somehow, but not sure if it will be painted brick or if we will do a concrete skim coat.

The views

This was something that I learned on our search for a mountain house, but the view and land are what cause a property to cost way more or way less.

We have what are referred to as “winter views” which means you can see the mountains when the leaves fall off in the fall and stay off until everything blooms again in spring.

When you walk out of those french doors this is our views to the right and left.

Our land is 3 acres, but runs long and skinny so it doesn’t run the length of the house left to right but instead runs front to back if that makes sense.

Guest bedroom 1

We are dubbing this the queen room. Meaning that you can only comfortably fit a queen in here if you want to be able to move around. We will be doing some type of feature wall in here and are still working through where we want the furniture to be since there’s a weird bump out you can’t see to the left of this photo.

Guest bedroom 2

Or as it’s known to me and J, the bunk room. While we know that friend groups may be coming to stay and we hope that happens, first and foremost this has to work for our family and since this is going to be a 4-5 bedroom house, we wanted at least one room to be kid focused.

That means having toys and adding some bunk beds. The dream is to build some in, but for now, we will likely buy some so that we can start enjoying this and letting other people enjoy it as well.

Guest bathroom

Quite honestly, I think you could likely do something in here that wouldn’t be a full gut job, but since we are having to do a lot of work anyway, we’re just going to gut it.

But the mauve aesthetic is definitely making a trending comeback and I could totally work around this short term with a little paint and creativity.

Primary bedroom

Again, a pretty big blank slate. We have a lot of ideas in here that involve a pretty big chunk of an overhaul. I’m excited to see it all come to life.

Primary bathroom

The bifold doors you see here are a set of 2 closets. Which means you walk through a very tiny bathroom to get to these massive his and hers closets.

Again, something you need in a permanent home, but for a short term rental, you don’t need a ton of closet space.

This is a huge space, enough for a double vanity but there’s a single one here with the weirdest light I’ve seen in a minute.

We have HUGE plans for this space. This is going to be our selling point we hope. Think luxurious, spa-like giant bathroom that has no closets in here.

Basement

A GIANT chunk of money is going to be going in this space.

The fact that the ceiling is open is also a reason for our decision to go ahead and gut the bathrooms since the plumbing will be way easier to get to before drywall is put up.

We plan to add a full bathroom, one or two bedrooms (depending on budget) and then adding a large open family game room/media room space down here.

This means that if you have 2 families that vacationed together, there is room for everyone to spread out when they start getting on each other’s nerves.

Like I said earlier, we have a very specific look that we are going for in this cabin so the first thing we did was pay someone to render the exterior so we could get a feel for it.

This is way more in line with what we are thinking. The black home with a black metal roof and then the horizontal wood slats.

The slats may go away if we choose to add 2 bedrooms in the basement so that you can easily walk out and have a covered patio space under the upper deck as well.

We will be doing a lot of this work ourselves, but since we are 2 hours away, we will also be having the help of some contractors and we are STOKED.

I’m also going to be giving out discount codes to my email list from time to time, so make sure you’re signed up for that below!