The Renovation: For Now

June 18, 2020Leave a comment

We have lived in our home for a little over four years now. We are still working on it. I don’t think that will ever end. Our biggest remaining projects are in the kitchen and back room. And, of course, there is a never-ending list of small projects that need to be finished. That being said, our little house has come a long way and it is happy, comfy home.

So! Here is a quick look at where the interior renovation stands today. You can see where we started and some of the process in these posts: The Renovation: Before and The Renovation: During

There are a couple of rooms missing in this update…the back room (which is a bit of mess) and the garage (which is also a bit of a mess). I will be sure to share some updated photos of those when I get a chance! Also, the fireplace has a board and a big box in front of it. The box has the new fireplace insert waiting to be fitted into its new home. The stock tank in the living room is the home of our box turtle, Boxy. The house has come a long way, and we still have a lot more plans for it!

Creating a Family History Gallery

March 3, 2019March 3, 2019Leave a comment

Now, that the spare room is relatively complete, it’s time to start my family history gallery. It’s harder than I thought. Deciding what to include has been the most overwhelming part. Fortunately, I have access to many family photos through digital copies shared by other family members and many originals in my own collection. I recognize that some may not have this luxury. But a family history gallery doesn’t have to be just family trees and ancestor photos. It can be so much more!

Here is a list of ideas that I am using as inspiration for what to put on my wall:

genealogy fan chart
ancestor Photos
photos or paintings of ancestral homes or lands
maps (there are so many amazing historic maps available online)
documents like marriage certificates, land patents, ship manifests…anything visually interesting
artifacts, like medals, jewelry, gloves, small items owned by the family
items that represent heritage (in my case things like Danish hearts, Swedish Dala horses etc.)
pressed flowers from heritage sites (this one is particularly exciting to me)
painted or printed sayings meaningful to the family
framed family recipes

I have been slowly gathering each item I want to put on my gallery wall. Before going on the wall, everything will be laid out on floor or bed to get an idea of how I want to look on the wall. One thing I have to decide is if there will be a few ‘extra’ pieces beyond family history items. I have a handful of garden/natural curiosity items I may add as well. I guess It will come down to space and what looks good!

Selecting what photos I want to use has been the hardest part, but I’ve started a folder on my desktop. Getting photos printed off these days is pretty inexpensive, so even if I don’t use them in my gallery, I won’t have spent a lot. I think it’s important to remember, that gallery images can change too! You don’t have to find an image and have it on the wall forever. I plan on using standard sized frames for photos I don’t plan to keep up long-term.

Above is the room, future gallery wall, and the beginning layout of the gallery. I will need to get some more frames, and get the pictures printed. I will be sure to post the gallery when it’s finished (someday)!

There are some really important things to remember when displaying and storing family photos, artifacts, and heirlooms. Working in the archives really showed me the importance of taking care of precious items. I may write a whole post on it, sharing some of my favorite resources.

Two of the best pieces of advice, if you can’t use a duplicate as a display:

Keep items/photos/documents out direct sunlight and fluctuating temps
Use archival or museum quality framing materials

I didn’t expect this to take me so long to put together becuase I have a lot of things too add, but it is really hard to choose what to include! It is a fun process though, I have gotten to revisit parts of the family tree I have’t looked at in a long time.

Our House: Spare Room Update

February 19, 2019February 19, 2019Leave a comment

Last week, I began redoing our spare bedroom. I took almost everything out of the room (except the closets, they are their own thing). The yellow ceiling was the first to go! I used Valspar’s color changing ceiling paint, in flat white. It makes everything so much cleaner and brighter. It goes on sort of purple and dries white. I probably didn’t need it for the this room, but the paint was left over from the painting the bathroom ceiling.

Next, I decided the wall paint we used to cover the turquoise just wasn’t what I wanted. I did a little looking at Lowe’s and on Pinterest and chose Valspar’s Oxygen White as the wall color. Eventually, the trim and closet doors will be the same white as the rest of the house’s trim, Olympic’s Delicate White.

Our house isn’t huge, so I’ve tried to consider how all the paint colors in our house work together. Below are all the paints we’ve used in our house!

Mountain Grey: main living, halls, utility, and kitchen
Azalea Leaf: master
Mountain Dew: bathroom
Oxygen White: spare
Duchess Lyndhurst Duchess Blue: kitchen cabinets
Delicate White: all trim

All our paint has come from Lowes, and the best pieces of advice I picked up through researching on blogs and Pinterest for paint is this:

Save the lids to the paint cans (with the paint color info on it), if you need to match discontinued colors, it makes it a lot easier.
For whole room colors choose something a few shades more on the gray-scale than the color you want. The intensity of a color is a lot higher than what it looks like on a paint chip!

Even though the paint all looks really cool, it balances with the amount of warm wood finishes we have in the house.

