Here We Go: Starting Our Kitchen Renovation

 

Did you know that there is a difference between a remodel and a renovation?  I wasn't sure which one we are having done, so I started doing some research.  To me, renovation sounds a lot more extensive.  I picture tearing down walls and adding on and completely changing the layout of a room or house.  Apparently, I was wrong.  That's what it means to remodel.  To renovate means to update or restore.  It covers things like staining floors, making repairs, changing light fixtures, painting or refacing cabinets---that kind of stuff.  Redecorating is to put up some new window treatments, hang some new pictures, and toss some new throw pillows on the couch.  We are definitely having a renovation here.

 

These wide pine plank floors that cover the entire main floor of our house were laid in the mid-eighties when this century-old farmhouse went under a major restoration project.  They were in fairly good condition when we moved in ten years ago, but our large family really lives in a house.  I mean we really, really live in a house, and we wear it out.  In the eighties, the owners changed the main entrance to the very front of the kitchen when they put in a new pebbled driveway and walkway that led to a big covered front porch that leads into the kitchen.  The back door of the kitchen leads out to the patio, pool, and down to the greenhouse and barn.  That means that nearly all of our foot traffic comes and goes through the kitchen.  That side entrance that opens into the foyer between the living room and dining room hardly ever gets used.  This has meant a lot of wear and tear on our kitchen floor.  The pine is beautiful, but it has splintered and split and lost its finish, so that was our main priority this year.

 

However, once we decided to not tackle the floors ourselves, but instead hire out, I figured we might as well get some other things taken care of as well.  The colors in this house were early American when we moved in.  I love colonial style houses, but the mustard-colored walls, forest green cabinets, and dark burgundy doors and trim make this large kitchen so dark.  I used to spend my whole day in this room preparing all of our food from scratch, plus canning, freezing, and dehydrating the foods we grew ourselves.  This is still the room we spend a good portion of our days in.  When friends and family come to visit, the kitchen is where we tend to congregate.  Homework is often done here.  Card games are played at this table.  This room is where everyone finds their birthday presents when they wake up in the morning.  It's in front of this black stove that the children warm themselves and drink cocoa after sledding.  And of course, this is where all the food is prepared and consumed daily.  To sum up, this room is where most of our living is being done, and it needs to be brighter.  So we're having every inch of it repainted a much lighter color.

 

Additionally, there are some repairs that need to be made to the floor, the ceiling, and the backsplash.  We're also having a white cast iron sink put in and the wood countertops refinished.  I was hoping for some new cabinet doors so that visitors can't see everything on my shelves, but that will have to wait.  I think it will motivate me to throw out some old stuff and organize what we have.  And there's a new piece of furniture I've been waiting for to place in the one corner of this room that I can't wait to own.

This renovation project starts next Monday, and I snapped all of these photos yesterday morning.  Everything in that room has to be taken out and put in our dining room, the hallway, our bedroom, the basement, and probably every other nook and cranny where I can find a space.  It feels like a monumental task, but at least that room is going to get a thorough cleaning that it hasn't had in ten years.  And I know that a month from now, that room is going to look like a brand new kitchen.

Now I should get to work.  I've taken down all the Christmas decorations that I usually leave up until after the Epiphany, and I'm going to start boxing up the things we really don't use very often.  I am definitely not looking forward to pulling the stove and refrigerator out of there and seeing what all lies behind.  Not to mention what a household of seven is going to do without a kitchen for several weeks, but I'll save that for another post.

 

This is the Crazy, Divine Story of How We Got This House

  

Scattered throughout years of ordinary life are these handfuls of supernatural events that remind me something much greater than myself is in charge.  Ten years ago today our family purchased, and moved into, this mountain farmhouse.  The complicated story of how this took place is one of those rare, miraculous events that only those closest to us know about.  Today I share it with you.

 

When we first began looking at houses in May of 2006, we had just listed our suburban South Carolina house with a realtor.  I was nearly seven months pregnant with our seventh child, and I hoped to be settled in a new house before his birth.  In the meantime, we were renting a beautiful, century-old Victorian house on the corner of a small town with two main roads up against the property.  It was a quaint town and a lovely house, but the roads and the pond were less than ideal for us since we had three toddlers and preschoolers at the time.  We called an old friend of the family (who happened to be a realtor) and set up a date to tour some houses.  My husband also searched the Internet and discovered this farmhouse had just been listed.  It looked perfect, except for the fact that it only had three bedrooms and one main bathroom.  We decided to put it on our list of possibilities.

