A woman and her father spent $80,000 turning a Texas house listed as a teardown into a cozy cottage. Take a look inside.

Ali Michel found her way into interior design when she bought her first home.

Michel, 27, has always loved homes and interior spaces, and she even considered studying architecture in college. Instead, she pursued chemical engineering, thinking it could lead to a stable career faster.

After she finished her degree in 2020, Michel moved to St. Louis, where she and her dad purchased a property together when she was just 22.

"We bought my first house together," she said. "We renovated it. I was like, 'Oh, this is what I should have been doing all along.'"

After falling in love with the renovation process while working on the home, Michel decided to make interior design her career. She secured a remote internship with Living Oak Interior Design and, in 2022, moved to Austin to work for the company full time. Now, she's a lead designer for the firm.

In 2024, Michel fell in love with a 1930s cottage in Austin.

Michel had been in Austin for about two years when she started thinking about buying a home.

"I was already living in this neighborhood," Michel said. "I loved it. I knew I would want a home in the area eventually."

When she saw a 1930s cottage for sale in the area, she decided to check it out with her dad. The two-bed, one-bath property was about 1,150 square feet.

"The house was modernized, but it was being advertised as a teardown," she said, meaning the listing suggested a buyer might tear it down and rebuild because parts of the home, like the flooring, had seen better days.

"We toured it, and I was like, 'This is not a teardown. It just really needs to be renovated,'" Michel said.

She said she immediately thought the house was beautiful. She loved the layout, as it had no hallways and maximized the existing space. She also loved the home's green exterior, the glimpses of hardwood floors she could see throughout the house, and the fact that she could instantly tell how much potential it had.

There was also a separate guesthouse on the property that could be turned into a rental space to bring in additional income for the owner.

"When I walked through it, I could just picture what it should look like," she said.

Michel bought the house so she and her dad could transform it together.

Michel bought the property in October 2024 with the intention of renovating it with her dad. The duo hoped to do as much of the work as possible on their own because they had a smaller budget than Michel was used to for an entire house.

"The budget was $80,000 to renovate the entire house, which is what we usually spend on one kitchen for clients," she said. "That was a really tight budget."

Still, Michel said she couldn't wait to work on her own space, even if it would be challenging.

"It's hard designing your own space when you're an interior designer because you see so many cool things every day," Michel said. "I just wanted to do almost too many things."

"It's a fun opportunity because you don't have a client telling you no, and you don't have to convince anyone else of anything," she added.

They began the renovations as soon as possible.

Michel made the most of the inspection and bidding time, creating her vision for the space.

"I started with the design," she said. "We do renderings in our design firm, so I could visualize it all before we started."

She also bounced ideas off her colleagues at Living Oak as she put together her plans for the house.

By the time the purchase was finalized, Michel and her dad were ready to go.

"We demoed the day we closed," Michel said.

When Michel bought the house, it had a separate kitchen and dining space.

"The kitchen and dining room were divided by a wall with a doorway," Michel said.

She felt the setup didn't make the most of either space, so Michel and her dad decided to combine them into one big room.

They removed the doorway separating the two areas, and she gained more space at the back by closing up a built-in pantry and a closet.

"Next to the laundry room was open shelving, and then across from that was actually a built-in closet in my bedroom," she said. "It's an inset closet, so by removing that and removing that pantry, you could push the kitchen back a little bit."

The extra kitchen room was worth it, even if she lost a bit of closet space.

She turned to Ikea for her kitchen cabinets.

Michel and her dad prioritized storage in the kitchen, lining much of the room with cabinetry on each side.

Since she was working with a tighter budget, Michel decided to turn to Ikea to save money.

She and her dad bought Ikea cabinetry for about $4,000 and Semihandmade doors, designed to fit Ikea cabinets, for around $8,000. They spray-painted the doors olive green and used brass hardware to give them a high-end look, which cost about $1,000.

