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historic house

House Progress

Our Kitchen Reveal!

WOW WOW WOW I cannot believe it’s finally time to reveal the completed kitchen space with you all! It has been a long nine months since we first became aware of the water leak in our kitchen and began making a plan to renovate (more on that here).

First, a quick walk down memory lane. These photos are so bizarre to me, after four years of living with this kitchen, it’s an unrecognizable room to me now.

This was the original plan, I always find it helpful to put my ideas in one place so that I can get a visual of how everything is working together. Now that it’s done, it’s interesting to see how this compares to the reality!

I pulled inspiration from historic kitchens like The Elms in Newport, and Biltmore House in Asheville. I knew I wanted to nod to the history of our home c.1895, but obviously couldn’t take that too literally. I made tile selections based on what tile houses had at that time period, and salvaged antique light fixtures. I wanted it to be not a true “restoration,” but a historic-ish rehabilitation.

We worked with a contractor who we loved, and was willing to go above and beyond with some of our asks. The biggest thing was the flooring. I studied historic floor patterns, and fell in love with this particular pattern that of course doesn’t come pre-made. I also noted many Victorian-era homes the tile had a contrasting border that went around the room. We chose a one inch hexagon tile that came in 1x2ft sheets. We ordered in two separate colors, and the tile crew did an incredible job laying the black border, and then filling in the rest of the floor with white tile. I then carefully measured and counted where exactly I wanted each black tile motif and marked it with a pencil. The crew was so gracious to carefully remove each one inch tile that needed to be replaced and switch it with the correct color. It was a huge ask, and the whole thing took over a week, but I am so pleased with the result.

For reference, this is the same angle before!

I thoughtfully decided to remove all of our upper cabinets so that we could run the tile all the way up to the ceiling. Traditional white subway tile is always a classic, no matter what trends come and go. With the addition of a bookshelf to store our daily dishes, one shelf made from a board from our home’s interior, and a large hutch with baskets, I have more storage now than I did previously with the row of cabinets up top.

I originally intended to use an antique sink, and I coulnd’t find one that met the specifics I needed, so I ended up ordering a simple black undermount sink, which I love. I think it makes the counter top (Negresco Granite, by the way, the poor man’s soapstone) longer since it doesn’t break it up visually, and it allows the gorgeous faucet to shine. A win-win!

Although we technically lost square footage by closing in the laundry, it feels more spacious. With the closing in of the laundry room, I knew we would lose some light because we would be closing in two windows, so I wanted a door that would let some light pass through. I found a french door on my local buy nothing group, and it needed some work to make it shine, I stripped the paint and stained it to make it look and feel older. Lace curtains on the inside obstruct the view of the washer and dryer while still lighting the stove area. With the walled in laundry room, it also gave us a little alcove for a breakfast nook.

I found the bench and the chairs on Facebook Marketplace, and the table for sale on the side of the road in my neighborhood. It’s a high quality antique I bought for $20! I sewed some cushion covers myself, which I do not recommend if you want to keep your sanity, but was helpful in saving several hundred dollars.

The only thing that was moved in the layout aside from building a wall around the laundry room was the stove. It works really well here, so I am happy with the decision to move it. Plus, it allows for our antique worktable in the center of the room. We purchased it at an antique store, and it is quite literally the most expensive piece of furniture I’ve ever purchased, but it was absolutely worth it. It helps bring a feeling of antiquity to the space.

We painted the pantry fridge cabinetry Sherwin Williams Billiard Green, to match the fridge. Which, by the way we love. It comes in several different colorways, and you can switch out the front panels to match your style. We also bought a dishwasher from the same line, but Ethan made the panel for it himself. We’ve had the fridge six months now and really like it (how’s that for an adult-sounding sentence?)

The paint color and all the trim and cabinets is Clare Turbinado, and the walls are Clare Timeless. I was super impressed with the coverage and love the colors! Of course I looked to historic house museum kitchens for color inspiration. Drawer pulls are these from House of Antique Hardware in unlaquered brass. They are already starting to get a slight patina as we’ve been using them, and they’re a nice solid quality. For the knobs I used simple wooden knobs and painted them to match. I also placed them about 1/3 of the way down the cabinet rather than in the corner, which I’ve seen in more English kitchen design.