That day in early May, we looked at numerous new houses in subdivisions, an interesting large house with several acres near a river (but no basement, attic, or any storage space whatsoever), and this mountain farmhouse.  We drove farther and farther out into the country, turned onto a gravel lane that wound through the woods, over a small bridge, and up the mountain.  And we arrived at this house on a sunny spring day.  The lilacs were in full bloom, and there were so many of them.  The pool was clear and shimmering.  The grass was a lush green, and the yard and property seemed to go on forever and disappear into the woods somewhere.  I was instantly in love, and I hadn't even walked into the house yet.

 

It just got better and better because there were covered porches, a split staircase, colonial colors and light fixtures, original doors and oak floors upstairs, and wide pine plank floors down.  Additionally, there was a full sized basement and attic to store all of our stuff and a large shed divided into a garage and another nearly-finished room with a loft above for storage and a lean-to for who knows what.  I thought it was perfect, and I never needed to look at another house again.  It didn't matter that it was over 120 years old.  Or that the basement sometimes flooded.  Or that the entire house had only one closet.  Or that a family of 7 was going to share one main bathroom on the top floor or have to venture down into the rustic basement to use the half-bath.  Or that it would take over six hours to mow all that grass if you had a riding lawn mower, which we didn't.

 

I was ready to make an offer right then and there.  But there was a glitch.  Our house in South Carolina hadn't sold yet.  We had a mortgage, installment loans on a minivan and remodeling of a bathroom in that SC house, and we were paying off the remainder of some student loans.  As depressing as it was, our lender informed us that we could only afford a house in a lower price range.  That was a very disappointing day, to say the least.

 

So we spent the next two-three months with the realtor all over the county looking at cheaper houses.  We didn't like any of them.  As my due date neared, however, I felt like we needed to settle on something.  Our lease was running out on the Victorian rental house.  We even considered purchasing it and finishing the spacious attic, but the small yard and noisy roads were not right for our family.  We started making offers on some of the smaller houses, but rather peculiar things happened when we did.  On the one house, someone counter-offered more money within hours of our offer---even though the house had been on the market for months.  Another house was under contract, but the realtor believed it was going to fall through.  After our offer, the contract was accepted and those buyers closed on the house.  On yet another house, after we made our offer, the sellers changed their minds and decided not to sell.  This went on and on throughout the summer.  In the meantime, I got more and more pregnant, our current lease was due to expire, and I continued to dream of this mountain farmhouse.

 

On July 14, 2006, I went into labor with our youngest son.  It was the hottest day of the summer, and we were scheduled to look at six houses with our one, four, and five year olds in tow.  I felt as if we HAD to decide on a house that day before I had this baby.  The very last house we looked at was a duplex in the middle of town.  It was a nice neighborhood, but we hadn't been interested in a duplex.  Our realtor assured us we would like it though, so we looked.  By the end of the day, we were hot, sweaty, hungry, and tired.  I held off going to the hospital until after dinner because I wasn't in that much pain.  When we finally arrived and I was admitted, I told my husband to call the realtor and make an offer on the duplex because I wanted to know we had a house under contract, at least.  He acquiesced because it's never smart to argue with a woman in labor.

 

Within hours, our son was born, and it was by far the shortest and mildest active labor I've ever had. The next day, we received a call from our realtor stating that the owner of the duplex (who happened to live in the other half) rejected our offer even though it was very close to the listed price.  So we offered the full amount.  He again rejected it.  Our realtor was perplexed.  She had never seen anything like this in her decades of real estate sales.  Her partner met with the owner in person, and he came right out and said he would not sell that house to people of color nor to ethnic minorities...nor to people with children.  He had apparently been watching us as we toured the other half of the duplex.  Our children were well-mannered and well-behaved even though they had spent all day looking at houses in the heat.  But seeing my husband and me with three small children and me being extremely pregnant turned him off, I suppose.  Unfortunately for him, there are laws against discrimination, and the realtor promptly removed the For Sale sign from his lawn, and all the local real estate agents refused to represent him.

 

Our realtor met with us and urged us to file a legal complaint with the US Housing and Urban Development so this person couldn't continue to discriminate.  She was appalled and embarrassed by the entire situation, especially since she was the one who urged us to look at that duplex when we really hadn't been interested at first.  I was initially hurt, flabbergasted, and offended at what had just happened.  In my postpartum, hormonal state I felt shocked and speechless.  Once our baby and I returned "home" from the hospital, however, I realized that aside from filing the lawsuit, we also still needed to find a house because time was rapidly running out on our rental agreement.  Fortunately, our house in South Carolina had sold a month earlier, and in a totally unexpected way.  Within a week of being listed, another realtor decided to purchase it at the full asking price because of its location adjacent to the horse fields where the annual Steeplechase occurred.  She planned to update the fifty year-old house and then flip it as soon as possible.  We had only owned the house for five years, so we didn't have a lot of equity in it, but it sold at such a good price that we made a nice profit.  We never dreamed that would happen, but it enabled us to pay off most of our loans which changed our buying power considerably.