The total cost for the cabinetry was about $13,000, a bargain compared to the cost of many custom cabinets.

"They're just really customizable and probably saved us $60,000 with how much cabinetry we had," Michel said.

Bench seating also allowed Michel to take advantage of as much space as she could in the kitchen.

In the front area of the kitchen, Michel and her dad created more built-in storage, adding a bench seat with cabinets beneath it. The dining table sat in front of the bench, and a bookshelf with a ladder sat across from the table.

Michel told Business Insider that she loves bench seating in kitchens and often incorporates it into thehomes she designs. It felt even more important in her own house because she was trying to make the most of the smaller space.

"There's no way that we could have really fit a table that big, with seating on both sides and the bookshelves," she said. "To be able to walk through that space, it felt like the only option."

Michel could have created a smaller seating area, but it was important to her to have a table where she could seat large parties and host game nights.

She also built her table herself to ensure it fit the kitchen.

Michel often builds her own furniture, and since she had specific needs for her table, she knew she wanted to make it herself.

"I looked at a lot of vintage tables, and they were all either like $4,000 or just weren't the right size, so I decided to just build one that looked like it, which was a great solution," she said.

The table features scalloped detailing that coordinates with design choices throughout the home.

The bookshelf was also a priority for Michel in the kitchen and dining room.

Like her kitchen cabinets, Michel found her bookshelves at Ikea.

"Those are all Billy bookshelves," she said. "I loved the idea of reading on the dining bench and that being kind of a library vibe."

Having a bookshelf in the space makes it feel like a natural place to read.

"It just feels cozy and classic, and it has so much storage," Michel said. "I have always wanted a library ladder, too, so I built that to go with it."

A new oven made a surprisingly big impact in the kitchen.

When the kitchen was finished, Michel realized she hated the oven that came with the house, as it didn't sit flush against the counters.

"I was sitting there with the finished kitchen and was like, 'Oh my gosh, if it's another $700 to replace this oven, that is worth it,' because I hated it so much," she said.

She ended up replacing it with an oven that sat more flush with the wall and didn't have a back lip. She was able to add an oven rack above it, which coordinated with the one on the bookshelf nearby. It also let the vent hood shine, which was one of her favorite parts of the kitchen and a bit of a splurge for the house.

"I drew that out, and I gave it to a local cabinetmaker," she said. "They made it for me, and it was insane. I think it was about $1,500, but that was really worth it to me."

A curved archway separates the living room and kitchen.

When Michel and her dad built the new kitchen, it created an archway. Michel drew inspiration from an existing structure in the house for its unique shape.

"I have a wood-paneled bedroom with built-in shelves, and the built-in shelves have that curvy detail," Michel said. "There's a scalloping, and then in the actual bookshelf, there's a curvy detail that matches what I put into the archway."

The tie to the home's historic charm in the new archway created continuity.

The custom fireplace had a unique shape as well.

"Originally, it was square, and it was just brick," Michel said of the fireplace when she bought the house. "During our inspection period, a huge, huge — like, my height — crack appeared in the living room wall. It turns out that the fireplace was sinking."

"The previous owners had to put metal framing underneath the fireplace, which meant that we could put whatever weight we wanted to on it, but it also meant that the original brick on the fireplace cracked," she added. "So we had to put something over it."

However, to keep the foundation strong, the fireplace would need to be completely surrounded or removed.

Michel wanted the fireplace to have a curved look, much like her kitchen's vent hood.

"I almost wanted it to look like a pizza oven," Michel said. "That's the closest inspo photo I could find."

She hired professionals to make her dream come to life, overseeing the design so it fit her vision. The team broke limestone into pieces and then finished them with the German schmear technique to give the fireplace a natural yet elegant finish.

The duo tried to balance 1930s charm and modern touches in the bathroom.

Michel and her dad installed shiplap walls in the bathroom, adding dimension to the space, and painted them a soft blue.

For the floors, she drew inspiration from the original tile hidden in the bathroom.

