Basement Bedroom

As I said before, older homes have smaller bedrooms and lack of storage.  Our goal if we had stayed in this house was to eventually put a bathroom in and move downstairs.  Here are some lovely before and after shots:

 Before:  This area was a workshop to the side of the garage.  My husband's goal when he first started this project (before we met) was to add another room and then another renter.  He had to settle for me instead:)  The air conditioning vents could not be moved and they hung down too low to put a bed underneath.  I suggested adding a huge closet as climate controlled storage.  We stored our Christmas tree and out of season clothing in this closet.

Drywall 

 I like to call this the "Great Closet Door Debate."  My husband and his buddy made closet doors to fit the non-standard openings created by adding the closet under the air vents.  These closet doors were pretty, but they were extremely heavy and we had countless problems finishing them (painting, adding plexi glass panels, getting them to close properly). 






We ended up scrapping the huge, time consuming project and we bought sliding closet doors that overlap and cut the bottoms off.  They slid on a track from the top.  Easy to paint, easy to hang.  Much better than making your own, in case you were wondering!

 After:  I added a sewing desk down here after I got a sewing machine for Christmas.  

Before and after the window was added.  To be a bedroom that is up to code, you must have a window and a closet.

Kitchen

I really liked the kitchen at Shorewood.  It had enormous windows and loads of cabinets.  The lighting wasn't good at night and it didn't have a pantry, but other than that, it was awesome.  When I moved in, the kitchen was a bright yellow that reminded me of Italy.  It was great!  But, when our realtor came to look at our house, the two main things she said were to depersonalize and declutter.  I really liked our yellow kitchen, but buyers might not.  We also had 40 year old kitchen cabinets.  My mom and I worked hard to restore them to their former glory and I switched out all of the hardware to give them an updated feel.

Before:                                                                                                After:

 -Before

After

Before:

                                                                                    After:

New windows made a huge difference in this room.  The corner of the old window let in cold air and bugs.  These new windows were energy efficient and pretty!  When the weather was nice, they easily slid open.  It was nice to be able to look out while doing the dishes.

Before:

One light for the whole kitchen...it was actually an entry hall light with weird refractive pieces of glass.  There was NOT enough light in the kitchen!  Especially for making dinner.

                                                                      After: My husband installed a new light fixture and then jumped off that line in the ceiling to run an extra track light (modern design) that we could use for task lighting.  While he was up there, he fixed the light over the sink that had been broken for years! 

Master

Old houses have lots of great things about them:
-Usually have hardwood hidden beneath ugly carpet
-Plaster walls that make you feel like a bomb could go off on our house and you would be fine
-cool architectural features
-well-built

Here are some things I don't like about older homes:
-lack of storage
-small master bedrooms
-small bathrooms
-lack of central air (my husband added this to our house as soon as he moved in)

There wasn't anything we could do about the size of our master bedroom, but we could change how much furniture we had and the placement of the furniture.  Here is how the room looked when my husband was a bachelor:

I made him these curtains to block out the light from fabric I got in Tanzania.  The chest of drawers made it feel very crammed and there was only room for a double bed.  (Fine for 1 guy, but not big enough for both of us when we got married!)  A queen sized mattress was one of our first major purchases as a couple.

Here is how the room looked when we sold our house:

 It's amazing what paint, new windows, and new lighting can do! 

Happy Table Day!

When you are first starting out, money is usually tight.  This is especially true if your husband is in the process of renovating your entire house.  When our house was a bachelor pad, all of the guys ate at my husband's homemade coffee tables, while sitting on the couch, watching TV/playing video games.  I really wanted a table, but they were so expensive!  So, I settled on a card table from Aldi, the cheapest place I could find one!  Here is how it looked:

I was kind of disappointed that we didn't have a dining room, but as I said, I did not choose this house, I just chose the man that came with the house!  We had a 2nd card table that we put with this one in case we had more than 4 people eating with us.

I also had a bookshelf for a china cabinet:

It did the job just fine.  And it was free, which was awesome.  It was my parents' old entertainment center back in the day before flat screen televisions.

So, I was working several overtime days back then, and I really wanted a real table and china cabinet.  So, I set out to work some shifts specifically to pay for them.

The fruits of my labor:

This set came from Sam's club.  They actually have some nice furniture for very reasonable prices.  I loved the dark wood and the shape of the backs of the chairs.  It's nice to not have tons of spindles where food can get stuck.  I also liked that the chairs don't have cushions, which makes them a little less comfortable, but much easier to wipe off at the end of a meal! 

My husband bought me flowers to celebrate "Table Day."  He knew I was very excited!

Here are some of the fun celebrations we had with the table that we could not have had on the card tables:

Mothers' Day brunch with the china my grandmother gave me for high school graduation :)

Mexican night for my brother's birthday celebration!

Here is a glimpse of the mid-century modern china cabinet I found at the antique mall in town.  I love the antique mall!