Where we eat, After

Here is our breakfast nook after we stripped it of all things made in the 60's. After that massive removal the room emerged as a full blown dining room. Not that it matters much because I'm much more a eat anywhere but the table kinda gal.

You'll notice that we extended the same oak hardwoods from the living room into here. I love how it helps to tie the long layout together. The room is so bright, open and sunny! Which is a complete opposite of the before.

Like the lamp? Its the second one we've had because someone ( named me) broke the first version when playing with the dogs one Black Friday morning. I felt so bad that I stayed home while Pete went out shopping with his best friend. Turns out that was the day he bought my engagement ring! So.. I guess its good I broke the light and stayed home :)

There are some hideous in-between pictures that include Salmon colored paint and a dark pine china hut. I have to dig those up for show and tell one day...

Dining turned living room after!

Turning the old formal dining room into a living room was a no brainer for us. As was pulling out the old off center fake mantel. Like most rooms in the house we fixed everything up in stages and with a plethora of generous hand me down items.

The old chandelier was taken down and flush mounted low profile light was added. These ceilings are low so anything that dangled down was a poor choice... really really low ceilings. People in the 1850's were short.

Pete ripped off the old paneling from the fireplace one afternoon while I was working. This was a project I just didn't have the vision for at the time and he had to convince me it was a good idea. Of course I now love it! I'm so happy that I was proved wrong and Pete could see how exposing the orginal brick would look good.

There was no awesome old fireplace hiding behind the panaling, just a few plastered up wood burning stove holes. The easiest way to fix that was to get a plug-in fireplace surround. The "flames" are hillarious.

The fastest way to fix gross floors? Carpet. After tearing up all the various layers of flooring we had carpet installed until the time came to figure out better options. For a few years it was the perfect solution. Merry Christmas 2004 to us.

Three years later and the carpet was starting to look a little sad in the main rooms. I guess constant house construction in and out of the front door combined with an old dog makes for hard wear and tear. My adversion to vaccumming was probablly a contributing factor, so out came the living room carpet!

Unfortunately the orginal floors were in no shape for restoring. Shopping around we found a killer deal on 4" hand scraped oak hardwoods. They were clearing out the stock for about $2 sq/ft. Installation was done by Pete and his floor nailer.

See the ferns in the white planters? Yeah, they turned brown and died on me. Somehow I killed them.

The new updated kitchen!

This was the kitchen when we moved in... and we lived with it in all its deliciously 60's dated glory for a few years. When there is a roof that you can stick your hand through the houses fug-o kitchen gets bumped down the list on things to do. Despite that the stove was a monster with only one completely working burner and a strong lean to the left.

Eventually the time came to come up with a game plan in the kitchen. We lucked out that the flow and layout were amazingly really workable, so thankfully no plumbing had to be touched or moved! As old as the cabinets were, they were solid wood and in good shape. Not having to demo and replace the cabinets was a huge contributor to keeping the costs down. Pete decided that painting them was the best way to update the look for the cheapest.


Off came all the fronts, hardware and drawers. Everything was carefully numbered so we would know exactly where to put it back. All paint-able surfaces got a good washing to remove any residual ick. Once completely dried we started the painting process. When it comes to painting cabinets time and patience is needed. Between each coat we let the paint cure for a week. Rushing a paint job like this can cause you lots of problems later down the road and we didn't want that. It took a total of almost 4 weeks before we felt ready to place the fronts and drawers back into the kitchen.

New hardware was added, everything is now a great antique-y oil rubbed bronze finish. It fits perfectly in my not bias at all opinion. A normal sized stove was added and the answer to all our domestic problems was installed. Hail to the dishwasher! You have no idea how many spats we had about (not) hand washing the dishes.

A natural stone counter top would look too modern in our house, in our opinion anyway. It was also light years away from the modest budget we were working on. Laminate would have fit the budget, but neither of us found anything we really thought would compliment our house. Large tile was at the top of our options until Pete found the butcher block counter top at Ikea. The butcher block worked with our budget, complimented the house and he was able to DIY for installation.