"I really wanted to do a mosaic because during demo, we found little hex tiles there, which are pretty similar to penny tiles," Michel said. "To bring back that charm, I wanted to add back in the penny tile mosaic. I drew it out, laid it all out with my contractor, and added a border. I love how that turned out."

Affordable but luxe-looking furniture brightened the space.

Michel kept the bathroom's original cast-iron tub, and she turned to affordable retailers for the other pieces in the space.

Her white cabinet is from Ikea, and she swapped the hardware for brass detailing to make it feel cohesive with the rest of the house.

"The vanity is from Home Depot, and I think that's a really cool find because it looks vintage and came with the marble top," Michel said.

A scalloped mirror from Amazon completed the room's chic look.

The primary bedroom layout changed slightly during the renovation, and Michel added some color.

Since Michel wanted to prioritize the kitchen space, the closet in the primary bedroom was downsized.

However, she still had plenty of space for her bed, nightstands, and dressers by the time the renovation was done.

Michel wanted her bedroom to have striped walls, selecting a blue that felt cohesive with the bathroom's blue walls. Instead of using wallpaper, she painted the stripes herself.

"Wallpaper was going to be out of my price range, so I had a crazy day where I was like, 'Oh, I'm just going to paint all of this this weekend,'" she said. "It was a ton of work, but I think it turned out so cool."

She also kept the integrity of the second bedroom, which had wood walls.

The wood-paneled space can function as a bedroom, but Michel uses it as a study.

She kept it almost exactly as it was when she bought the house, highlighting the multiple sets ofbuilt-in bookshelves with green paint on the trim.

"We didn't touch that room at all except for the green trim and flooring," Michel said.

Michel took her time sourcing furniture for her home.

Michel's home is filled with a mix of vintage furniture pieces, items she makes, and more affordable finds.

"The dressers and apothecary tables are vintage, but I make a lot of stuff, too," she said. "I made the bench by my front door, and my dining table."

"A lot of my rugs were from Facebook Marketplace because I had very specific ones I wanted picked out, and then I just searched on Marketplace till I found it," Michel said. "A lot of the art was from my grandparents or from vintage auctions or small artist prints."

Despite the considerable amount of work they did, the renovation was completed in only three months.

"We worked every weekend on it, and then our general contractor was working during the week," Michel said of how they pulled off the project so quickly.

The contractor handled all the plumbing and electrical work, and Michel and her dad were able to build their work around that.

"We looked at their budget and picked out the things that we could DIY ourselves to get to the budget we needed, and that worked well," she said.

Michel was able to bring her exact vision to life in the space.

Michel said it was fun to design the house with a bit of a feminine flair, and she's doing the same with the guesthouse, which she and her dad are now renovating.

"We're designing the guest cottage right now, and the cabinets are light blue," she said. "I'm putting in a mauve banquette. I'm getting to do a lot of fun things that I wouldn't get to do if I were thinking about a long-term renter or a man living there."

"With a lot of our clients, they're couples, and you definitely have to take in both people's design styles," she continued. "Not many people have just a very whimsical style."

Having a clear vision can help you if you're renovating your own home, Michel told Business Insider.

Michel recommends doing a lot of research before diving into a home renovation, particularly if you want the aesthetic to match when the home was built.

"I think it's good to gather a lot of inspiration photos, both of what you like, but also what the house may have looked like in its era, and then seeing what the common themes are and putting together a list of the common themes, and go from there," she said.

"If you're pinning a lot of sofas that have pattern, pick that as your focal point for the room," she added. "Or if you're seeing a lot of 1930s homes have a certain wall treatment, and you love that, and that's coming up a lot in the images you're drawn to, start with that."

Michel also said to remember you don't have to go with cookie-cutter options if they don't suit you.

"You can really customize anything, especially if you're working with an interior designer, if that's in the budget," she said. "I don't think many people realize that until they either are in the industry or are working with the designer, so anything is really possible."