New Family Room Reveal Part One

Okay so we don't have the new family room quite "finished" yet, we still need to do all the trim work, but I figured you guys were getting tired of waiting so I decided I would just show it to you anyways. Please ignore the fact that there is no corner trim or outlet covers on yet:)

This is the left side of the room if you are standing in my kitchen looking into the back yard. I had many years to think about how I wanted this room to be, what was most important to me was that we had lots of windows and that it felt bright and cozy at the same time. I also always knew that I wanted it to be covered floor to ceiling with bead board. We kept the trim simple to match the rest of the kitchen. I painted the walls and the trim Glidden's "Swan White".

My goal is to find a giant piece of salvaged molding for above the three windows behind the couch.

To give you an idea of where you are seeing below is what it looked like in the summer during the rebuilding process after the wall was taken down separating the two rooms.

The picture below (that my son took) is of the wall during reno that the couch is now on.

I was really lucky to find the perfect pieces for this room, most of them costing less than$15. The coffee table and the wall unit pictured below both came from the same estate sale. Over the summer I was on my way to the mall to try on dresses for my sister-in-laws wedding when I spotted an estate sale. My son was with my mom and I actually had cash in my wallet so I figured I would stop real quick. I went into the house and I found a couple things but nothing too exciting. As I headed back to my car I spotted a garage off to the side of the property that I had somehow missed (my estate sale rule is to always hit the garage first cause that is usually where the old stuff is). I walked into the garage and it was a jack pot! I found two old tables, tons of farm goodies, totes, primitive tools, and the wall cupboard pictured below. I was grabbing stuff left and right and putting it in a giant pile, people were looking at me like "why would she want all that junk". It just goes to show you should always stop because this was a tiny 1970's house in a very residential area.

The cupboard wasn't even actually for sale but when I asked the woman who was running the estate sale if  I could buy it she said "sure if we can get it off of the wall". You should have seen us trying to get this thing off of the wall, it was filthy and had a lifetimes worth of mouse poop on it and was screwed to the wall with at least 20 screws. It took a good half hour to pry it loose but we got it down! She said it would be five bucks and that everything in the garage was half off that day!

I knew just where it would go when I bought it but I had to wait patiently for the day we could actually hang it. It looks just how I pictured it could, the women at the estate sale were so excited that I was going to make it cute. It is made with all different salvaged pieces, the shelf with the scale on it is a little door cut in half and I love the wire shelf. I scrubbed it multiple times and painted it Glidden's "Antique Beige".

The coffee table was also five dollars. It was a regular size table and I just had Neal cut the legs down. I didn't do anything to it except scrub it and put a coat of polycrylic on the top to protect it from spills and wipe downs. I left the estate sale a sweaty dirty mess, it was 90 degrees that day and on top of it I had to squeeze everything I bought into my car. I was actually there so long that the women started to refer to me as "The Renovator":) Needless to say I didn't feel oh so fresh and clean as I was trying on those dresses.

 The table in the corner under the cupboard is the one I picked up at the flea market for $15 dollars this past summer. I painted it Martha Stewart's "Sisal". The other end table is also new. I have always wanted to make a table with a sewing machine bottom and I was so excited when I actually found an antique sewing machine base at Savers (the greatest thrift store ever, you are so lucky if you have one) for $12! Someone had attached an ugly desk top to it, so I took that off and screwed an old piece of wood that I had found in the house when we first moved in to it.

And then as you get a look into the kitchen you can see that I have changed some things around in there. We brought the little cupboard down from the upstairs bedroom because I needed some more functional storage. I painted it Glidden's "Whispering Wheat" and added an antique knob that I picked up at the flea market.

I brought the desk in from the mudroom and put one of the tables I got from the estate sale in its place. I wanted something long and skinny for this space since you need to be able to walk through easily. Plus I love this table so much I wanted it in a place I would see it more.

It makes for the perfect little office space which is great because try as I might I always end up doing all of my Etsy work in the kitchen and my son always does his school work here.

I really love the way everything turned out in the family room but what I love most are the giant windows that allow us to see into the backyard from this part of the house now. It always drove me crazy that I couldn't really see into our backyard and our woods unless I was in the guest bedroom.

Seeing "my deer" come through in the morning while I drink my coffee brings me the greatest joy. Plus they let in so much light it makes such a difference in the kitchen.

We special ordered the windows from Anderson so that they would be the exact same size as all of the other large original windows in the house.

And to give you an idea of how far we have come in case you are a new follower I wanted to show you the stages of this area of our house. The picture below is what is now the kitchen but it was a small and dark bedroom when we first moved in.

If you look in the left hand corner you can use the pot belly chimney (where Neal is working) to show you that it is the same space, minus a lot of nastiness, in both the above and below picture.

And below is what you can now see when you stand in the same place (and yes I painted that cupboard, post about that to come).