The back splash was my first experience with tiling and I learned I'm a natural (pats self on back). Tiling speaks to my OCD and anal tendencies that I have when it comes to projects. I like lining the tiles up and making sure every grout line is even. (such a nerd) Pete did all the cuts with the wet saw and I blew through tiling the open walls, together we finished the back splash on one very rainy Saturday.

Finally the kitchen was finished. We ate a meal cooked on a stove with all four burners working and level. The dishes got placed in the dishwasher and all the leftover went inside our non weird name fridge. Live was good.

And, despite my strong Gemini desires to have everything change all the time, I still love the kitchen. Except for a few of the paint choices. But those are really a minor things that don't count.

Stripe Living Room After

Remember the old stripe on stripe wallpapered living room before? Thankfully that wallpaper peeled off pretty easily (for wallpaper) and we were able to roll up the not quite wall to wall carpet with ease.

Since we like color, and were primarily going to use this room for TV viewing- we decided on a deep, dark movie theater red. Which is a fantastic color for nighttime movie watching, the whole room gets nice and dark with all the focus on the screen in front of you. The room took a coat of tinted primer, which is a must for red paint, and three very heavy handed application of red paint.

All the trim is dark brown, which I've never loved, but I have no inclination repaint all the trim and no idea of what color I'd even use in its place.

The carpet was part of a Christmas present we gave ourselves way back in 2003, and it was (and still is) fantastic to have something clean and new underfoot. I got used to having crunchy carpets at first, so being able to walk around barefoot with no crunch is just wonderful!

Mini Mudroom Improvement

In our mudroom we have a traditional bench and hook shelf set up. Which makes perfect place to stash our keys and drop off any items we're carrying. Not only does having that drop off point so close to the door help keep house clutter down, it also helps me quickly find my keys. If I don't stick my keys on the hook right away I'm sure to loose them and that means frantic moments of tearing the house apart during my search to find them.

The bench was a great Ikea purchase that does double duty because of the storage space inside. Which is where we place the pet food, one quick peak in lets us know if anything is running low before heading out.

It seems that we've placed a few things on the bench that have left their mark(s) on the cushion.
I felt like the stains took away from the clean feeling in the room, and might be distracting to buyers during showings. Also its really just gross to have such a grody stain on your furniture.

Buying a new cushion would be impossible, being as the bench is long since discontinued. I almost purchased a bit of fabric last night to make a cover, but then I remember that I have a few remnants of fabric laying around that would like really nice in the mudroom. They are leftovers from our Ikea curtains in the office.

Up into the attic I went to grab the fabric and my trusty sewing machine!

I put down the cushion in the middle of the fabric and played around with how I wanted wrap it up. I had to make a simple cover, leaving the bottom mostly open because of velcro attachments. Eventually I decided on a very simple folded over design. A little measuring, folding, refolding, pining with the only four pins I could find and then I'm ready to start sewing.
My trusty sewing machine was an awesome birthday present from mom during my teenage years. What teenager wants a sewing machine? Apparently I did! Although my sewing skills have not much improved over the years I'm so happy I have a machine in the house, it has proven itself invaluable over the years.

The whole project took a little less than an hour from start to finish and cost zero dollars and zero cents. Well worth the time and price in my opinion. Everything looks so much cleaner now!

The after, downstairs bathroom

Unfortunately there are no before picture to share regarding this bathroom. You'll just have to have faith that it was indeed horrible. I'm doing everyone a great favor by sparing you the visual of all the nastiness that was the before.

The walls are a very pale yellow, which really brightens up such a tight space. Even though the bathroom is small, it's great having another full bath in house! You never know when the upstairs loo will be out of commission like it was during our massive upstairs bathroom remodel. Also very helpful when the two of occupants of the house have to shower/ get ready at the same time.

Our bowl sink was the cheapest one at a big box home improvement store, it cost something around $99 and I thought Pete was insane for spending that much on just a sink at the time. Guess its a good thing that he didn't take me along while shopping for the faucet. I just ( years later) found out how much that thing cost and it took me a while to pick my jaw up off the floor.

