Brick House: Living Room and Entry Before & After

One last Before & After to finish up the Brick House! I am so excited to have good people living here. They love the backyard and appreciate all the space. Though it is really weird not going over to work on the Brick House every morning. That has been the hardest to get use to....

Do you remember what the living/dining room looked like before? I didn't! Ha! Going back and looking at these Before pictures is a bit scary! Yikes! I don't remember it looking this bad..... I guess I really had a vision. And I am so glad the house has lived up to the vision!

 Oh those dark walls!

The front entry just looks filthy! At lest this is an after-carpet picture or it would have been worse...

 Let's get back to the pretty photos, shall we? 

It is hard to portray how large and bright this room is. Even on a cloudy day it is bright! Those big picture windows is my favorite feature! And the window seat looking things under each window? Those are radiator covers. They do make great window seats though! The warmest seat in the house during winter!

 From the kitchen doorway looking toward the living room.

The living/dining room needed the lest amount of work. All last summer it was the "store" room for tools and materials. We primed and painted the walls and ceiling; and washed and shellacked the floors. Other then washing the windows that was it!

 The entry needed a little bit more love. Besides needing to remove icky carpet, we also had to get two spots of cat pee to get out. (Our tried and true recipe is Time, Bleach and Nature's Miracle Stain remover. We had spray bottles of bleach and Nature's Miracle in the hall for weeks! Every time arrived and left we would spray the spots down with either bleach of Nature's Miracle. We tried to alternate. After four months there was only a faint whiff left when you got close! And the shellac took care of that.)  And then there was the stairs to deal with..... Read about the Stairs here.

 I know that light fixture isn't original, but it lends a nice touch of elegance to the hall!

Thanks for coming along on this journey with me! As with any journey there is mountains and valleys, but it has been fun! I hope you enjoyed it too! 

Summer Flowers, Painting and Porch updates

Ah! Summer is here in full swing! The porch is almost tree house like with all the leafy green trees surrounding it. I have been doing a little fluffing and sprucing to the porch. We changed the pillow covers to our usual summer covers and have added one or two other things.

I suddenly remembered I had a basic wooden stool in the basement and decided it would make a great plant stand behind the settee. Then Mandy found a (slightly squashed) fern on sale to perch on top. Perfect!

We have had pansies on the porch this spring. This one is lovely! 

 I forgot I wanted a new doormat to spruce up the porch, until I saw this one at Hobby Lobby! Mandy managed to get Kerri to "pose" for us. I love all the colors!

 Summer also means gardening around here. This year we have larger hanging baskets on our fence hooks. The tin buckets, while very cute, looked a little lost on the fence. We are loving the bright geraniums!

We also got our patio pots planted! (Say that seven times fast!) Can't wait to see what they will look like all filled out!

Summer is all about projects too, right? So last Friday I decided it was time to get re-painting the bathroom checked off the list!

 One of the perks of having a small bathroom is it is quick to paint! I managed to paint the bathroom and back hall (they were both the same color) in a little under three hours. Made a nice start to the weekend! (I don't often get a bird's-eye-view of the bathroom. The ladder was half in the bathtub for cutting in around the ceiling!)

I didn't get any spiffy "after" pictures. And it doesn't really look any different as I used the same color paint. It just feels a lot fresher and clean with a new coat of paint. Six years of wear and tear in a bathroom was starting to show on the walls! 

Saturday was filled with a bunch of projects outdoors! All of which I will share more details later. Mandy built a potting bench, which is super cute! I cleaned out the garage, which inspired Mandy as I found a bunch of lumber. The Great Radiator Project has also started. In the left corner of the picture above you can see a radiator I am scraping. There are two I need to scrap and re-paint. The others just need a touch up coat of paint. I am also working on patching the cold air returns in the cottage, which is why there are old floor boards there! I was cleaning and stripping the finish on the boards.

It took a bit for me to adjust to not having the Brick House to work on! Still in process, but I am getting into re-focusing on projects around the cottage. The biggest one this year is to get the whole house fitted with radiators. There are a lot of steps that project and hopefully we can get most of them done this summer!

I dug this embroidered cottage out of my closet and finally got it finished! 

Apple Blossom Time 2019

It's Apple Blossom time over here! I love this time of year. And this year, I have two trees to enjoy! But we will get there in a moment....

 You don't mind way too many pictures of beautiful apple blossoms, do you? Good. I can't get enough! And alas, it is a very short season....

 The little apple tree didn't flower quite abundantly as last year. But it was a long hard winter. I am enjoying what it has!

 I'm so glad I took these when I did! Our weather has been a little more volatile then usual. The day after it was very warm and now it is back to rainy and chilly....

 The other apple blossoms I am enjoying this year, it the crab apple at the Brick House! This old tree is so huge and beautiful!

 I have been working on getting all the flower beds weeded and defined at the Brick House. It is so fun to suddenly see a shower of petals raining down!

 Mmmm… don't you love that color?

This week marks the one year anniversary of the Brick House! Even though I didn't technically buy the house this month, this is when I first looked at it and accepted the counter offer. My, what a year! I loved (almost) every minute of it! 

Brick House: Kitchen Before & After

Are you ready for a dramatic change? Even though I didn't change the layout; changing the wall color, countertops and appliances made a real difference! 

 I had almost forgot I took the upper cabinets down.... From the first the didn't look right to me.

 Oh that orange! Yikes!

I traded this fridge with my brother for a stove! It was just too big for the kitchen!

 I'm not a fan of the no-cabinet-hardware look. Doesn't look finished to me! So I added simple handles and knobs.

Mandy and I took some of the cabinets that we took down and added them here. I think it looks a little like an old fashioned wall of cabinets! I wasn't sure how the space of baskets would turn out and no one else seemed to understand what I was trying to do, but when I finished they agreed it wasn't  bad!

There are still a few small things that need to be done. But I have found a lovely family to rent and they will be moving in the end of the month!! They are so excited about the big yard and all the flowerbeds. I am so excited and yet at the same time sad.... Even though the Brick House is still mine, I didn't think it would be this hard to turn the house over to someone else..... I have loved refreshing it and bring it back to life!

Now it is time to get back to my cottage and work on a few projects there!

Brick House: Bathroom Before & After

BEFORE

BEFORE

BEFORE

A big improvement, wouldn't you say?!

A lot of things needed to be refreshed; the paneling removed from the walls, the space eating vanity removed, the sad flooring and dim light. We also installed a baseboard and door trim, curtain rod, toilet paper holder and hooks for towels. Plus all new plumbing!

BEFORE

This is one of the only before pictures I have with the carpeting. Couldn't wait to get it out of there! 

Looking down the hallway toward the back bedroom. Plenty of lovely wood floors!

 I love how the sun comes in through this window on the stairs. It faces west and gets the most beautiful evening sunshine!

As soon as I tidy up the kitchen and remove the last of the tools, I will be back with more before & after pictures!