Category Archives: Making Our House Our Home

July 4, 2016 · 8:16 am

Beginning our Bathroom Renovation

When we bought our house, I wasn’t planning to renovate the bathroom anytime soon. I liked the vintage look (minus the flooring), and it fit so well with the house. We actually discussed adding an addition on to the house. However, life happened and plans changed.

A few weeks ago we bought a new vanity and mirror for the bathroom and started to rearrange plumbing. That’s when my husband discovered our bathtub drain was completely deteriorated and every time we drained the tub, it poured out under our house! 🙈🙈🙈 Talk about old house problems!

Soooo, we decided to just gut the whole thing.

Then the washing machine died. 😂

Here we are, a few weeks later, sink ripped out (and in my flower bed😁, but that’s another post), new washer & dryer installed in their temporary location, tile and new fixtures sitting patiently in the shop, and our bathroom being ripped apart.

Here’s a little before peek!

Did I mention this bathroom was added in the 1950s? Lol

Our new plan will allow for a bit more space and functionality for our family. I’m excited about that. The actual process? Not so much. Anyone want to come lay some tile?

PS – Stay tuned to see what’s under all that wall paper. 😁

Projects #1 & #2 – stair wall and handrail & baby gate

Project #1

Our first order of business was to tackle the problem with the stairs. While the open staircase was beautiful, it certainly was not practical for all our little ones running around. Every time we looked at this house before we signed, I was a nervous wreck the whole time the kids were in the house! To make matters worse, my husband had to go out of town for a week right after we moved in! Thankfully, he got part of this project done before he left. 🙂 This one is still technically in-progress. My awesome guy got all the woodwork done and then a few of the steps got broken, so we put off painting until he can replace those since part of this will have to be removed to change the steps out.

Eventually all of it will be painted white. We decided to go with a slatted wall to not completely close off the stairs.

I’m pretty proud of the handrail on the landing. That’s not a purchased, prefab handrail. My sweetie made it himself. 🙂

Project #2

I actually posted about this project last year, not long after he finished it.
We chose to put the latch on the inside of the gate to make it more difficult for little ones to open it and to keep from having a big ugly latch on the outside.The hinges allow the door to swing all the way back against the wall when it isn’t needed, and we have a small bench that sits in front of it most of the time now that our three bigger kiddos can all maneuver the stairs.

1 Comment

Filed under Making Our House Our Home, our lovely little farmhouse

Tagged as DIY, fixer upper, home improvements, home renovations, victorian farmhouse, woodworking

September 14, 2014 · 9:00 pm

Baby gate – check!

My husband has officially completed his first project on our new house!
The baby gate has been built since the weekend we moved in, but tonight he finished it off by staining it! Yay!

1 Comment

Filed under Making Our House Our Home

Tagged as old house love, wood working

September 6, 2014 · 4:19 am

Our new (old, really old) house

I had intended to save this post until we had internet at our new house, so I could include the pictures from the day we first looked at it. However, we’ve been here 5 weeks now and still haven’t found an internet provider. So, here we go… On Father’s Day we looked at this house for the first time.

And fell completely in love. We put in our offer 2 days later and signed a contract on Saturday. We closed a little over a month later. This house is the perfect mix of my husband and I. It has the elegance and charm of a Victorian farmhouse and the ruggedness and history of a log cabin – because it is both. Originally built in 1901 as a dogtrot cabin, the house was put under one roof in the 1930s. As soon as we have internet service I’ll be sharing more pictures and some before and afters of the projects we’ve been working on so far. Here is a small recap of our activities this weekend – yard work!
little sister has taken some wonderful naps in the yard this weekend. 🙂