I hope you enjoyed Part One, in the next part I will show the room as a whole and go into more detail about the flooring and lighting. I have been getting lots of specific questions about things lately so I thought I would start doing posts that address readers questions since more than one of you might be interested in the subject matter. For the first one I am going to address the lighting in our farmhouse and my painting techniques. Feel free to email me if there is something you would like to know more about!

A New Cupboard With An Old Window

Okay so don't be mad, I know I said that my next post would show our new family room but the ceiling part is taking us longer than expected and I don't want to show it until it is completely finished. In the meantime I have done some other things that I wanted to show you like my new cupboard.

Over the summer Neal built me this cupboard using the old window that I always placed on my mantel. Originally I thought about hanging it the new family room but I put a different one in there. I also wanted to use it to display some of my blue and white dishes that I had to box up when we took the wall down in the kitchen. It made sense to put it in the living room since I have touches of blue in there already. The corner between the window and the door seemed like the perfect place.

I put a table that my mom gave me that I had always loved in her house under it. And then under the table I put some of my old crocks. The larger crock is original to the house actually, my neighbor grew up in our house and the crock went with his family when they moved out, he brought it over to me one day and said "my kids don't like old things, thought maybe you would want it". I was tickled, not only do I love old crocks, but it was back in the place it belonged. The other one was a $7 thrift store find. And speaking of finds...I just found the little pillow on the arm chair brand new for $3 at my Goodwill, it is "Threshold" from Target and is at my Target right now for $25!

I painted the cupboard Glidden's "Whispering Wheat" because I love it with the blue, and because I just love the color. I figure I will change what I put in here a million times over and this soft wheat color goes with all of my collections.

I left the door unpainted and added an old rustic handle.

The feather edge platter was one of my very first "I can't believe I found this" flea market finds. I got it about 8 years ago at the Leeper, PA flea market for $10 and I absolutely love it. That is a good flea market if you happen to camp at Cook Forest State Park like we do.

A new place for my blue and white quilts...for now:)

Some other things that had to be boxed up when we started the kitchen demo were my cows. I found them a new home in the living room next to the step back.

They are in new frames that I picked up at the flea market for $2, the blue gray color of the frame compliments the colors in the cow pictures perfectly. Plus their size and weight holds up next to the very large cupboard.

I was excited to find a blue stripe grain sack (on the couch) on Ebay that I could actually afford, it was cheaper because it has some stains but that is okay by me because inevitably my son is going to wipe his Dorito covered hands on it. Which reminds me, some readers had asked me about the coverlet on my couch. That is also there because of the Dorito hands, it is much easier to wash once a week than the entire cushion slipcover, and because you know how I love layering. It is from Ikea and washes beautifully, I have had it about 10 years, but they still make them. Gotta love Ikea, one of the only places you can find simple staple pieces like that.

So here is what we are currently working on, this is the ceiling of the family room (that is what we have decided to call it officially).

We have it about half finished. I wanted it to be plank boards or shiplap so Neal was going to just cut down pine boards but then he found this heavy bead board at Home Depot that when turned over looks just like shiplap. It interlocks and cost us about $300 dollars less than just plank boards would have. Below is a picture of the bead board side.

And below is them flipped over,  I paint them (my dining room table has been covered with a rotating supply of these boards for two weeks now) and then Neal slides them into place. Hopefully we will have it all finished sometime soon and I will show the room in total, hang tight:)

Welcome to all my new followers and thank you to all of my followers that let me know they love what I am doing. Reading what you guys think often turns a "Serious Day" as my son calls it, into a great one:)

Farmhouse Christmas Part 4

I know Christmas is over but the last month was so hectic that I never had the time to show you our kitchen all decorated and we finally have most of the new room finished so I don't have to worry about carefully angling my camera shots anymore! This year in the kitchen I wanted to keep the Christmas decorating simple, using fresh greens with little pops of red here and there mostly done with linens.

I also wanted to share some of the wonderful presents I got from Neal this Christmas, he always does a great job but he really went above and beyond this year. No handmade gifts from him (lots of adorable ones from my son though) this time, unless you count the new room of course, but lots of really thoughtful gifts. One of the things is the beautiful French linen hanging on the ladder, I love its nubby texture and of course the red stripe!

And I finally found the perfect place for my sign from https://www.etsy.com/shop/KnickofTime that I love so much. And you may have noticed that I painted the walls, they are now Glidden's "Swan White" to match the new room. 

I hung a cow bell in the middle of a wreath with the "Believe" ribbon that Mary from Homestead Treasures on Etsy sent me and I love the way it all looks together.

The awesome antique scale is one of the other great things that Neal bought me this year. I have wanted one of these for so long and can't believe that I now have my very own! She's a beauty, and still even has the original hanging weight.

I filled my old milk carrier with mason jars filled with cedar clippings and put it on a red stripe table runner from TJMaxx.

These beautiful stockings are also new, I bought them from Mountain Momma Designs on Etsy, the same place I bought my other all white quilt stockings. I just love these with their little bits of red quilt showing and they are absolutely beautifully made.

I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas, we sure did but it always goes too fast! In the next post I will show you the new room, I promise!