A-Plenty on A-Plate

Been a while since you've heard from me. Not that I don't have an explanation...

We have been working diligently on our house with the goal to finish this year. (I'm sure now that I've been verbalizing this timeline to everyone, something will come up to divert us!) I'm not a pessimist, just a realist based upon past occurrences. Let me remind you that we've been working on this house for four years in the making. And from what I've heard, it never really ends.

1) We have (finally) replaced our roof with the help of some mighty hard-working roofers. Squirreling away some cash for several months helped with that one too!

Look at that beautiful dark architectural composite roof!

2) We gave the rear addition of the house a complete (much-needed) makeover:

Before - Ugly out of scale window and rotten siding. Yuck!

After - Amazing view with a giant corner window and metal siding!

3) The house used to have walls between the rooms. The previous homeowners knocked them all out. Open concept is great, but not in an old house. You walk in through the front door and viola, there's the entire house! It just never looked pulled together. Plus, laying out furniture and effectively decorating was a beyotch. We have added more wall space to separate the living room from the entryway and dining area. When we added the walls back in, we made the door openings wider than they were originally and the longer wall between the living room and dining area has two openings. This is how we determined to have the best of both worlds--separation and openness. To boot, we installed recessed lighting in the living room and master bedroom so we can stop bumping into things in the dark.

View of living room to entryway

View of living room to dining area and kitchen

4) Serendipitously, we had a friend whose father's business location was going to be demolished. We salvaged these gorgeous doors from their fate as trash and framed them into a partial wall that separated the rear addition from the rest of the house. It somewhat has shifted our house from a 2-bedroom to a 3-bedroom. The wall was built structurally "uncouth" by the previous homeowners, as I'd like to put it. Hubby spent lots of time fixing the wall and ended up beadboarding the entire wall to correct the major mishaps. We will eventually add trim around the walls and doors, which will beautifully highlight this room.

I am in love with how this separation creates a very private girl cave!

5) And--not on our list--but the house seemed to demand this one by nearly catching on fire: the task of re-wiring the other half of our house with newer wiring and safer circuiting.

Look at that scary old wiring! Bye bye!

As you see, we have a full plate. Unfortunately, most of the projects--except item #1--are not fully completed. We still have yet to finish the details on the kitchen remodeling project that I've blogged about previously. But...I'm very happy to share our progress with you and it's been quite rewarding. I hope seeing these transformations inspire you to restore and appreciate old things. There is nothing quite like it.

(All photos via Art and Facts)