Ceiling Tour

It's no secret that old houses have a lot of quirks and our home, by no means, is an exception. In fact, our home has a personality of its own. Apparently, in the 1960s, a wood-artist lived here. He took the time to cover just about every surface he could find with intricate wood paneling and mosaics. The bulk of his time, however, was definitely spent on personalizing each and every ceiling. So, I figured our ceilings deserved a little house-tour of their own.

Living Room

We'll start in the living room. This room was recently renovated which is why the color is now white.



We've been told that at one point, a wooden-carved eagle hung in the center of this ceiling. No joke, it had holes for eyes and colored lights shined out of them as the main lighting fixture in the room. Trippy, much? You'll notice these are individual squares, each cut by hand out of wood and stained. There are four wooden "lines" coming from each corner of the room joining in the center. The perimeter is defined by smaller wooden squares placed side-by-side in two rows, forming a border. Wowza.

Why'd we keep the ceiling when fixing up this room? There are only three ceilings in this house that are pure drywall and they're located upstairs. The wooden ceiling, though unique from the others, helps to unify the room with those on the first level. Plus, who else can say they have this in their house?


Kitchen and Dining Room Area

I actually love this ceiling; it's very beachy to me, especially now that we've painted it white.



The bead-board style surface seems clean and classic. A definite keeper which is why we left this one installed when we renovated this space.


Office Ceiling

Just off of the living room is a tiny space that we believe was, at one point, the main entrance to the house. This room will someday be a home office.



While the ceiling here is made up of white squares, similar to the living room, it will definitely have to go when we renovate this space. The squares here make up the suspended ceiling and each square sags a little in the middle. I think they may have installed this to match the living room a bit, but truly, it just looks old and cheap. We've considered installing a similar ceiling to the one in the kitchen when the time comes.


Billiard Room

Our house has five bedrooms which is more than we need at the moment. So this room on the main floor is destined to be the room the pool table will go in someday (having space for one was a requirement for Shawn when house hunting).



It's not yet painted, obviously, but I think this ceiling will look really nice when painted white. The only obstacle in this room is that the previous owners only covered about 3/4 of the ceiling with this. The remaining 1/4 is left dry-walled and white. Why? Who knows...


Downstairs Hallway

We recently renovated this hallway area and really like the look of this ceiling. It's the same texture as that of the dining room and kitchen, however, it has a square pattern to it.



Let's wander upstairs, shall we?



Soon-to-be Walk-in Closet

Just at the top of the stairs is a small kids' room. However, this room adjoins to the master bedroom and with no closet to speak of, we're tearing through the common wall and claiming it for our clothes. The ceiling in this one is a little nutty:



It looks very similar to the intricate detail that was in our living room before we painted it. Because it makes the room truly unique, we'll try to keep this installed (but white). If it looks bad, out it will go.



Master Bedroom

Moving to the room next door we have our bedroom that is next on the list for renovations. The ceiling in this room is very similar to the kitchen and dining area.



This will stay and I can't wait to see it painted. I think it will be perfect for the beachy and airy room we'll be creating.


Upstairs Hallway

Moving down the hall towards the other rooms, we wander through one of our dry-walled ceiling areas. This space was an addition to the house years ago which explains the odd angles.



This hallway used to be coated in blue wallpaper. We tore that down and painted a very light yellow in its place. I'm very pleased with "the after. "


Guest Bedroom

At the end of the hall is our guest bedroom. Here is another room that lacks wood paneling and mosaics, but I love the look of the smooth white paint against our gray walls.



When we moved in, this ceiling was wall-papered the same as that of the walls. We tore it all out and painted the ceiling white. Much better.

There are a few other rooms in the house I didn't post here, such as the bathrooms and one other bedroom (our someday library). I think you get the gist of the craziness that are our ceilings though. Keep an eye on those upcoming make-overs for the results on how we plan to tackle some of these coverings.

Kitchen Rug Dilemma

Well, it's not really a 'dilemma' per se, just not quite sure what to do. As revealed last week, here's our finished kitchen:



I love the hardwood floors and definitely want to keep them as exposed as possible. However, too many drippy drops from the sink have been catching on the floor and I hate stepping in puddles in my bare feet. So I think a kitchen mat is in order right in front of the sink.

The hubby feels differently. He thinks a rug at the base of the sink isn't enough and envisions a runner from the length of the dishwasher to the refrigerator. No problem with me, but that's only about 5 feet in length. I don't want to spend the extra money on the two feet I don't need covering up the flooring (most standard runners I've found are 7' long).