I had grand plans of building my own replica of a light fixture for the island, and I eventually just ordered this one, and have no regrets. All the other light fixtures are antique or thrifted.

I really had this vision of an upstairs/downstairs vibe. Historically, “downstairs” would refer to workrooms, or servant’s living and working quarters in grand manors. Usually much simpler in their design than the upstairs public rooms. If you watch tv shows like Downton Abbey or The Gilded Age, you’ll notice this. I wanted to give a nod to the time period when kitchens were not the entertaining center that they are today but more the workhorse of the home, while mixing it with some glam that would have been reserved for the upper rooms. Hence upstairs/downstairs. It’s the mix of simple ladderback rush chairs with brass faucets.

This being the first kitchen I’ve ever done a single thing to, I learned a LOT. Made some compromises and didn’t get everything I wished I could have added (hello very normal budget), but I’m very proud of what we created. We are so so happy with it, and so so happy to be completely finished. It’s far and away the nicest room we have in our house now, which just means we have a lot more work to do.

That’s all for today, friends. Have a fabulous day!

September 26, 2023 by
House Progress

We’re Renovating Our Kitchen!

Eeek! I’ve been waiting four years to say those words out loud. And honestly I thought it would be a few more years before I did. We had plans to work on some rooms downstairs this year that would be smaller budget items.

But then a leak in the kitchen ruined the subfloor under our kitchen cabinets, and our plans changed. Due to extensive water damage, we are having to replace floors, cabinets, countertops, etc. So since a kitchen renovation was on the long term horizon anyway, we are diving in and going for it. It’s been pretty stressful up until this point, trying to work through finding the source of the water (it took three different specialists!), and trying to get contractor recommendations on an unplanned timeline. On top of things, our fridge died. It’s like the kitchen just decided it was her time to go, and she all went at once!

But now that we have wrapped our heads around the initial shock and urgency behind the situation, I’m getting excited about the design.

Our kitchen is currently a timestamp of the year 1997. The kitchen that was put in almost 30 years ago is dated, but I’m grateful to have had solid wood quality cabinets that have lasted. They’ve served us well until this point.

The only thing I did in this space was paint the floors before we moved in. I’m super excited to have the kitchen feel a bit more like the home it resides in, a Victorian built in 1895.

Of course we won’t have a truly period appropriate kitchen, we believe our home was built without plumbing, so there goes that, but I don’t want visitors to walk into the kitchen and be able to pinpoint an exact date. I’ll be using modern reproductions of historic materials, and adding free standing furniture pieces to contribute to an unfitted look. (Fitted kitchens where the cabinets are mounted to the wall were popularized in the mid twentieth century, whereas before that kitchens were a collection of different tables and shelving pieces.)

I plan to find salvaged and antique pieces to help contribute to the overall feel of the room, so although I have some photos listed below, they are general ideas and the actual execution will depend on what I’m able to find.

I’m calling it the historic-ish kitchen, because that’s just what it’ll be…ish. I’ll be sure to share updates here as things get rolling (demo is happening soon!), but if you want more up to date information, be sure to follow along on Instagram where I share much more in real time.

Now, I’ve got to get back to scrolling Facebook Marketplace incessantly in between planning the next antique store to check out, but I will keep you updated as soon as I have more! That’s all for today, friends! Have a wonderful day!

January 31, 2023 by
House Progress

The Power of Paint (A Phase One Bathroom Makeover)

Hi there! Thanks so much for stopping by today! Boy oh boy, do I have a before and after for you today! First, let’s get the backstory. We bought our home from a realtor who had purchased the house at auction following a foreclosure. That realtor listed it for sale, but went back and forth about whether he wanted to flip it himself. When we bought it, there were a few random half hearted attempts at restoration work. One random door frame stripped of paint, carpeting partially pulled up, wallpaper torn off in just a small section of a room. That was the case in the room I’m going to show you guys today.