The wash stand is actually a microwave cart from Ikea! It was somewhere around the thrifty $30 range and worked perfectly in the tight space with a few modifications! We even bought the matching cabinet and used the top to make a coordinating mirror. The mirror was so simple to make- take off backing, add pre-cut mirror, glue. Done.

See that little metal and white square on the door jamb? Right in the middle of picture, left hand side? That is actually our light switch! It's a touch screen and is almost completely flush with the wall. That where we had to put the light switch if we wanted it inside the room, so using the slim line touch was the solution to the problem. If we had to do a traditional switch, it would have had to be placed outside the actual bathroom. Which would have meant that there would have been many years of hijinks of turning off the lights while someone was on the john :)

This was the first tile floor that Pete ever put down and I think it looks fantastic! We used sage as a good neutral accent for the yellow paint because the standard blah beige just didn't look quite right. When this bathroom got finished it was so wonderful to have a completely clean and renovated place to shower. I then claimed it as "mine" and stuck Pete with the old lilac germ shower upstairs. So generous of me, I know.

Evolution of the Shed...

Pardon me, I mean Summer House...
When we moved in the shed looked like this, and was completely empty except for piles of old leaves. As the house renovations went on the shed was used to store all sorts of random construction materials. Much easier to store stuff in a building that actually had a roof, unlike like the house for the first summer.

Then in 2008 we came home from a wedding to this lovely sight. A freak March storm tore one of the HUGE limbs off the old Maple tree and landed in right onto the shed and garage. Those two roofs got crushed and littered full of Maple branch shrapnel. Not even the Mustang was spared inside the garage...the poor car caught a couple of new dents from limbs coming through the roof.

Pete replaced the garage roof last summer, it was a few weekends to rip everything off, patch and re-shingle. I can't help much with roofs being that I hyperventilate somewhere around the second rung on the ladder. Once the roof was finished Pete painted the garage to match the house, and it looks awesome now all spiffed up!

However...we did nothing to the summer house shed. In fact the area around the shed got completely overgrown last summer with all sorts of weeds, poison ivy, seedlings and other useless plants.

Looks gross huh? and it was the first thing you saw while pulling in the driveway. Pete and I bickered over fixing it up before putting the property on the market. I was pro fixing, Pete was against. He relented when the Real Estate Agents strongly suggested fixing it before the house got listed. So we took a weekend to replace the roof, clean the underbrush and paint. It was a long, no fun weekend...

Friday- Adult Married Person Date Night at Lowe's! Get all supplies needed for roof.

Saturday- Weed garden. Clean up shingles as Pete tears them off. Start pulling down creeping vines of poison ivy. Go to dump and help throw out all the shingles. Own personal hell at dump. Hot, Dizzy and getting leared at by the drunk guy next to us. Get back home and continue with clearing out overgrowth/poison ivy.

Sunday- Paint crusty old picnic bench red. Looks adorable now. Clear out more underbrush.
Husband finished roof right after the sun sets.

Monday- Realize that I am indeed allergic to poison ivy. Get home from work and break out the paint. Each of us picks a side and goes to work trying to beat the setting sun. Finish painting moments before its too dark to see anymore.

After one weekend of uber hard work from both of us, the shed is done! We're happy, our agents are happy...even the dog is happy!

Master Bedroom After.

The master bedroom paint was my first experience with picking the wrong paint color from the tiny sample chips. Aiming for a light and soothing sage we ended up with something that was actual a very light, very bright Miami beach mint. This mistake taught us to always go a shade or two darker than the chip we liked. I find that paint usually ends up look lighter once its all over the wall.

Painting the room was a task I tackled in the summer of 2004. Since I was off for the summer and worked wacky retail hours I figured painting our bedroom would be a good use of my free time. I guess this room was my first official home improvement project on the house! And amazingly I stuck with the house even after ending up on the bed clutching the paint brush crying in the fetal position.

