Blog Archives
Our House… I Really Love Handsome Furniture
Several years ago, my husband and I were heading over to the cities. We live in NW Wisconsin, just about 20 or 30 miles East of St. Paul/Minneapolis, MN, and for those of you not from around here, they’re known as ‘the twin cities’… but locals shorten that to ‘the cities’.
So back to my story…
We were heading west, and driving through one of the suburbs we spotted an ‘estate sale’ sign. Those are the best sales and even though we were a day late from the opener, there still were a few treasures, and I think we got the best treasure of all… click here to read the rest of the story…
Our House: A Single Vintage Tin Ceiling Tile in the Kitchen
My friend was having a barn sale and had some pieces of a tin tile ceiling for sale.
I bought one and here’s what I did with it:
I repurposed it, and now use it for a click here to read the rest of the story…
Someone Else’s House: Drastically Change a Vintage Fireplace with Paint and a Little Bit of Fabric
Can you believe it? The same fireplace in in both these pictures, and no structural changes were made… just a little bit of paint and fabric… and elbow grease.
Yes, this is what they started out with: click here to read the rest of the story…
Our House: This Sink has a History that Spans a Century and Half the Country
This is our powder room today:
The sink with the unique single pedestal leg is not a reproduction. It is an antique sink we rescued from click here to read the rest of the story…
A Little Getaway at a Gorgeous Victorian B&B
We recently were given an amazingly generous gift package from our son and daughter-in-law to a B&B in Stillwater, MN at The Rivertown Inn.
(This is the ‘wallpaper’ in the dining room… They had an artist somehow photocopy or reproduce a painting onto large canvases and then hung that canvas on the wall like wallpaper, and then embellish it by hand with paint. It looks amazing in person, like a huge oil painting on the walls!)
A little about the history of Stillwater, the oldest town in Minnesota, it is a picturesque town sitting on the St. Croix River across from Wisconsin and absolutely filled with Victorian homes and mansions, amazing shops with tons of choices for antiquing. It’s for sure a destination town and well worth the trip.
And the place we stayed, The Rivertown Inn, was over the top in opulence and décor! The amazing attention to detail with no expense spared for this antique B&B is remarkable. High end finishes throughout, both inside and outside… click here to read the rest of the story…
Master Bedroom, Pottery Barn Linens, Just Not a Messy Bed
I’ve been sort of delaying getting the master bedroom revealed on this blog. Mostly because I’ve really been struggling with making the pictures look as good as the room looks in real life. For some reason, I can’t get a good angle with the bed, either it looks huge, or it looks messy. And then this week I got the Pottery Barn catalogue in the mail and the bedroom pic, that by the way, looked great… of course, had bed linens that were slightly messy.
Source: Pottery Barn
Doesn’t that bed above from Pottery Barn look great? Yeah, I tried to embrace the ‘messy’ bed look. I wasn’t happy with that picture either. And the toile printed linens I have, even came from Pottery Barn. (maybe I just lack the guts to pull that messy look off, Ha! after all, what if you thought that since I posted pics of my bed messy, you thought that was how I normally kept it? Gasp!)
So instead I tried to get the same angle and closeness of the bed as Pottery Barn did… Read More of the Story…
Blast From the Past… Our House Dining Room Series: Baker’s Table: Re-purposing is No New Thing for It.
Since it’s summertime with more folks taking time for vacation and travel, and well, because I’m in the midst of another remodeling project that is taking all my time and energy, and since I have a ton of new followers that possibly haven’t read about the dining room, (thank you!!) I thought it’d be fun to revisit some stuff I wrote at the beginning of when I started to blog… (sounds like a long time ago, but was actually less than a year ago) anyway, for the next few times I’ll be re-playing the series I did on the dining room at ‘Our House’…
A while ago, I started showing you the dining room at ‘Our House’, but then I was delayed because there was a pile of supplies for ‘The Little Brick Cottage’ in a huge section of the dining room. Well, I’m sooooooo glad to say that pile is gone, because the cottage is done, (be sure to watch for ‘reveals’ of each room of the cottage over the next few weeks) and now I can continue with the rest of the dining room tour.
Many years ago, I bought this baker’s table at a garage sale.
I think this is a Read on…
Bayfield, Wisconsin, Part 1: Street Scenes
August is the month of our wedding anniversary. 33 years this year! Most years we are in Maine during this time, but this year, some things prevented us from being there… (so far… still working on that though…)
So on this special day this year, we decided to hop in the car and drive North to the shores of Lake Superior and enjoy the day walking around the little town of Bayfield, Wisconsin.
Bayfield is a tiny town at the top of the state of Wisconsin on the shores of Lake Superior.
Although it is a tiny town, it is packed with quaintness! The first weekend of October, Bayfield has the famous ‘Apple-fest’ where thousands of people celebrate with every kind of apple dish and beverage you could imagine in this gorgeous setting. We’ve visited during that festival time many times and it’s so much fun, but the streets are packed with vendors and people, not exactly how the street scenes look in these pictures I took on our trip this week. READ ON…
Our House: Free-Hanging Antique Window… Still More Interior Windows!
I’ve shared with you, several times, so many different ways I’ve used old, antique and vintage windows at ‘Our House’.
I bought this antique window at a garage sale for READ ON…
Our House: This Antique Chandelier Looks like the Crowning Glory…
We bought ‘Our House’ 16 years ago. At the time it, being built in the late 80’s, it was a fairly plain walkout ranch style home without much character. I immediately set into changing that.
Little by little, as we budgeted, (sometimes, my budget differed from my husband’s) I’ve been working at transforming every square foot, inside and out, into a house filled with character.
One of the ways I’ve added character is by working in actual vintage & antique elements, like what I did with the landing chandelier:
