House Tour

Welcome to our house! It is still far from completed, but we are finding it so much more comfortable now that we have an upstairs and downstairs to work with.

When you come in our front door, the downstairs is one big open room, with the sitting room to the right and the kitchen to the left...

 

First, the sitting room. Comfy seating, books, and a wool rug.

  

Brass lamps and lace on an antique dough box used as a side table.

 

  I keep imagining how different it will look when we have the walls and floor finished! But for now, I am quite content to have such a cozy space.

 

Now, turning to the other side of the room we have our kitchen area.

 (please forgive the laundry drying by the fire!)

 

 Still one of my favorite places in the house. Big wood table, my antique hoosier dish cabinet, and always some flowers in a jar.

 

Don't know what I would do without my ceiling joists for storage!

 

Kitchen Aid, rolling pins, and vintage aprons.

 

If there is one thing I could collect, I would probably be dishes...

 

You saw right - I have a sink! Soon after Marian was born, Jordan and Laredo put in a kitchen sink! Talk about exciting stuff - in case you have never had experience with this wonderful modern invention - it. is. incredible. Even though this sink is just temporary till we fine 'the one', I LOVE IT. I feel like I have a real kitchen. The amount of work running water over a drain saves is pretty incredible. If you have a sink, be very, very thankful. I surely am!

 

Spices and baking items in vintage glass jars with decorative labels...

 

 These banners have been through a lot, first made for the Jane Austen booth event, then used at the wedding and other celebrations, now adorning my kitchen windows.

  

 Now, won't you come upstairs??

 

Our bedroom.  I really love being here, its so bright and cheery with all the sunny windows. I used the same swiss dot fabric for the curtains as I used in the sitting room, but also added a creamy lace valance.

 

 Mirror and lamp over the dresser.

 

Pom-pom trim on the door curtain 

 

 I love the view from this window behind my bedside table.... 

(which is actually a stack of boxes covered with a tablecloth...but you wouldn't have know if I hadn't told you!)

 

 Upstairs is also one big open room right now, we have curtains hung up to divide the rooms where we will eventually have walls. This is the beginning of the spare bedroom/ kids room in time. My old iron bed. The missing window is the last window we need for the house. So far we haven't been able to find one of the right size and type.

 

 Drum roll please! - my sewing room. This is just beginnings, but it is oh-so-nice to have a space dedicated to my work! Have a look at those fabric shelves Jordan and Laredo made me? Aren't they awesome?

 

 My vintage singer iron and sewing machine have a home again!

 

Vintage suitcases store lace, supplies, and unfinished projects.

I hope you enjoyed the tour! Come visit us for real sometime!

Log House Progress - Moving Upstairs

Beginning where I left off from the last post about the house, when we were getting close to finishing the inside chinking upstairs....

 

When my family came up for a quick 3 day visit last November, my brothers helped Jordan put in our upstairs ceiling.
 

Tar paper put up first

It looked so great when they got finished! It changed the whole look and feel of the upstairs. I love the brightness of the natural wood look, but once we get the room walls in place we may decide to paint the ceilings.

Next some friends helped us get the very last of the chinking done! That was a monumental day!

 

 The only thing left keeping us from finishing the floor was a problem with the floorboards buckling over the center joist beam. Jordan had to rip up some of the boards and adze and plane the beam level, then replace the flooring.

After that the floor had to be finished. Before the wedding, Jordan and my brothers had bought dried oak wood and made lapped edge flooring by running the boards through multiple saws. So, since the flooring wasn't already perfectly even and level, there ended up being many boards that had slight edges that stuck up over others. Jordan ended up planing the whole floor with a hand plane. (his poor knees!)

The next step was sanding the floor - which was quite a process. In early December we rented a big floor sander to do the job - but quickly found out it wasn't going to work, as the floor not being perfectly level, threw the sander off. So, Jordan had a small handheld sander that worked pretty good, but took forever! So, we didn't have time to get it finished before leaving for Texas for the holidays. 

When we returned in late January, our first priority was moving upstairs before the baby decided to arrive. Our crowded downstairs bedroom/kitchen/living room was certainly not appropriate for lots of company and having a home brith. 

Our friends the Morgans came and stayed a week with us and helped us finish sanding the floor (among many other things!) It was a lot of dust and noise - but what a relief it was to have it finished!

(Silly guys)

 

After the sanding came the best part - oiling! Jordan had decided to do an oil finish so the floor wouldn't be as high maintenance as a polyurethane floor finish, and so we wouldn't have to worry about it getting scratched and banged up - when it does hopefully it will look more like an antique floor, which was the look we liked anyhow! We used linseed oil applied on with rollers - it was such a fast transformation, it brought out the colors in the oak so beautifully -we were all very pleased with the color!
 

We all wanted a turn helping - it was so much fun rolling the final transformation on the floor!

 

Done - and it looked wonderful!

 

 

 

 

As soon as the oil had soaked in enough that evening we tore apart the downstairs, and started moving furniture upstairs, and we were able to spend the night up in our real bedroom for the first time!

 

The guys lost no time - the next day they were hard at work getting our stairs built.

 

Stairs useable but still in progress (finished pictures to come)


So - we were upstairs before Marian arrived, and with stairs to get up and down! We were so happy and so thankful for all the help we were given to meet our 'deadline'!

 

A little peek at our downstairs, that is finally our living space, and not a bedroom!
I am preparing pictures to give you a current 'house tour' soon!