Having spent hours scraping off all the wallpaper I could, it was time to paint. Commence with rolling on the primer. Second layer of primer. First layer of paint. Stop rolling paint to pick off old wallpaper backing that decided to come off the wall. Paint. Stop and pick off layer of primer that has come off. Paint. Continue with the 'paint and pick off' pattern until one wall is finished. That is when I realize that color is not the spa inspired sage we wanted, but a bright Boca beach mint.

Grit teeth and I decide that maybe the color just needs a second coat. A second coat will solve all my color woes! Except the second coat just makes the color worse. The heat of a non AC room is combining with three layers of paint fumes. My thighs are sweating so much that I can't even crouch down to paint the trim without slipping and falling over.

The whole room is now the wrong color. My first attempt at picking something out for our house and it is horribly wrong. and its hot. I climbed into bed and just started to cry. An entire day spent working was wasted along my first chance to prove I was going to be a good designer for our home and it was all an epic fail.

Eventually Pete came home and laughed over the horrible paint color with me. We went off to the store and picked out a new, much darker, color. We still didn't get it quite right on the second go-round, but it was much better and I didn't feel like re-painting again.

The final after, like all our rooms the Master went through a few different stages before reaching this point. Those stages included carpeting, a built in for the tv, curtains for closet doors and bamboo blinds that did nothing to block the light. Slowly we ripped out the carpet, put down hardwoods, tore out the built in unit and reattached the closet doors with nicer hardware.

i love my shower.

In our old and lovely Lilac bathroom I would clean by pouring bleach on the floor. Watching the bleach work its way down my tilted bathroom floor and pool into the corner was the only way I felt like the germs lurking under the peeling vinyl tiles would die. After my massive bleach pour I'd have to go lie down from the fumes and that would cut my bathroom cleaning time short. There is always an excuse when it comes to cleaning for me.




Here is the result from when we tried to fix the room up a bit... That meant replacing the toilet and sink with ones that looked like they were manufactured this century. Also I may have gotten over zealous again and peeled off all the wallpaper (shelf paper) in a fit of disgust for it.

Clearly the whole thing would have to get demo'd. There was no fixing this hot mess with paint alone. We got to work gutting everything, but leaving the original foot print of the bathroom in tact. Dealing with permits and moving plumbing are not my idea of fun and would have slowed the process down a ton.

I helped my husband hang drywall and it almost killed me. I held the entire ceiling sheet over my head as he screwed it in and my lungs threatened to blow up while inside my chest. My upper body was sore for days afterwards... I'm a complainer by nature though...so maybe it was more like minutes or hours.

Choosing the bathroom colors/tiles was pretty easy. The room is small and needed to look airy so a light color was in order, but we wanted something that looked like it could have been part of the house originally... or original to when indoor plumbing was invented. I love the subway tiles that are on the wall and shower more than a person should really love tiles.

The upper walls are leftover bead board, painted a cool grey because bright white walls would have looked too stark. The sink console was the best non sale buy we've ever gotten from Lowe's, it included everything! Even the mirror. I'm seriously in love with it and haven't seen it since we bought it. I guess they realized it was a good buy and discontinued it?

However the best thing about the room is something you can't see. We put in heated floors! and they are amazing in the winter. Everyone doing a bathroom renovation better put that on the top of the must do list. I can not stress enough how it makes getting out of your warm and cozy bed on a cold winter morning just a little less jarring.

The Deck

Welcome to the back door area! There are no before pictures of this space, but you can rest assured that it wasn't very pretty. At all.



A blah and rather useless side yard got turned into something so welcoming and relaxing pretty easily. We just added some hanging plants, a little side garden, grill and a seating area. Most nice summer evening we'll bring dinner/wine/beer out here and relax while dining al fresco. Since its just the two of us and we never ever host people, a tiny cafe table fit the bill perfectly. The metal table was an under $30 purchase from Home Goods, which is where we also snagged the rustic look wood folding chairs.

Planters full of flowers add cheer to the area. That is when I'm not busy killing all my potted plants with my black, oddly misshaped thumb. There is a little herb garden off the front of the deck and a butterfly bush. So far the garden has held Rosemary (Died), Lavender (transplanted), Oregano (Died), Basil (ate by Rabbits), Mint and Thyme. The mint is growing like ganbusters which pleases me greatly because I love Mojito's.