 

At the same time all this was going on, my husband picked up some extra hours in the ER of a local hospital.  One night as he was talking about our adventures in house hunting, his boss mentioned that her house was for sale, and maybe we should check it out.  It had been on the market for nearly three months, and although offers had been made, none of them were close to the asking price.  What do you know?  Her house was the same farmhouse we had looked at in May---THE house I wanted in the worst way but had given up on.  I called our lender again and asked what we could afford now that our SC house had sold.  She asked if there was a house we had in mind, and she didn't have to ask twice.  We talked to our realtor immediately and made a good offer, and six weeks later the seven of us moved into that house.  THIS house.  And that is our happy ending.

 

Prologue:

Several years later, we were granted a significant amount of money from the HUD settlement.  It enabled us to build a greenhouse and install an aquaponics system without incurring debt.  And that is really how our farmhouse turned into a small farm since the herbs and greens grown in the aquaponics system were the first items we sold to the public at a local farmers' market.  How amazing is that?

My wish for all of you readers is that your lives be sprinkled with such miraculous moments to ponder and share.

A Primitive Preppy Christmas Farmhouse Tour

I still get excited during this time of year.  There is a feeling of anticipation and magic and joy from the beginning of Advent all the way through Christmas day.  I love every part of this season: the Christmas music, the decorations, the Advent wreath and calendar, the movies and stories, the food and the shopping, the wrapping of gifts and the giving of gifts.  I wear my Christmas tree earrings and Santa sweater during the day, and I slip into my flannel Christmas pajamas and snowflake slipper socks at night.  This year, inspired by Pinterest, I decided to add a touch of both preppy plaid and primitive burlap throughout the house.  We still put out our traditional ornaments and decorations, but there is also a bit of this new primitive preppy found in many parts of this old farmhouse.  And it's all still very kid-friendly.  Let's take a tour...

I would love to decorate with lights on the front porch, but alas, there is not a single electrical outlet on the outside of this old farmhouse.  We would have to run an extension cord through the house, which would mean we couldn't close the door all the way.  Not a good idea in December.  So I have to settle for decorating without the lights.  The little red chair in the top picture is part of a set with a children's table that my father built for our kiddos when they were all still small.  The boys have taken over the table with their Legos, but I confiscated one of the chairs.  Lo and behold, I found my husband's old ice skates in the attic (told you it's like a rummage sale up there,) and I added a plaid bow and old Santa hat.

This chalkboard has found its way into other blog posts, and I'll probably continue to use it through the different seasons.  I re-used a red bow from an old wreath and took the remainder of the cinnamon pinecones and attached them with a plaid flannel ribbon.  Some blue chalk was all I needed to create some snowflakes and a Christmas ball ornament down the center.

While shopping in my attic, I came across an old wreath and stripped it down to just its greenery, then attached a new plaid and gold bow from Target.  I wanted to keep it simple.

Kohl's had a bunch of Welcome mats on sale, including many that could sit out all winter.  It was hard to choose.

This is as lit up as my front porch gets, unfortunately.  I used extra pine boughs from our Christmas tree and attached them to the tops of our outdoor lantern lights with plaid flannel ribbon.

Moving into our kitchen, there is this slice of our tree trunk that I shared with you in the last post.  Painted with chalkboard paint and some pine and ribbon hot glued to the top, this is one of our countdowns to Christmas.

Although not plaid or burlap, I bought this painting last year at a small, local gift shop because it reminds me of our house.  The lamp post actually does light up and flicker, and my children love it.  It hangs in our kitchen all winter.

I finally took that ugly computer desk and all of our office supplies out of the corner of our kitchen.  I am still undecided about what will fill that space, but for now, we put up the children's Christmas tree.  When I was a girl, I thought it would be amazing to have two Christmas trees, so when our teenage son was little, we purchased a four foot artificial tree that used to sit in the middle of an electric train set.  We put up the traditional ornaments of the past, but I also added plaid flannel ribbon and some of those plaid/burlap balls and pinecones I described in my last blog post.  When my husband saw the plaid Santa hat at Joann Fabrics, he insisted we buy it since I'm on this plaid kick this year.  I don't look good in any kind of hat though, so it went to the top of the tree.  Around the bottom is an old plaid tablecloth that no longer fits any of the tables we have.  I found the burlap/plaid deer pillow at Joann Fabrics as well, and it gets moved all over the house.

The inside door of our foyer holds this straw wreath with plaid ribbons and a wooden bear, also found in my attic.  This is across from our staircase...

It's the same artificial evergreen garland I use every year with some new lights attached, but now plaid bows connect it to the stair railing.  Bows were handmade (not by me) and purchased at Michael's.

