The Case of the Closet Mystery
Old houses are full of mysteries and today’s post is about the Case of the Closet Mystery. Mysteries are not to be confused with surprises. Surprises are unpleasant discoveries that, without fail, pop up every time there is a project or home repair. Surprises inevitably result in any combination of the following: more time spent on a project, more money spent on a project, more Tylenol taken to get through a project, more trips to Home Depot, more grey hair. Mysteries are just things around the house that make you wonder why something looks or operates a certain way. One of the things I’ve wondered about frequently is the closet…
Removing Window Decals
Many home makeovers and renovations involve adding things to a home to give it character or function. I’ve spent the last six months removing things from our Colonial Farmhouse. Stencils, wallpaper and window decals have been the worst offenders. Removing these items has let the home’s existing character shine through. Let’s talk about the fun job of removing window decals. The windows on our living room fireplace wall were adorned with colorful, flowery window decals. Truthfully, I didn’t loathe these window decals. There were so many other things in this home that were much more offensive to the eyes. I also knew there would be a tradeoff when I removed…
Back Staircase Before and After
Our Colonial Farmhouse has a front staircase and a back staircase. The front staircase has gorgeous trim work and is located in the center of our home. The stairs made an appearance in my music room post. Then there is the back staircase. Oh, the back staircase. These stairs are tucked away in a far corner of our home and are a shortcut from the kitchen up to the bedrooms. When we bought the Colonial Farmhouse the back staircase was steep, narrow and ugly. The stairs weren’t inherently ugly. It was more bad bridesmaid dress kind of ugly. However, I saw the potential in those stairs. If fact, it was…
Navy Blue Sunporch Reveal
One of the most charming exterior features of our Colonial Farmhouse is the sunporch. There’s just something about a sunporch that gives an old house some added character. It’s probably all the windows. Here’s a refresher on what the exterior of our Colonial Farmhouse looks like with the sunporch. Ignore the landscaping for now. This is an improvement from when we moved in. From the inside of the house, there is nothing charming about our sunporch. Zip. Zero. Nada. It has cracked windows. The windows that aren’t cracked look like someone let a toddler finger paint with window glazing. Some of the window grids are askew. There are rotting tongue…
Music Room Before and After
I’m not sure if I’ve ever done a proper ‘before and after’ room post because that’s just not how I roll, but there’s a first time for everything! Today I’m going to show you pictures of our music room before and after because I’m at a stopping point in this space. Basically, I’ve called it ‘good enough’ for now. Or maybe ‘much better than before’ and I’ve moved on to other projects. Yes, there are still things to do in the music room. Will they get done? Definitely. Probably. Let’s not hold our breath. Last week I showed you my piano harp art. The piano harp art may be the…
The Surprising Way We Cleared 75 Feet of Bushes
When we bought the Colonial Farmhouse it wasn’t visible from the road. This is saying a lot about the amount of overgrowth happening on the front of our property because the Colonial Farmhouse sits only 20-feet from the road. It should be visible to the naked eye. To further illustrate how overgrown the bushes had become, we didn’t need window treatments. No one driving by at night could peer in the front windows – at least not on the main level. I don’t even have a good picture of the overgrowth because there was nothing photogenic about the situation. Here’s this one though… Can you see the road? Or the…
The 1971 MLS Listing For Our Colonial Farmhouse
I rarely answer my phone for numbers I don’t recognize. Half the time I don’t answer my phone for numbers I DO recognize. Therefore, it must have been fate calling one sweltering summer night when my phone rang and I decided to answer. After all, every once in awhile I do need to make sure I remember how. The person who sold us our home was on the other end of the line. He had found the 1971 MLS Listing for our Colonial Farmhouse in some papers he was sorting through and called to see if I wanted it. Do I need air to breathe? Do I need shoes that are…
Our Colonial Farmhouse Dining Room
Today is an exciting day. You get to see where I eat breakfast! And lunch. And dinner. Sometimes a snack or…three. That’s right, it is Colonial Farmhouse Dining Room Day. If you are new here, two months ago we bought a really, really old house. Old houses are quirky. Ours is no exception. This house has no formal or informal foyer space, which would drive me nuts if I didn’t have a thousand other things that were already doing that. When you walk through the front door of our Colonial Farmhouse, you are walking into the original room of this house (circa late 1700s). The previous owners used it as…
Clearing a Sight Line to the Pool
One of the perks of buying a really old home is that the landscaping is mature. But with every rule there’s always an exception, right? In the case of our colonial farmhouse, our landscaping had ventured into a realm past mature. I’m not sure how to say this delicately…so I won’t. Every single tree, bush, shrub, weed, flower, vine and blade of grass on the property was overgrown when we moved in. Not just overgrown, but out-of-control. Not just out-of-control, but rapidly taking over anything and everything in its path. It crossed my mind that if I stood still for more than a minute, the Virginia Creeper vine would probably…
My Dining Table Is Now a Coffee Table
Do you remember when I bought a $9.60 round dining table at the Habitat Restore and making over that table almost sent me over the edge? That was fun. Fast forward several months and the scars from the traumatic table makeover experience were healing nicely. Then I realized why that table might have been donated to the Habitat Restore in the first place. The top kept coming loose from the base. I’d tighten it and then people would put their elbows on the table (!) and eventually the top would loosen up again. The solution was clear. Either I could teach my family manners or we could stop eating all…