Bedroom #3- After

Bedroom #3... Amazing what a clean coat of paint and new carpet can do! I love how the gray looks against the crisp white trim. This color is a new favorite of mine, it is a great warm gray and I have plans to use it in the new house.

This room was among the least labor intensive for us. Nothing had to be demo'ed or remodeled. A few hours of pulling up all the old flooring and painting, coupled with a deep intense cleaning was the extent of our efforts to transform the room.

After- Bedroom #1 turned Office

Four bedrooms for two people who never have house guests is a little excessive. So we turned bedroom #1, which was the smallest and had the enclave for the walk up attic landing, into an office. We took off the door which really helped the upstairs hallway seem brighter and more open.

Not featured is the molding and new light fixture but there are no more bare bulbs in this room! This was one of the first colors we picked out while painting the interior colors years ago and it is currently one of the only ones that I still like. Sometimes going for a darker color or non neutral in a small space is risky but we wanted some color and personality in the room. I think the light floors, trim and ceiling help to keep everything from feeling like its closing in on you.

My husband made me the bookshelf and I love it! Its perfect for all our bookshelf needs (of which I have many) and is nice solid wood, quality piece of furniture. I can definitely see me moving that bookshelf to a ton of different locations all around the house over the years.

The old oak chair was picked up at a antique store for about $20 and I now think we overpaid. Especially considering that it has a huge crack in the back, needs to be recovered and the wood "carvings" in front pieces are not carved but glued on. Ce la vie. I want to paint the chair, and hopefully can convince Pete that I should make painting it a project soon.

The trunk is steamer trunk from around the 1900's and it hides all our random computer equipment, you know the stuff your never sure if you need to throw away or not. It has a flat top, so I plan on repurposing it as a coffee or side table in the future.

After...The house

Now that everyone has seen the before I figure its time for the after pictures. This is what six long years of work, blood, sweat and tears on a tight budget looks like.

Quite a difference! At least I think so.

Sure there are a million things we would change or have done differently now. But we did what we thought was right or fit out tastes and budget at the time. The learning curve was so steep on this house.

For instance, we didn't pick the current paint color. It was quite a shock when we got home and saw this green brown instead of the light sage we thought the paint really was. Picking out the paint color meant an hour on a model home street in Maryland where we climbed over fences to hold up paint chips to actual homes comparing and debating all the different colors. Finally we left with what we thought was the perfect pale green shade.

Somehow paint chips must have gotten mixed up, or too much time passed and we forgot what color was right. After getting a huge drum of custom mixed Ralph Lauren Khaki and handing it over to the contractor, we came home to a house of a completely different color. But it ended up working out just fine and I think fits the historic feel of the house more than the original color we wanted.

We know now that you should get tester cans of all exterior colors first and apply them in two foot sections. That way you can see the color on your house in all different lighting conditions. Not just peeking into a giant drum of paint and saying "huh... I'm sure it will dry lighter"

Garage Before and After!

While house hunting we had a very short list of must haves. Simple things such as walls and a roof. While our house came close to not having a roof, I guess you can call five layers of rotting shingles a roof...

The number one must have was a driveway, so you can imagine how very thrilled my boyfriend was when the Wtown house had a two car cinder block detached garage. I'm pretty sure it was the garage that sold him the house. After 8 long years of sitting out in the weather my boyfriends 1967 Mustang was going to have a proper parking area. I think the car said thank you when it got backed into the garage for the first time.


Here is what the garage looked like before. The green and white house theme spread to the garage as well. No building escaped the green shingles, but thankfully it was awning free. I've circled (in pink) the exposed live wire that used to run right out from the house to the garage. All the insulation dry rotted off the wire. Super safe.

And After! This is the final after...


Yes, I have a weed filled driveway. I salted it recently and am waiting for all the plants to die before pulling them up. Weeding your driveway is a giant PIA.