De-Cluttering the Dining Area

I love putting up all my Christmas decorations but I am also really happy to get them down! By the time Christmas is over I am ready to de-clutter my house!!!

So I did that last week and over the weekend cleaned house and put things back together.

I kept it simple. Which feels so good.

 

The living room and dining room are one in the same. They share the same space. The table is an antique I bought at a garage sale. It is a square table that has two leaves that come out of the ends and pop up. Usually I leave it as a square but thought I would mix things up a bit and pop the leaves out.

 

 

 I am really liking it. It almost make the dining area look bigger. Weird I know.

 

 

The table cloth is from Target after Christmas clearance!!

 

 

I have a wreath that I might put above the mantel.

 

 

 I LOVE Ironstone. All of which came from garage sales.

 

 

I am really loving the old brick and new mantel.

 

I hope you don't get tired of seeing pictures of the much loved mantel!

 



Mantel Remodel

Yesterday I shared with you all some of the before pictures of the mantel and fireplace.

I showed you some of the mess we got ourselves into.

 

So, here are some pictures of the next few steps.

I decided to go ahead and rip up the carpet on the steps. I figured we already had a mess and this has needed to be done for a long time! The entire living room had this carpet in it but we had ripped it up when we moved in.

 

This shows the bones of the mantel. My smarty pants husband and his dad took a picture and designed a mantel! Amazing!

 

I just got on Pinterest and started looking for mantels that caught my eye. I had a very short window of time to decide what I wanted.

 

It's starting to look like a fireplace surround.

 

This shows the knotty pine wall and the steps with the carpet removed. There were a ton of staples in those steps!!

 

The brick has not been scrubbed at this point! This was such a dusty job!

 

This is before the top of the mantel was put on.

 

This is with the top on and it all primed.

 

More after pictures tomorrow!

Have a great evening. I have been finishing some Christmas gifts and adding a few more Christmasy touches to the house! It's chilly out so stay warm and cozy!

Painting turned into Remodeling

How are all my friends today? I hope this finds you well, warm, and happy.
I wrote this post Thanksgiving weekend and have been trying to upload pictures since then. Blogger has been a HUGE pain!!

I finally saved my pictures to photobucket.com and then copy and pasted to the blog post..!!

Anyways, this is what we have been up to.
 

I knew we had a long weekend so I talked my wonderful, sweet husband into painting the living room. It hasn't been done since we moved in 8 years ago! It was way over due!

 

Now our house is about 150 years old and you never know what you will find. Keep that in mind....

 

The living room is covered in ugly 80's dark paneling that we painted white immediately after moving in. We had a pretty good inclination that there was cool, old, red brick above the fireplace behind the paneling. So since everything we do around here turns into this HUGE ordeal or actually a huge mess, we went from painting to tearing off the paneling above the fireplace.

 

Now when we (I use the term "we" very loosely) tore off the paneling we found plaster! Great, plaster!! Of course this will not be simple. So "we" chipped off the plaster. Cool brick!! Yeah!!

 
We found a little cubby behind there that they had covered up at some time.

Wait there's more.

 

Around the fireplace opening is the ugly yellow-orange 70's brick and a very narrow, concrete mantel that we both hate but I was just going to paint the brick! Oh no. That would not be sufficient. "We" are already this far we might as well tear it all off!!!

 

Yep. So "we" did! We found that when they had put in the stove insert they tore out the lentil and some of the brick so there was a gaping hole above the stove. It's a wonder that the brick hadn't fallen even worse.

 

Stay tuned.....tomoorow morw before and even some after pictures!!

Corner of My Home....Mud Room Part 2

I have a few more pictures I wanted to add to yesterdays post about my mud room.

Hope you like them!

This little table sits next to the door going outside. 

The water pump is connected to an old cistern that is underneath our back deck outside the door.

It doesn't work...bummer I know! I want to cut it off but just haven't done it. I'm not sure what to do with it so it has just been hanging out.

This picture is a poster from the hatchery where we get our chickens. It is a little faded and looks pretty neat with all the pictures of the varieties of chickens they offer.

Corner of My Home....Mud Room

Here is a peak at our Mud Room...I believe this to be the most used and abused room in all the house!

I love this room and think I would go insane without it due to all the dirt that my lover brings in!

I love this bench. It was in the pump house at my parents and when dad decided to clean it out I got the bench! The enamel bowl has our hats and gloves it it.

You could probably guess which pair are mine...I love me some cowboy boots!!

I have shelves with wood pegs on both sides of the window. This is where I have a lot of my enamel ware displayed.

This is the corner cupboard that I love! 

The mud room was the first room we completely remodeled. We tore everything out but the floor. It was gray, the walls were pink, and the trim burgundy. It was lovely...not really. 

When I told my love that I wanted to paint the floor RED he was not totally on board with the idea but I eventually talked him into it and we love it!!

Corner of My Home....Bedroom

Here is a little glimpse of my bedroom. Last year we painted and stripped the window trim. I love the wall color. It is a green that is so bright and cheery!

Love this old window..the patina is great! It hangs above our bed..

This chair sits in the corner. It is hiding an ugly filing cabinet. 

I don't have curtains in my bedroom because I can't decide what I want and haven't found any that I like. I will probably make some but I just can't decide.

This little stool is the extent of my reupholstering skills...I think its kinda cute.

I have all my perfume on an old cake stand that my mom bought at a yard sell. I thought it was very feminine looking with the flowers on it.

 

This is my night stand. The lamps came from Lowes on clearance for $6. They were an ugly beige and burgundy color and we spray painted them white. I tend to paint my finger nails while I'm laying in bed...hence the nail polish. I love this picture of me and my love. It was taken about six years ago!

Corner of My Home....Bathroom

Hello all - I woke up this morning to an inch of snow on the ground!! What in the world...Spring begins on Sunday so I guess the good Lord had to get one more snow in before the sun came back out. The snow was gone by 3pm. 

Like most of you, I too am ready for spring and all the prettiness that comes with it. So I went to the dollar store and bought some fake flowers. I know fake flowers...but I am really in need for some spring prettiness and the real ones are expensive and they don't last long. 

So I wanted to share with all of you a corner of my home. This is what I did with the flowers...

About four years ago we gutted the bathroom and remodeled it. There was a blue bath tub, Blue tile on the walls, gold sink and vanity, and gold linoleum floor. One morning I woke to a huge crash while my lover was in the shower...the wall fell in on him....cue bathroom remodel.

We are very happy with how it turned out! It's the nicest room in the house!

A friend of ours is an awesome cabinet maker. I drew him a picture of what I had in mind and he made it just like I envisioned it.

The baskets underneath are old freezer baskets. This bathroom is small and there is no closet for storage, so the baskets work great for towels and toilet paper.

The sink top matches the bath tub. It is cultured marble.

This sink looks so shiny!!! Trust me, its not!! It's due for a good cleaning..

I love using old mason jars for stuff like cotton balls! 

The hooks are from Hobby Lobby Clearance..gotta love things that cost $3! The little basket holds the q-tips.

The mirror was made by my FIL. We use the actual mirror that was there and then I described a frame I had seen in a shaker style furniture store and he did a great job. It is super heavy though. 

And this is me..without makeup...saying "have a great weekend"!!!

Office Remodel

I mentioned in an earlier post about our office that we are working on...for the past 2 years...and put up some pictures of the framing and "bones" of the room. Here are some pictures of the room dry-walled and with three new windows! 

This is looking into the office from the mudroom. There is a window next to the one you see here and then one window on the opposite wall. You can barely see the beam at the top of the picture, but it spans the room and is pretty cool looking.

This is standing in the office looking into the mudroom. This is an original outside wall and the siding was left on which I am really excited about. Since this picture we have primed the wall white and it looks so cool! The big white block above the door is actually an opening into the attic. We have a neat door that we found in this room that fits the opening perfect and will eventually go up there. The other hole you see is an old stove pipe hole. Not sure what we are going to do about that yet. I am so blessed to have a husband who can doing anything! And I mean anything...He has done all the wiring/electrical, dry-wall finishing, framing. He can do anything and I'm not just saying that because he is my husband and I think he is perfect...for me...

We have just been working on it as we get the money and time. We never have both at the same time.

I have very high hopes for this room! I will keep you updated as soon as something else gets done to this room...please don't old your breath...you may turn blue!

Cold...

I woke up this morning to a nice dusting of snow on everything. It makes everything so pretty. All though this old farm house is very cold. Most of the rooms have no insulation in the walls except for the ones that we have gutted and re-done. That's only two as of right now. We are currently working on the office (and have been for two years I think) but we either have the money and not the time or the time and not the money. Here is a picture of the office. This picture shows it with the sub floor in, it had a dirt floor to begin with. We think it was originally a shed or something that they attached to the house by building a room in between the kitchen and shed. That room is now a mud room. 

The door you see in this picture goes into the mudroom.

There is a vaulted ceiling, which I love and the wall with the door has the old siding on it!

That is my father-in-law in the picture. He built custom homes for 30 years.

There were no studs to nail drywall to so we (when I say we I mean my lover and my father-in-law) had to frame out the entire room with studs. We also added three large windows.

I love old houses! They have a character that new ones just don't have. They are also cold in the winter, hot in the summer, drafty, crooked, inhabited by mice, and a lot of hard work. But I love it!
Have a great day!

P.S - I call my husband Steve lover...because he is the love of my life! I have since we got married!