So the upstairs of our house has three bedrooms and a full bathroom. When we did our first big amount of work in the months before we moved in, the only room we touched upstairs was the first bedroom for our son, leaving the bathroom and two bedrooms untouched. The house was built in 1895 with no indoor plumbing, and therefore no bathrooms. I’m not sure at what point it was added, but at sometime, a bathroom was poorly shoved into what would have once been a spacious hallway between the three upstairs bedrooms. This leaves us a bit perplexed as to what to even do with the bathroom, because the floorplan of the second story is a bit wonky. I’d love to someday see that turned back into a hallway, but alas, we need more than the outhouse that was originally here. Knowing that this bathroom was going to involve some structural changes, and that our needs in the house/bedrooms may change as we have more kids etc., the upstairs bathroom was literally at the bottom of the priority list. Out of sight, out of mind.

Until, that is, we moved the master bedroom upstairs. Then all of a sudden this upstairs bathroom was a little more on the forefront of my mind. I lovingly nicknamed this room “the dungeon bathroom,” because I was so scared to use it. Everything was fully functional, but the carpet (yep, this thing had carpet) that had been in there had been waterlogged and soaked through the subfloor. My brother actually pulled up the carpet and old subfloor and laid down new plywood. And that’s the extent of work we had done in the dungeon bathroom. But now our bedroom was right next to it, and it was a pain to go all the way down the creaky stairs right outside of our son’s room in the event that I needed to go to the restroom in the middle of the night. So I knew I needed to do something. But again, of all the “big projects” we have planned for the next couple years, this one is quite literally the last one on the list. So I decided to give it a little cosmetic facelift, a Phase One makeover to tide us over until we would eventually remodel this bathroom. So, without further ado, here is the dungeon bathroom.

For days, I worked during naptime and after my son went to bed to scrape wallpaper. Most of the wall had two layers of paper, but in some areas, I found four different papers laid on top of each other. It was grueling. I used a handheld steamer and a wallpaper scraper and would work in tiny six inch square sections. It took a long time, and my arms arched.

As I scraped the wallpaper, I found that some of the drywall had been damaged, and had simply been disguised by the paper. That meant we had to do some patch work on the walls. I had to sand it all down to get the gunky wallpaper paste completely gone. All of this was before I ever started painting!

I originally planned on only using products that I had on hand to do this bathroom, but I ended up purchasing the wall color because I didn’t have as much paint in the garage as I thought I did. The color is Behr French Colony, and I think it’s a lovely blue-grey.

A shower curtain over the shower stall helps disguise that whole lotta ugly.

I also painted the plywood subfloor using some paint I had on hand. The floor is painted with Behr Tanglewood.

As you can see, I didn’t change any of the fixtures, the only thing I changed was paint. Isn’t that crazy?! Paint is so powerful!

Because this room is directly next to our bedroom that’s painted such a bold color, I was really concerned about how these two colors would look when coming up the stairs and they were both visible. I think they go complement each other nicely. (Bedroom is Behr Thermal.)

The 1920’s light fixtures stayed, and I think they look so much more elegant now without the dated wallpaper.

All of this to say this: just don’t wait. I would have loathed this bathroom another two to three years until it finally was time to gut it. Instead, I can enjoy the space, and it doesn’t give me the heebee-jeebees every time I go in there! I think there is power in a can of paint, and so much power in doing a “Phase One” project, something that is just enough to tide you over while you’re waiting for the big project.

Before we go, here’s one more before and after from the same angle. I can’t even believe the only difference is paint.

Alright guys, that’s all for today. Have a fabulous day!

January 5, 2020 by
DIY Projects, House Progress

House Progress – Our Front Stairs

Hi guys! Today I wanted to share a quick update on a section of our house that isn’t finished yet, but looks waaaaayyyyyy better than it did before, and I’m happy to live with it as-is for a while.

Our front staircase is one of the original features from 1895. It is tight, narrow, and has a very abrupt turn which makes moving furniture upstairs quite tricky. Just as a reminder, this is what it looked like when we moved in:

Looking at that photo is absolutely crazy to me because it looks nothing like this anymore! Within the first few days, we pulled out the carpet, and a few weeks later while we were working daily, we painted the walls. But for a couple months, we hadn’t done anything with the stairs themselves. And then our son was born, and we were a little slow to getting things done, so it took a while before I got around to painting.

I decided to paint the stairs, back in December, I believe, but I never really shared the full details. 

And now they’re black and white and I’m totally in love! They make the space feel so much bigger and brighter, even though it really is a tiny staircase.

Pardon the glaringly bright sun, I was just too excited to wait to take these pictures!

