Welcome to our European-inspired home gym in the middle of rural New Jersey. Are you more surprised that a home gym can be European-inspired or that part of New Jersey is rural? New Jersey is used to being the subject of many jokes, but this home gym we created is no joke. It’s our new favorite place! We converted a room in our 250-year-old Carriage House into a European-inspired home gym because that made the most sense, right now, for how we could utilize this space. It started out looking like this. Then we made it look worse when we decided the stone walls needed repointing because no one wants…

I love when old pieces of furniture have a backstory and this reclaimed wood bench we just made has the neatest origin story. The benchtop came out of a 250-year-old carriage house where it had been a windowsill for possibly centuries. A windowsill! Whoever thought a windowsill would have the starring role in a reclaimed bench story? It wasn’t on my bingo card, that’s for sure. Did you notice that I used the words “possibly centuries” to describe how old the windowsill was? Gold stars for paying attention. It’s tricky to put an exact date on lumber in this situation. I do have a few clues. According to our local…

It took five solid weeks of near daily work to complete one portion of our stone Carriage House restoration. All of that work was done on the walls. We didn’t even touch the floor besides cleaning it up. Five weeks to redo four walls. That’s some messed up math. I think it’s way past time for the grand reveal. Here’s a photo taken approximately 30 minutes into the restoration. To be fair, it looks more like destruction than restoration. It has to get worse before it gets better. You can see the potential, right? No? Well, I don’t blame you. This was definitely a squint and “trust the process” kind…

Plain to pizazz! Let me show you how to easily add a copper accent to exterior lighting that will take those lights of yours to the next level. All you need is a little hammered copper paint. Any copper paint would probably do, but I’ve been using a quart of Rust-oleum’s hammered copper paint on everything I can get my hands on. It has a gorgeous finished texture courtesy of some magic I don’t quite understand the hammered effect. Plus, I tend to think brushed-on paint lasts longer than spray paint when it comes to outdoor applications. Here’s how the porch light on our Carriage House started. I bought it,…

I have an epic stone fireplace makeover to share with you. The fireplace makeover to end all makeovers. Nothing will top this. If you can’t tell, the whole reason I have a blog is to be able to make ridiculous declarations. Haha! But this stone fireplace makeover IS really, really good. As is the running theme with this fixer upper of ours, most of our makeovers involve removing the unnecessary layers to reveal the beauty underneath. The unnecessary layer in this story is the two inches of lime mortar that was skimmed over the fireplace. Eventually, given enough time and exposure, the lime mortar will start to flake off the…

Yes, there can be wood in a stone wall. Go figure. We’re turning our 250-year-old carriage house with stone walls into a gym. The stone needs to be repointed (outer layer of lime mortar removed and replaced) and you might be surprised at how much woodwork has been required in the course of this project. Nothing is ever simple with old houses. I should put that saying on a T-shirt. Might make enough to buy myself a cup of coffee. Where are you likely to find wood in a stone wall? Nothing would surprise me (also a great t-shirt slogan) but we’ve found wood most commonly in four different places…

The messy middle of any project, but especially converting a stone carriage house into a gym, feels exceptionally long. Sometimes it actually is long. I realize time is annoyingly relative. A long time for you might be nothing to me and vice versa. But trust me when I say that when the hours turn into days then weeks of repointing stone walls, you’re allowed to say and feel that the messy middle of this project is taking way too long. I don’t make the rules. I do love to whine about them though. Here’s where we started with the stone carriage house gym conversion. Yes, there is a fireplace wall…

Let me share our plan to convert a 250-year-old Carriage House into a gym…a plan we came up with AFTER the hammers came out and the dust started flying. When most people are spontaneous, they go out for ice cream. When we are spontaneous, we embark on back-breaking work to repoint the stone walls of a Carriage House. I think we’re doing spontaneity wrong. Here’s the current exterior of our Carriage House. You can be horrified by the before pictures of the roof here and marvel at how paint transformed this building here. Having a space to exercise at home, specifically to lift weights, was something we’d been contemplating for…