A New Start

The house before we bought it! YIKES!

A New Start

(Outside)

Back in January we decided to move from our beautiful, historic home into a major fixer upper on the Mississippi River. 

Now, 6 months into our major remodel I guess it's finally time for me to show our progress!

I will skip some of the details of what we have done so far, since they aren't as fun or showy!  Especially new electrical wiring and updated panel.  Haha...

I'm going to break down this post into two different parts so they are not so long! 

Lets start from the beginning!  The house came on the market and we looked at in on New Years Day!  It was bad... a house that had been neglected for years and then turned into a rental and hoarders had lived there.  We were left with 3 sheds of junk, 14 TV's, 12 yucky mattresses left out in a shed, 2 couches and 4 upholstered chairs.  Let alone the kitchen and a bathroom so bad that they needed to be gutted immediately!

A week and a half  after moving in, my mom lost her battle with stomach cancer after 4 1/2 years.  So I spent a week down in Arkansas.  Poor Scott had to deal with the house and remodeling. 

Once it started warming up, I immediately started working on planting some flowers, anything to help the front of the house out. 

So you may ask...Why move to this house??? 

This is why...

This is our back yard on the Mississippi River!  All the remodeling will be worth it!  We have the most amazing panoramic view that has changed so much as the seasons have changed.

And we have a  beautiful 100 acre park right next to us.

So...back to the front yard. 

I did a lot of planting, even thought they will probably get moved in the next year or two, I needed something pretty!

I'll try to post a before and after picture together so you can see the progress.

Did I mention how much the dogs are loving life on the river?  They spent pretty much every day swimming and playing in the river!  

And...one of the most beautiful Fall days I've ever seen in Minnesota!

Check out my next post about the interior of the house!

Historic Staircase & Hallway Transformation!

Since we moved into our 150 year old Haunted House, one of my biggest pet peeves has been the LOOONNNGGG spooky hallway from the bedrooms to the bathroom upstairs and the steep, narrow staircase leading upstairs.  Last fall, Scott started tapping on the low ceiling going up the stairs and it sounded hollow...So....what do you think he did?  He, of course, tore a piece of it out to explore.  We found a very high ceiling above the stairs that was covered due to water damage on the ceiling.

So...we have our next project!  The day after Halloween, we started tearing down the false ceiling and a couple of the plaster walls.  We had a suspicion that there was a brick chimney running through the hallway wall, so it was very exciting to find that brick!

The Start

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The stairwell (looking down) as the false ceiling is being taken down and wooden paneling

The Wallpapers under the wooden paneling 

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These 4 pictures are all the same angle as we went through and removed the left wall between stairs and hallway and all the lath and plaster and exposed the brick chimney...and finally new sheetrock.

It was a very messy remodel with so much dust and lath.  We carried buckets and buckets of lath and plaster out but it was worth it.  As the first call came down we could see our vision of this long, spooky hallways turning into a beautiful open space!

I'm sure you are now waiting for the Finished Pictures!  Here they are!

Now we have a sight line from our bedroom to the bathroom with no spooky walks in the middle of the night!  I have fallen in love with our upstairs now and think that we have kept the historic feel to the house still and yet modernizing it to work for our family.

Lower Staircase

On to the lower staircase, which most of our company would see more than the upper.  This part is into our large dinning room.  When we originally moved in, we found the original staircase under the landing but decided it wouldn't be safe or practical to open it back up.

This short staircase was put in at some point in the 60's or 70's and the doorway had been widened and a landing put in.   Our plan originally was to just redo the stairs but after finding out we could remove a wedge of the wall between the stairs and dinning room wall, we decided...what the heck!  Lets go for it!

The before and after removing the wedge of wall.

And here is the before and after of the lower staircase!  I absolutely love it!  We got it done just in time to hang out stockings on the railing and finished the lower railing recently (no pictures right now)  The landing is still in debate as to what we should do for it.  We want to use our dinning room floor as an inspiration (Pictured)

Marvelous Master Bedroom Makeover

Farmhouse Bedroom   

Before & After

The Before...

After a year of living in our 1859 house in Minnesota and living with lighting coming in and out of the bedroom, we finally decided we could live without a west-facing window since there is ample amount of light coming in through the other 3 windows.  One window had to be blocked since there is no wall big enough for our bed without doing so.

There were a few issues with the room we needed to solve:

1.  No wall big enough for a bed without blocking a window or door.
2.  Not seeing directly under the bed when walking in.  We hide the 2 giant dog beds under there during the day.
3.  Personality!!! HELP!

To the left, you can see the view as you would walk up the stairs...Right under our bed!

This was the room before.  It has beautiful woodwork around the windows but I didn't really want to cover it up and didn't need curtains for privacy since we had blinds.

Before:  As you can see in this panoramic photo, the window behind the bed looked weird and the room just looked incomplete.  We had a beautiful bed to work with and wanted that to be our main focal point in the room and needed to have some color in the room but keep it light and airy!

 After asking a reader question on Remodelaholics Facebook page, I got some feedback and came up with a game plan.

We have a big Graduation party in less than a month so I didn't have time to repaint the whole room, so I left the soft butter color on the walls and white woodwork.

Our beautiful, reclaimed wood bed got moved from the left wall to the right wall in front of the window.  A nightstand on each side (I can't live without one and neither can Scott)  I replaced the grey flannel duvet with a white tapestry duvet.

I found curtain panels in the soft teal color I was looking for.  I hung them behind the bed to cover the window since our headboard is so high only about 1/4 of the window was visible.

The dresser got moved to the opposite wall.  This dresser will eventually get painted or replaced but no time to do that right now!

I moved my reclaimed wooden shelf, my husband built me from wood out of my Aunt Terri's old farm, over the dresser and placed some of my favorite things on it!  I used old bottles to hold my bracelets and some of my favorite canoeing hats.

I topped it off with an old window with a saying written on it with a dry erase marker.

I decided to do the other three windows different than the curtain behind the bed.  I felt it would get too heavy in the room with the dark curtains so I went with white sheers and hung them just above the woodwork with rot iron rods.  Simple and elegant and the beautiful woodwork can still be seen.

I had an old mirror we weren't using so I put it under my husbands cologne and a strip of burlap as a runner.

















A cute little light blue chair I had repainted and a basket with some extra blankets and pillows got placed at the foot of the bed.

I absolutely love how the room turned out and happy with how it looks with the teal curtain behind the bed.  It really brings out the colors in the headboard!

Want to see more of our 150 year old farmhouse? 

Check out our Farmhouse Kitchen Remodel