The color is Behr’s Totally Black, with Ultra Pure White (the color you get without any mixing – straight from the can) trim, and Polar Bear on the walls. We painted the staircase with a semigloss finish, which I would not normally recommend on a high traffic area, but we do plan on adding a runner down the stairs for comfort, so they will not be getting much foot traffic at all once the runner is installed.

Here you can see an unedited look (nope, I didn’t clean up for y’all) at the stairway into the rest of the house. So aside from the runner, we do plan on doing a few other things. The light fixture will be changed, of course, but we’re also thinking about a fun statement tile to replace the parquet flooring. For now though, it’s a small makeover to tide us over until we get to the real thing!

So, if you can pardon my photography skills, that’s the latest little update. Projects are going pretty slowly around here, but as soon as we get back at it, I’ll keep y’all updated. 🙂

That’s all for today, friends. Have a fabulous day!

 

March 18, 2019 by
DIY Projects, House Progress

Status Update: End of 2018

Hi friends! I’m so glad you’re here! If you’ve been following along on our house progress on Instagram then you probably have seen lots of little projects we’ve been working on as we’ve been doing them. These days, it’s a bit easier for me to do a quick update there than on here, just because life with a newborn is busy! In case you haven’t been following along, here’s the deal with this post. My  Status Updates (Check out the first one here or the second one here) are a series of unedited, real life photos rounding up the entire process of what we’ve accomplished thus far.

At the time of my last update, we had not yet moved into the house. We have since moved, had a baby, and continued working. To say things are a bit crazy would be an understatement. We are definitely still in “fixer upper mode,” when looking at any room in the house, there are at least five undone projects that come to mind. So, bearing all of that in mind, let’s have a look at what our house looks like right now.

The Foyer 

We lived with completely undone stairs for a little while before I went ahead and painted the stairs. This is the view from our front door, and it’s a very tight space. Painting the stairs and the walls made it look a little bit more open though. Still to do in this space: replace the light fixture, add trim along the ceiling going up the stairs, add a runner up the stairs, do something about the floors (we aren’t sure what the plan is…there are no original hardwoods, so we might lay a statement tile. We are still in the very early planning stages on that particular project), and lay a transition piece between this an the living room floor.

The Living Room

This room is mostly “done” with the exception of the transitions on the floor from one section to the next, and replacing the light fixture (we haven’t done that in any area of the house yet). If you look closely in the first picture, you can see a thin cable running along the floor. It’s something for the internet that needs to be run underneath the house. I also want to replace 99% of the furniture here, but that’s not necessarily considered a project.

The Dining Room

The dining room is the most embarrassing in its current state. It took me a month to clear the moving boxes from here, we had no table for two months, and Ethan still has a makeshift desk sitting in the corner (the room that will be the office upstairs is completely undone). We don’t have chairs or any other dining room furniture, but it’ll get there. The fireplace has been painted, and everything else is complete, with the exception of caulking along the ceiling trim.

The Bedroom

Our room has a ways to go, but since our son is still sleeping in here in the bassinet (not pictured), everything is temporarily out of place. The rocker will eventually go back into the nursery once he starts sleeping through the night, and once the extra furniture is out of there, I’ll feel more inspired to decorate and finish things in here. We need to add some trim pieces in here, and add a light fixture. This room doesn’t have an overhead fixture at all, so it’ll be a bit more labor intensive than fixtures in the other rooms.

The Bathroom 

The bathroom is small and hard to photograph, but the only thing completed in here is the cabinetry has been painted this emerald green color. As you can see, we need to replace the light switch box, which we will do in the entire house all at once. We replaced the outlets, but we haven’t done the light switches yet.

The Nursery 

I did a whole post about our son’s room, because it’s the only room that’s “done.” It actually still needs a new light fixture and light switch box, but other than that it is done. If you missed that post, you can check out more photos of it here.

We haven’t done anything else on the outside just yet, but we do have some major plans for that yellow house. (Hint – it won’t be yellow forever). We’re at a point now where we have to slowly plan things out. In part, because we spent all the money we had earmarked for house projects when we bought the house, but also because things move at a much slower pace with a newborn around. When I was 8 months pregnant, I was working 12 hour days in the house, and people thought that was crazy. It may have been, but now I can only work in one or two hour increments during naptime. So, in 2019, we’ll be moving a bit slower. Anywho, that’s the update for today. This house has come a looooooong way since our closing date, but she still has a long way to go before she is everything we envision. That’s all for today, friends. Have a fabulous day!