Part two of said 'dilemma'; we want a mustard or golden colored piece. I had submitted my photos to Rate My Space when we first finished this room, long before the flooring was installed. A reader suggested playing off the blues, whites and blacks with a little splash of yellow. Brilliant. That in mind, I love rugs with pattern and don't want to settle for just a plain old golden kitchen mat.

Here are a few I've been toying with:









Now I know most of the rugs above shouldn't be in areas with high traffic and water droplets. I definitely don't want to have to replace this anytime soon.

So what do you think? Know of any golden/mustard/yellow rugs, roughly sized between 2x3' and 2.5x5.5', that can tolerate a few water droplets?

Dining Area Before and After Makeover Photos

Our dining room and hallway-area renovations have really been no big deal, thus not really a secret. I think I've shown off glimpses here and there throughout our kitchen and living room makeovers. Today, however, when looking through before photos, I realized just how insanely different these rooms are. Let's have a look...

Our dining area is just off to the left of the kitchen. When we renovated our kitchen, we did the walls of this area at the same time. Likewise, when we installed the flooring a few weeks ago, this room was finished off automatically as well. Bit by bit this space has come together.

Before Photos



And here's our handy work:




Paint, new floors, new lighting and window treatments really make a difference, don't they? We actually left the wood paneling in this room on the walls and ceiling and painted it white. I know some people strongly hate it, but I love the beach cottage look it gives off.

I've installed an antique-style hook on either side of the sliding door to pull back the curtains as needed:


And while we were at it, why settle for regular old vent covers? Our heat registers even took a replacement.



Standing in the dining room, if you do a complete 180º turn, you face the strange extension of the dining room that is also our hallway. Here's the loveliness we inherited:



The decor simply HAD to go ASAP. So in deciding we'd use this space as mainly a hallway first, and as an entertaining area/extension of the dining room second, we ended up with this:



This area still feels very unfinished to me since there aren't many knick-knacks and photos up yet, but we'll get there. :) Again, we have the same flooring throughout the first level of the home to make everything feel uniform and flow nicely. The photo that's now leaning on the buffet will hang above it so I have room for colorful candles and what not to add a punch of color. The rug on the floor I love, but is slightly too small for this area, we think. Instead, we'll be moving this one under the kitchen table to draw the two rooms together even more closey, and add the same rug (just a size larger) to better fill this space.



Since we decided to leave the paneling in here to unify this room region with the dining room, we ran into some issues with trim. When we pulled off the old nasty door casing, turns out the paneling was cut about 5" short of the door on all sides. We decided to go with this fluted casing, which is elegant but still wide, so we wouldn't have to replace the panelling at all.



As I add more to this room, I'll be sure to keep you posted. While I don't want it to be cluttered (as it is a transitional space), I do want to add some items of visual interest. So that's that. Another room renovation complete.

The Story of Our House

We love our house (I guess it shows, being that I blog about it almost every day) and even though it's under construction, it already feels like home. We've worked hard to ensure every room we've tackled so far is exactly our style from flooring finishes to paint colors to even vent covers. But, actually, we went through a lot of hassle and headache to get this place before any renovating started. We almost missed purchasing it by a matter of hours. So instead of posting more before and after photos (I meant to, but the hubby seems to have misplaced the camera cord to upload my pics), I thought today we'd run through a little history lesson about how this fixer-upper came to be ours.

We used to live in a townhome, also in Hudson. I'd been ready to move for about two years while I waited impatiently for Shawn to be on the same page. We wanted to stay in town as my business is here, Shawn loves his job, it's on the river and just outside the Twin Cities. Our townhouse was great, but no yard/garden, noisy neighbors and the serious lack of historic charm was getting to me.



So we started casually looking for houses. We flipped through endless photos and online ads, went to a few open houses, but just weren't digging any of them. The houses I liked didn't have a spare room for a some-day pool table, and the ones Shawn liked lacked a nice kitchen or enough yard space for my taste. So we kept looking. Then, through an online listing, I found this green house that looked like a mess from the outside. The garden and foliage was all overgrown, there were metal rods hanging off the upstairs deck and the garage looked shabby and old. For some reason though, I had to see it. I told Shawn about it that night after work and we set up a showing.