Believe it or not, this old farmhouse has a chimney, but no fireplace.  Therefore, the stockings get hung on the railing.  Come to think of it, we have so many people in our family that we'd be hard-pressed to fit everyone's stockings on a fireplace mantel, so it's just as well.  The wood/coal stove in the kitchen is what's actually attached to the chimney.  No stockings can be hung from that.

Along with older decorations and another soft plaid fleece throw on the leather sofa, this seven foot long plaid blanket and woody wagon pillow get thrown on my enormous rocker/recliner where I sit to read, grade papers, blog, and cross-stitch.  Every one of my children can fit on that chair with me---one at a time, that is.  Its size is probably out of proportion with everything else in that living room, but it is so comfy and it's positioned between two windows, so it gets the best light.

Each window downstairs has one of these cinnamon pinecones with plaid flannel bows at the top hanging from them.  Unfortunately, I ran out of pretty ribbon and jute twine, so I ended up using red twine that was used to wrap around one of our old Christmas trees years ago.  I found it stashed in the back of a bookshelf, just waiting for a moment like now, I suppose.  In a house like ours, one must be willing to improvise at all times.

Our live Christmas tree is across the foyer in the dining room, and you've seen many photos of that in another post.  Does anyone else notice it significantly leaning?

In the center of the dining room table is our Jesse tree.  I never saw one of these when I was growing up and wasn't quite sure what to do with it when we first got it years ago.  I have to admit that I've never placed items from the Old Testament on it like I think you're supposed to during Advent.  It usually sits bare in its burlap bag, but since it already had burlap on it, I decided to add a few more burlap bows and tie a plaid ribbon around the bottom.  I hope that's not sacrilegious.

My husband and I decided to do something a little different this Christmas and instead of buying each other gifts that we don't really need, we splurged and purchased a king-sized down comforter and a plaid flannel cover.  We saw these at Macy's weeks ago and fell in love with them, and so have our children.  I can't keep them off my bed now.  The comforter is Charter Club Home brand, and we got the Level 3 Vail Collection in medium warmth.  This thing is so incredibly soft and warm and luxurious.  The flannel comforter cover is Martha Stewart brand and is 100% cotton.  We love the idea of being able to take the covers off and wash them and change them throughout the year to match the seasons.  The only problem is that I didn't purchase pillow shams, and I have nothing that matches.  So the plaid deer pillow is thrown on them for now.  By the way, these comforters and covers were marked down dramatically at Macy's this weekend.

The last stop of this tour is in the bathroom...the ONE main bathroom that seven of us have to share.  I'm afraid this shower curtain isn't plaid or very rustic, but Kohl's has the cutest shower curtains, and I wanted something I could keep out for months and not just for Christmas.  Since we are outnumbered here by our children (greater than 2:1 ratio) I feel like the bathroom should have a fun, playful touch to it from time to time, so the snowmen were it.  I really liked the more woodsy curtains with bears, pinecones, and moose decorating them, but they probably fit our cabin better than our farmhouse, so I'll wait for those.

I do believe that at this point, my Christmas decorating is done.  Now it's time to tackle the Christmas shopping, card sending, and cookie baking as we begin the second week of Advent.  I hope you are enjoying every aspect of this holiday season as much as I am.

Antiquing for Desks on a Cool, Rainy Weekend

Here in the Alleghenies we had a weekend with lots of rain and temperatures that barely hit the sixty degree mark.  To fill an afternoon, my husband and I went antique shopping with my parents-in-law who were visiting from out of town.  I am in desperate need of some kind of desk to hold a laptop computer and small printer.  For now it needs to be housed in a corner of our farm kitchen, so it can't be too ornate.  Something simple, not modern, and in a country style would be ideal.

This is what is sitting there now, and as you can see, it will not do.

This does not at all go with the style of this house, but it's what we had when we moved here, and it served its purpose.  However, it is definitely time to move on.

I like this walnut schoolmaster's desk, but when it opens, it sits out relatively far from the wall, and I'm afraid it will block the back door.

This was the favorite of my mother-in-law.  It is simple and would match much of the oak furniture in our house, plus it has a shelf underneath to hold the printer.

I loved this mahogany secretary's desk, but with its claw feet, darker wood, and decorative features, I'm afraid it will be too Victorian looking for this house.

If you can see beyond all the items on top, this cherry secretary desk is nice; although, it's a little on the smaller side.

This olive wood desk was quite unique, but I'm just not sure it's the right fit for my kitchen.

Finally, there was this interesting desk that opens up and has a built-in bookshelf on the back side.  However, we could not figure out how to place it in the kitchen and be able to use the bookshelf since I need to push it up against the wall.

All the desks we looked at were in the $150-$600 range.  I cannot make up my mind, and would love some input from others with more experience in antique furnishings.

Which one do you think would be the perfect fit for my century-old farmhouse?