December 27, 2018 by
House Progress

Status Update: The First Weekend

Hey y’all! Thanks for stopping by! I’m starting a new series called “Status Update” today. The point of this series is going to be to recap the small things we’ve accomplished over a period of time. This isn’t going to be one tutorial or reveal, it’s not going to be for decorated rooms, it’s just going to be a gauge of progress on the house, and all the random things we’ve worked on.

If you haven’t seen the before pictures, you may want to start here because it has come a long way already. This was our first weekend in the house, so all of what we’ve done so far has been accomplished within a few days. We’re anxiously trying to get things done, as we’re under pretty tight time constraints (we plan to move in at the end of the month, so there are several projects that need to be done ASAP).

We closed on the house on Tuesday, and got to work on Wednesday. We started in the living room, which looked like this:

The carpets were infested with the smell of cat urine (#nevergettingacat). We rolled them up and got them out, which was a sweaty and incredibly stinky task.

We then started pulling down the upholstery on the walls, which also smelled of cat urine. It was stapled to the wall behind the trim and baseboards, so we ended up having to remove all the trim. By the end of Friday night, we had all the wall upholstery down, and pulled out the staples in the wall, which wasn’t easy.

Saturday we got up bright and early ready for a long work day. Ethan wanted to start with some plumbing issues, so while he replaced a pipe on the exterior of the house and a piece on the inside of the toilet, I started tearing down the textured wallpaper on the ceiling of the dining room.

The wallpaper on the ceiling in the living room and dining room both needed to come down, but it was so difficult. It actually still isn’t 100% done. We tried several different methods, including water and vinegar with a scraper, scoring the ceiling with a knife and pulling it off dry, and sanding it off with a sander. Eventually, we ended up getting a heavy duty wallpaper remover, applied it with a pesticide sprayer, and peeling it off. It was time consuming and took the majority of the day with one or both of us working on it.

(This was taken after about 12 hours of working on the house. Which explains the look of death on our faces. 🙂 )

Sunday morning we arrived to this, which is all the paper we had scraped from the ceiling. We cleaned it and turned our attention to the floor. So far we had removed the carpet and carpet pad, and planned to scrape the linoleum. The original parts of the house have the original hardwood beneath them, so we assumed they were beneath the linoleum. We (and by we, I mean Ethan. This was all him.) started scraping, but we couldn’t tell what the condition of the wood was because there was so much glue on it. I took a hand sander to it just to test it out, and we realized it was just a large sheet of plywood under the linoleum. Subfloor.

We were super bummed because we really wanted hardwood, and we didn’t have it. We made a plan to put in carpet until we could afford traditional hardwoods at a later date. I started researching wall to wall carpeting, and we planned on scrubbing the floor and painting a layer of Kilz over the linoleum to mask any remaining odor before having carpet installed. I did not like this plan, but I knew it was one of those things we were going to have to compromise on in the short term.

So we are prepping the floor to start painting, and Ethan sees along the edge where we removed the baseboards something that he thinks might be hardwood under the subfloor. So then this happens: 

So before we know it, we’re pulling up the plywood to find the original hardwood underneath. Praise the Lord. In modern homebuilding, a plywood subfloor goes below where you would lay hardwoods. But, this house has had 123 years of different owners and different repairs and additions made, so there’s no telling who did what and when they did it. Ethan kept asking me when I was going to stop asking questions…because when it comes to this house, nothing makes sense! Our current plan is to refinish the hardwood in this room, as well as the other rooms that have the same wood.

So this is where we ended the weekend. The plywood came up without too much difficulty, but Ethan is going out of town for work this week, so we had to call it quits early. Overall, we did a lot more destruction than construction, which makes you feel like you haven’t really done anything but make a mess. Overall though, we got a lot done. Now we just have to start putting it back together. No pressure.

Next weekend Ethan’s family will be in town to help with some projects, so we’re hoping to knock out a few things. We’re currently in a race to get things moving so we can get this place as livable as possible before we have to move in. There is so much to do, but I am optimistic that we will be able to get done the top priority things. Everything else can be done after we move in, and we will be working on this house for the next few years, but for now, we’ve got our work cut out for us. Stay tuned for the next status update. That’s all for today, friends. Have a fabulous day!