We toured the house and (in case you haven't seen any before photos yet) here's what we walked into:






I couldn't help but notice while walking through the HUGE pile of realtor business cards left on the counter. This home had been on the market for a while with not even a bite. Sure the walls were covered in terrible paper, the flooring sucked, and overall the house resembled the interior of a sauna, but that could be changed. There was something about this house that really appealed to us. So we went home and over homemade pasta, went on and on about what we could do with the place.

At this point we still hadn't put our home up for sale. It was rapidly approaching Christmas and with the busy holiday season, little action was probably to be had on showing off our home. So we decided January 2nd would be the day we'd publish our listing. We kept our sights set on the fixer-upper, invited Shawn's dad up to tour the place to ensure our vision was realistic (the only thing we'd ever renovated was finishing off our basement), took photos of the townhome and waited for the big day.





We had lots of activity on our house and then after a while it died down. With not many bites, our realtor advised us to place a contingent offer on the green house. So we did - thankfully. Things were at a standstill for four months while Shawn and I slowly packed up our items. We couldn't put away too much because we didn't want the house to look vacant and "un-homey". But we couldn't relax and throw whatever anywhere due to the showings.

Finally, things started to move and INSANELY fast. Out to brunch with some friends on a Saturday morning my realtor called. She said, "I have news. There's a non-contingent offer on the green house. You have 48 hours to respond." WHAT?! We hadn't sold our other house yet. I was sure this was over. I called Shawn immediately and both our spirits plummeted. I finished brunch, went home and we ran circles in our heads about how we could possibly make this happen. Not to mention letting us know on a Saturday morning was surely part of the other buyer's strategy. That meant we had until noon on Monday to be approved by a bank to get the buying process rolling. After some furious Excel spreadsheet creations and calling our lender at home on the weekend (it was do or die!) we decided we'd live off pasta and beans for a while. We were going to take the house.



First thing Monday our lender gave us a call. We'd been approved. The closing needed to take place in two weeks, which was another battle in itself. Keeping everyone in line and up to speed isn't easy. Still, we were ready three days before the closing date. We were almost all packed and ready to move when my realtor called again. "The seller isn't going to be in town for the closing," she said. "They'll be in Ireland and they'd like to reschedule." When I asked if they could pre-sign, she said the seller didn't want to. Wait a second; hadn't we worked like mad to meet their closing date demand? Turns out, they didn't think we would make it all along. They knew from the get-go they'd be out of town and didn't take our meeting seriously. They thought we'd never get the house. Now that it was clear it was ours, we had to reschedule.

It turned into a mess of paperwork over the next few days. You see, since there was another offer initially, if we didn't close on the original date, the other party would "win." In other words, it was this day or the house was theirs. After a lot of reassurance and some serious signatures and amendments, we had to wait two more weeks. The seller, as a consolation, told us we could start fixing up the garden, planting our veggies, etc. (they didn't live there at the time).

Finally, the day came and we closed. We were stressed out at that point for about a month straight. We didn't really believe that entire time that the house was going to be ours. Every curve ball that could've been thrown our way was. But somehow, we managed it. We moved in, with the garden and veggie plot already alive and kicking, and were able to focus on the interior. I'm not sure why we were meant to jump through all the hoops we did, but it certainly did prove to Shawn and I how much we loved this house.

Oh, and the townhouse? We rented it. :)

Fixing It Fancy Kitchen Featured on Cococozy!

The other day I received an email from Coco, over at the Cococozy blog. She saw photos of our before and after kitchen, new wood floors and all, and asked if she could feature the transformation herself. Of course, I was flattered and said yes. Today you can find the Fixing It Fancy kitchen renovation here.



She has so many wonderful posts, awesome design ideas and bits of inspiration. Be sure to check out her site!

Fresh Start

I mentioned last week that we were having a few shrubs removed from our front yard. Here's the overgrown greenery we've been coming home to since we moved in:



The shrubs were just too large and overpowering. When sitting on the screened in front porch, you couldn't see anything but brush on either side of the windows. Yesterday, however, the shrubs were officially removed and their stumps were ground well below the soil's surface. Here's the after shot:



Of course we plan to fill in those empty spaces with bushes or small hydrangea trees, but doesn't it look so much better?! I really feel like our whole front yard has brightened up. Best of all, you can't even tell the trees were ever there. Here's a peek at where one of them stood:



Even though we just finished up the summer season, our minds have been reeling about what we can put there next spring. Can't wait!