My remodeling of the spare room is on hold for the moment. We are waiting for the new bed frame for our master room to arrive, Todd still needs to add base-boards. Once that happens, we will move our old bed into the room, arrange it, and start putting it all back together. I’ve started to think about how I want the space to function, and what I want to add to the family history gallery. I’ve also purchased these pretty curtains…

I got them on sale, and was able to stack some discounts to get them for just over $30.00. Woot.

Next post, I will share my plans and thoughts on putting together a family history gallery!

Our House: the “Spare” Room

February 9, 2019Leave a comment

I’ve been struggling for inspiration these last couple of weeks. I took a little break from genealogy, and garden planning. The weather went from -30 to 40 degrees in a couple of days. During the warmer weather it rained, but the ground is so frozen it’s just turned into a sloppy mess, which has now froze again. We’ve also had several inches of snow in there. I hate weather like this. Stay cold and snowy then ease into an early Spring. That’s what I wish for.

I missed my Sunday post, but while lacking inspiration for genealogy and gardening, I’ve spent a lot of time looking at our unfinished house. It’s getting there. Soon, I hope, I’ll post some pictures of how far we’ve come. For now, my February project is to tackle the “spare” room. It has a lot of duties, since this house isn’t huge, around 1100 sq ft.

When we moved it was a kids room with yellow ceilings, bright turquoise walls, and lilac closets. The walls and closets are now Mountain Gray, but the ceiling is still yellow. Here are photos of the room when we bought the house. It’s hard to see how yellow the ceiling is because the walls are so bright!

The room is some times clean and pleasant, but lack of organized storage in the house turns it into a mess quickly. Right now, I have Good Will bags, art, spring decor, horse stuff, shoes, hats….etc all over the place. This is the mess that happens whenever I need something out of the closets or change seasonal decor. The current state of things (a bit embarrassing):

But I’ve been dreaming and planning. I need a guest room, office, and storage space all in a 12×12 room. Here are some of my Pinterest inspirations:

I’m hoping to have a gallery wall of family history, with some other art as well. I think that will take some time laying out and planning. I may write a separate post on it to share about displaying family images and documents. We will also be putting a real bed in the room, after we get a new one for the master. The closets…well, I didn’t take a photo of them for a reason. Over all, I just want it to be a happier space for guests when they’re here, and for me when I want to paint or do genealogy. I’ll post as the room progresses!

2019 Garden Plans

January 21, 20191 Comment

Last week, I wrote about my dreams for my 2019 garden. In my mind they are pretty grand. Because Todd said he would help me with the hardscaping and remodeling of the garden…my imagination took off with big ideas. Now that we’ve talked more, and I’ve gotten my head out of the clouds, I feel like my plans are maybe not super exciting, but within in reach.

So…some of the basic plans:

Create a “holding bed” with good soil and good drainage while better permanent beds are made
Paint my existing shed, add better shelves inside
Move plants from the “Big Bed” to holding bed, and dismantle “Big Bed”
Replace the Big Bed with space/pad for new shed (coming in 2020?) and two new 8×8 square beds flanking each side
Replace existing raised beds with better quality materials, refreshed soil, and good drainage
Add two large 8×15 spaces with landscape timbers and mulch as pads for my grow bags
Add large row for cut flowers in front of the garden
The most expensive but the most important addition will be the privacy fence. It will probably the big project of the year
Pour cement for new patio slab (this is all Todd)
Extend and clean up the rock area along the backside of the house

All of these plans concern our backyard, I have some thoughts on the front of the house, but I haven’t really put any on paper, yet. Our biggest constraint is budget. This little house has been quite the ‘fixer upper’ and we are still working on the inside. Not to mention, this year we hope to replace the doors and windows, and get the fireplace working again. It leaves very little money to throw into the yard. Fortunately, most of our work will be rearranging. I have to remind myself, we are going into our 4th Summer here, and all great gardens take time. I’ve also focused this year’s garden plan to mostly the large backyard garden. I hope to eventually add a lot more beds along the fence lines, but will wait for the fence to be built. I am sure there will be plenty of amendments to the plan and some final measurements need to be made too. Below is my basic plan for the year, some of last year’s map, and my garden sign hope to add at the front!

Aside from the practical and basic layout, I’ve been thinking about the aesthetics too. Todd and I sat down and tried to figure out what my garden style is. I have no idea how to pin it down…except for tons of pins on Pinterest! Above all, I like gardens that look like they’ve existed a long time. Old gardens are the best. Some are kind of wild, nothing overly shiny and new which is perfect. I like structure and neat lines, but nothing sterile or overly-suburban-cookie-cutter-landscaped. I love color and texture too with bright flowers and soft grasses.

I am of the belief that you should decorate with things you love, no matter if the styles conflict…so long as you like it and don’t cram a million things in, most things will balance out. I feel the same way about gardens.

Here are a handful of my favorite inspiration photos. All of these images and the links to their content and credit can be found on my shamefully huge Farm & Garden Pinterest board.