Blog Archives
Our House: Wet Bar Details
Last time I showed you the fun before and after pics of our new wet-bar in the lower level family room at ‘Our House’.
To create loads of character in this corner, we built in new things, like the barn sash window and beadboard. But we also added in vintage or vintage inspired items too. click here to read the rest of the story…
Our House: Wet Bar Finished!!!
Yay! The family room is done… finally! I’ve been working away on it, little bit by little bit for most of the winter. (I’ve still got a few projects to show you, but it’s is done!!)
I’ve worked on several different projects this winter/spring, from painting, to making a canning jar chandy, to getting a new sectional and creating a huge folding screen for it with vintage plantation shutters, making a new more neutral window treatment, and re-doing a table and chairs set I found on Craigslist, and installing a wide plank laminate floor, making a sign from old fence boards, re-doing a tennis themed folding screen, making numbered pillows, confessing my secret to an easy fireplace, and having a lot of fun moving around the furniture to create a sort of ‘Ralph Lauren meets 1900 Boy’s Club’ style room.
So here’s how and what I did in, what was once, this boring corner of the family room. click here to read the rest of the story…
Someone Else’s House: Amazing Closet Transformation
When I showed you this young couple’s stairs and the clever numbered treatment they did to them, I mentioned that they were working on transforming this closet.
It sits across the landing from the stairs, between the kitchen and living room of this antique bungalow home they bought a few months ago. Since then, they’ve been busy transforming it into click here to read the rest of the story…
Someone Else’s House: Vintage Bungalow… Turning the Kitchen into a Masterpiece and All on a Budget
We’re back to visit the antique craftsman style home we’ve been touring. Little bit by little bit, we’ve seen some really clever and super cute transformations in this young couple’s first home, and the subject of today’s post is no exception to that.
When they bought this antique house, the kitchen, unfortunately had been re-done in the 1980’s. In which, the previous owners had completely stripped down and removed every original surface… appliances, floor, trim and window from the original home gone, and replaced with that famous, generic looking 80’s style. click here to read the rest of the story…
Someone Else’s House… Amazing Pot Rack!
This is something I’ve been so excited to share with you… this is only one part of the kitchen that belongs to the young couple that just restored their antique craftsman bungalow style house this winter.
Of all the rooms in this house when they bought it, the kitchen was for sure the worse. It had unfortunately been re-done in the 1980’s and had the lack of character and details to prove it… well that is except for a few really questionable things, like this for instance:
This set of very shallow cabinets with lights, and glass doors. We can’t figure out what the previous owners would have stored in them… they’re only about 4” deep… perfect for a soup can, but that’s a lot of soup cans, and would you really want them on display like that? Honestly, to me it sort of looked like something in a doctor’s office. Whatever its intended use was, it wasn’t working so well for our couple.
I will do more posts to show the whole kitchen later, but today I’m going to show you the amazing transformation they did to this display cabinet. click here to read the rest of the story
Someone Else’s House: Bungalow Bathroom, Almost Anthropologie Style?
Continuing the tour of the refreshed and somewhat renovated c. 1916 bungalow, (or there abouts,) our young couple has purchased, the bathroom is the room to see today. (If you missed it, click here to see their bedroom/projects)
This room started in pretty good condition:
The walls, however, were a shocking yellow. I think the previous homeowner was trying to coordinate with the floor tile, but instead the result was quite harsh.
Although the mechanics of the room was fairly solid, our young couple really didn’t care for some things in the bathroom.
First, as what so frequently happens in older homes over the years, the bathrooms and kitchens during the ‘updating process’ lose their original trim and character. Which is exactly what happened to this room, it had, at some time in the past, been updated, and in that process, the original trim was removed and replaced with ranch molding.
Another thing our couple just wasn’t sure about, was the floor tile. Although it was in excellent condition, it just seemed to scream a little too loud.
After considering ripping out the tile, but given the budget, and encouragement from others to keep it because it had an ‘Anthropologie’ look to it, the new homeowners instead decided to add back in some of the missing character and see if then the tiles would feel more at home in the new setting.
And here are the results of their hard work and creativity: 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…
Monday’s Simple Cleverness… Secret to Caulking the Edge of Beadboard
I’ve installed or had installed for me in several rooms/houses beadboard. I love the simple farmhouse style of beadboard. I have it in my kitchen at ‘Our House’ for the back splash, I have it in several rooms at the ‘Little Brick Cottage’, and I just recently had some installed in the bathroom of the 2 bedroom duplex.
Here’s the deal though, although I love the look of beadboard, it’s kind of a pain to paint, especially caulk. In the past, before I tried this simple clever tip to caulking, I’ve caulked then gone back and tried to poke out the excess caulk from the grooves… yuck it’s a mess.
Read on to see the simple trick I’ve discovered that makes that job oh so much easier… Read On
One of Our Rentals… Vintage, Cottage Style Duplex… Bathroom Refreshed!
The last couple of days I’ve been showing you a few things I’ve done to refurbish one of the units in our duplex that’s located in NW Wisconsin. (It’s just been rented, so no longer available, however I may have another super cute one opening up in September)
So far I’ve shown you how we cut the doorways in a bedroom to create the dining room with a more open floor plan, as well as the yellow and white kitchen with aqua accents and open shelving cupboard.
So today I thought I’d show you the bathroom and some changes we’ve made to it… so, here’s the before: READ ON…
Little Brick Cottage… Leaving Out the Back Entry
Well people, this is farewell, at least for now, to the ‘Little Brick Cottage’… yes, I’m sorry, I love it too, but like I told you at the beginning when we bought this antique house, it was a project for me to fix up, breath new life into it and then either sell or rent it. For now it’s being rented by a wonderful family that loves it.
However, I still do have one last room, the back entry, to show you, from start to finish, then it’s out the door and let this family live in peace in this charming home.
When we bought this house the back entry was ‘yucky’ at best. There was no natural light in the space, there was a door closing the kitchen to the entry, yet it was completely opened to the basement and felt dangerously close to the first basement step.
I told you as we were working on this space how we needed to READ ON…
