Living Room

Reclaiming the beauty of the past

As we started to reclaim the old house we discovered underneath all the green paint layer after layer of old wallpaper. We attempted to remove the old wall paper but it wouldn’t budge. I scrapped the seams, removed what was lose, repaired the cracks and applied a plaster skim coat. I lightly sanded the plaster, painted a coat of Kilz, followed by a coat of flat gold, and I hand rubbed a coat of half glaze and half brown paint to achieve a Venetian Plaster look.

The beautiful old fireplace was covered with several layers of paint as well. I spent the first winter in the house stripping the paint from mantel. As the paint came off it revealed a beautiful tiger oak mantel. We installed gas logs and added a flat screen TV.

Entry and Office Nook

Making a Single Purpose Space Meet Three Needs

The space the entry now occupies was once use as a den. It was a large room with a wood burning stove and worn linoleum flooring. We divided the space into a large closet, a proper entry and a small office.

Dining Room

Re-purposing a bedroom into a formal dining room

The room we’re using as our formal dining room was in the years past a downstairs bedroom. A small bath, added in the mid 1940’s opened directly into the space. To move the bath entry so it no longer opened directly in the new dining room we added a partition, it allowed for a larger bath and a proper formal dining space.

The plaster had suffered extensive damage from water leaking under the double windows. To minimize the repairs and an effort to save as much of the original plaster as we could we installed  high wainscoting along with crown molding to give the once casual space a more formal feel.

Kitchen

Creating a nice kitchen from three small spaces

When we first bought the house we had to do something to make the kitchen usable. We put in some basic cabinets and a sink and used it that way for many years. After many hours of researching kitchens on Pinterest and Houzz I had the kitchen I wanted in my head. Finely, in 2015 we started the final kitchen redo.

The original kitchen had a screened porch on one end and a small lean-to porch on the other. We incorporated these two small spaces into the over all kitchen layout to add a small sitting room and a nice pantry/cat room.

I wanted the kitchen to look, at first glance, like it could be original. I antiqued cherry cabinets by distressing them and painting them with black and cream milk paint. Instead of just adding the white subway tile back-splash in the customary place, we added it all the way around the room half way up the wall to give it a vintage look.

I had a hand painted hutch that wouldn’t fit into the kitchen when we started designing the layout. I really wanted it in my kitchen so I incorporated it into the cabinets, I love the final look of it.