A Turkey Was Here.

How shall we start this off. Perhaps, forgive me I'm a huge blogging failure?

I meant to post pictures of how we left the house before Thanksgiving. Each room waiting anxiously to be seen. A new table preparing to hold its first turkey. Fresh paint drying all over and beds made and couches and everything! But instead I ate a lot of food and watched lots of movies and stayed far away from my computer. 

The moment for the grand tour seems to have passed, or at least been postponed until things are finished! Which is in a few weeks, which just gave me a heart attack. But that doesn't mean I don't have something beautiful to share with you. To be honest, there is SO much I want to show you. But we'll get there, we'll get there.

For now...the dining room! Or at least the front half. From start to (near) finish.

This is how the dining room looked when we walked in the door for the first time. We instantly knew we wanted to change every single thing about it.

Green trim. Lace curtains. Hand stenciling. 

Those things could look beautiful, but not in this case.

One of the first things we decided was that this little dividing wall had to come down. It created two tiny unusable rooms instead of one grand dining room. Which is exactly what our food and company loving clients needed.

And with one swift blow of his mighty hammer,

Percy knocked the wall down. 

At least that's how he tells it.

Some panels from an old barn door came together to make the perfect long dining table.

Once the wall came down, we realized that under about 5 layers of cheap wood flooring, the original wide plank floors were still in tact. We couldn't just leave them buried under there! Many many days of demo and sanding and sanding and staining and finishing followed. 

We knew we wanted to plaster in the dining room, and loved the idea of having a blue sky like ceiling and slightly darker walls. I read somewhere that people used to paint their ceilings because it was cheaper than painting the entire room, and for some reason loved that thought. Even though we didn't paint, and covered the walls as well, it still makes me feel like there's a story hidden in there.

 It's no easy task, but watching the plaster go up is beautiful. The bottom half of the room was so rich in color we almost wanted it to stay that dark. But once the dry white clouds started forming we fell in love with the new color too.

This is what the dining room looked like around 7am the day before Thanksgiving. 

And...

this is what it looked like when we walked out the door a few hours later. 

(We thought we'd give the green trim one final meal.)

A little lot of turkey and rest did us good, and we were so excited to get back up to the house after a much needed Thanksgiving weekend. It was magical walking back into the house. The plaster had dried to the perfect colors. The sun was shining. The kitchen was incredible. Everything was simply dazzling to the eyes. Such a dramatic change from that first day, months ago, when we curiously opened the front door.

A little paint mixing and a few tedious trim painting hours later, voila. The oh-so-stunning dining room was officially born. There's still some final touches to be done, but we're totally in love already. And hope you are too.

What Day Is It?

Tuesday, right?

Wow. That was an actual guess and I just checked and it's literally Wednesday. I will never be able to prove this to you all, but take my word for it.

We are currently in the stage of this job that I like to call "The Total Worst". That is to say, the total worst part of a situation that overall is amazing, so still not the world's worst, but you know, the awful middle part of something that's pretty great. Did I mention I'm high on floor stain fumes?

The coming together stage feels incredibly close, but as of today we are basically camping indoors, which I've been trying to think of a word for. If glam camping is glamping then we are... Riving? (rough living) Hamping? (Home camping) Seriously, it's the fumes.

I had big hopes to keep this blog orderly and compartmentalized but today I throw caution to the wind. Which according to the weather forecast will also be filled with snow any minute now.

Instead, enjoy this scattered glimpse into our lives (and the house) today. Everything you see is exactly how it really is.

A new kitchen in the works. And PS it's going to be beautiful. 

The future home of one very amazing sink.

Can't wait to get some paint on this wall.

Fire hazards and coffee making.

An old newspaper found behind the cabinets. And yes, those are The Beatles.

Wish list.

Quarantine floor refinishing area. Keds on guard.

One day this will be a dining room.

A door is born.

These floors need some TLC. But I still love them.

The new door. Even better from the outside. 

Refinishing floors means no dust which means, no heat. Yay!

Upstairs bathroom gets a make-over.

One day I will take a warm bath in here.

Sweet homeless dresser.

The great divide & small bedroom #1.

Pillow storage and small bedrooms #2 and 3.

The master bedroom. On the way to perfection.

Plaster makes everything better.

Winter view from the sunroom. Sun nowhere to be found.

Where I'm sitting. Right this very moment.

The Master Bedroom : Creepy Dollhouse Make-Over

Even though we'll probably end up leaving no surface left unaltered by the end of this project, the upstairs was definitely a place that we knew needed some work. We've been trying to figure out the house's story as we pull up rugs and knock down walls, but it seems that it's undergone many changes since it was originally built.

The upstairs in general was a little gloomy, but the master bedroom looked like a haunted dollhouse where they used to lock up little kids.

The dark floral wallpaper and small windows were bad, but the ceilings and miniature doorway were the major problem. I'm 5'2" and I still felt like I had to duck when I walked in there. Percy could literally touch the ceiling with his head. It was creep-town, and something had to be done. (ps. i realize these pictures make it seem almost charming. But still, hope you're getting that haunted dollhouse because TRUST ME it was in there.)

We did the only thing we could do, aside from lowering the floors, and knocked into the ceiling. Best decision ever. Well, for me especially. Percy was buried in blown-in insulation for a few hours which didn't look very fun, but it was undoubtedly worth it. There were still a few days of moving stuff around, re-insulating, rocking, and mudding ahead, but it was an instant relief to have that ceiling bumped up.

Plus, once we started ripping the wallpaper down, there were layers of past wallpaper underneath. We've got some plaster plans in the works for the walls, but definitely plan on keeping some glimpses or even walls of the old floral prints.

Check out our snowstorm of insulation and vintage wallpaper works of art below.