August 5, 2018 by
House Progress, Room Tours

The New House: The Before

Alrighty, friends, I shared the other day that we just bought a house, and we are so so excited about it! If you didn’t read that post, you can check out the entire story here.

Today I wanted to share some of the pictures of the house as it is, and talk about our plans for some things. Be forewarned though – these are rough! The rest of this post is going to be a whole lot of ugly, so scroll through at your own risk.

The Exterior 

Let’s start with the exterior. It needs a bit of work, I don’t love the color, and the yard is a mess. But, of course it is so charming with all the gingerbread trim, and so it’s not hard to envision what it could look like with some love. It’s a historic home on our city’s register of historic buildings, which means there are some regulations about what we are able to do to the house. The interior is basically fair game, but the exterior facade has to remain the same for the most part. Thankfully, this does not include paint color.

 

The Foyer 

When you walk in the front door, you walk into this small foyer with a stairway to the second floor. It’s teeny tiny, and definitely over a century old because the stairway doesn’t have much headroom, but it does have some gorgeous craftsmanship.

The Master Bedroom

The master is the only bedroom on the first floor, and it is what was once the original parlor of the house. It needs some serious work, as you can see there is an archway that leads out onto a porch here. The porch has a plexiglass cover, but it is definitely not a permanent solution (although I believe it’s been that way for about 30 years). We plan on putting in a functioning door, and walling in the arch. Then we’ll remove the plexiglass on the porch and have a porch off the master bedroom.

The Living Room 

The living room is eerily quiet when you walk in. That’s because it’s one of the few rooms that has carpet, and the walls are upholstered. From my understanding, upholstered walls are period appropriate for the era of the house, but this was a reproduction done in the 80’s or 90’s. Under the carpet is linoleum, and hopefully below that is the same gorgeous hardwood that’s in the master bedroom. Pulling up the linoleum is going to be a pretty serious job though, so we’ll see how that goes.

The Dining Room 

The dining room and kitchen were actually added to the house later on, they are at the far back of the house. I’m not sure when this portion of the house was added, but none of the features are original. The family that lived here from the 1980’s to the mid 2000’s did add the fireplace, and they definitely chose thoughtfully something that would work well with the original portion of the house.

The Kitchen 

The final room downstairs is the kitchen. Like I said, this is not original to the house, and is a true homage to the 1980’s.  This is where the back door leads, and it is actually a very large kitchen. We aren’t sure exactly how we want to use the space yet, but we plan on doing a “Phase One” cosmetic remodel to the kitchen, before doing a full gut job and reconfiguration of the space. Some thoughts we have may be to build out a laundry room/pantry/mudroom, and to eventually add a traditional stairway here to replace the spiral staircase. Since these things require some serious construction, it’ll probably be a few years before that happens.

The Upstairs Bedrooms 

Upstairs, there are three bedrooms and a creepy little carpeted bathroom. The bedrooms all have hardwood, which is original to the home, but in need of some TLC. The layout is a bit wonky, but what old house isn’t? The bedroom that is currently painted blue will be used as the nursery, although it may not be finished before baby gets here. Which is just what my planning personality can handle. 😉 The other two bedrooms will serve as guestroom and office, until we have need of more bedrooms. Thankfully, all the rooms have closets, pretty doors and hardware.

We’ve started doing some of the work already, so these photos are already outdated. We have been waiting for such a long time to start a project like this, it is so incredibly exciting for us. I’m sure it will be stressful and frustrating at times, and things will be dragged out far longer than we anticipate. As of right now, we plan to get as much of the “top priority” work done this month, and move in at the end of the month. We haven’t done much to prepare for baby’s arrival this fall, because we’re going to be moving! God sure has a sense of humor when it comes to timing!  The entire project will take several years, but we are going to do things at the rate of the cash we have to spend, and so we know it’ll take a while. It’s going to be a long lesson in patience, contentment, and hard work to say the least!

Thanks for checking out the before pictures. Make sure you check back as we continue the process! That’s all for today, friends. Have a fabulous day!

 

August 2, 2018 by