Welcome Home Wednesday #4

Welcome to our Classy Coop!



Today's featured room is our Living Room/Entry.
Before moving in, I always new I wanted an old horseshoe above our front door...being the daughter of a farrier, I just figured I would get our lucky shoe from Dad. Imagine my delight when during construction, we found an authentic, antique draft shoe!


Our house is over 100 years old, and we continually find treasures scattered about the property.



As you enter through the front door, this built in sits to the left. It is original to the house (used to be in the dining room), we just relocated it. It has glass doors that we have yet to put back on. The previous owners had busted out the amazing leaded glass doors, so they will have a more simple, craftsman look when we put them back on.





Off to the right is the living room. This room has undergone some MAJOR changes. The built-ins to the left of the fireplace are original...again, we need to put the doors back on. We couldn't strip the original chipping plaster from behind the piece, so it's now backed with bead board. I'm not sure what the original fireplace looked like. When we purchased the house, there was the ugliest pellet stove shoved into the opening, and the whole thing was a mess. Not able to afford rebuilding the masonry chimney, but wanting a wood-burning fire, we opted for a zero clearance insert, and a wood chase. We then pieced together a mantle using leftover crown molding and trim from my grandfather's woodworking business. I did all of the tile work in our house and am so pleased with the surround. I used some small, glass subway tile that I found at the Home Depot in a beautiful aqua color, then accented with some tiles scrounged up at the Pratt and Larson seconds room. The hearth is covered in slate.

The view from the dining room...
To the right of the fireplace is an original wood box disguised as a seat. We added some wall work to help with flow. I plan to someday add a cushion and some pillows. Another thing on the "to do" list is to cover those green swivel chairs. They are from my Great Grandmother, and I was lucky enough to inherit them!

The sofa caught my eye last summer as I drove past an auction house. It was sitting on the side of the road with a sign on it that read....well, you don't want to know how cheap I got that antique sofa for!
It is in amazing condition, has down cushions, and gorgeous tufting!



The lighting in our home is another thing we had to save on.
It's one of the last things to purchase, so we were running low on funds. This is when it helps to be creative. I purchased the living room light at the Habitat Re-use It Store for $7.
It was an awful avocado green, and covered in grease.
I cleaned it up, gave it a coat of paint, and used some Amy Butler gift wrap to spruce it up.



Over the Entry, is a reproduction schoolhouse light from...gasp, Lowes! Believe it or not, Lowes has some decent repo's for only $40 each!
That beats $140 any day!

My mantel is ever-changing...I envision a painting of a wooly brown cow. I am crossing my fingers that Teresa Sheeley will do a custom piece for me. I would even take a print of a past piece if she had one.

Ah, I see another project...that coffee table.
It has a great base and will soon get a fresh coat of paint.





Loving this new mirror I found on my latest trip to GW, and the horse head purchased from Sarah at Roost ReImagined.







Thanks for visiting!

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Welcome Home Wednesday #4

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Welcome Home Wednesday #3

Welcome Back to Our Classy Coop!


How did I choose which room to feature this week?
Welllllll, if I'm being perfectly honest, it's because it was one of the only clean rooms in the house!
As I prepare (ok, more like cram) for Luke's Local Artists, the house is in disarray. This happens every time immediately leading up to an event...
and is a result of my nasty little procrastination habit.
This is the entry to the upstairs bathroom.
The entire upstairs is new construction, as we "went up" to gain more square footage.
The original plan was to simply punch in some stairs and finish the existing attic space.
Hahaha!
Like everything else in this project, we had a surprise awaiting us.
As we got into the demo phase, we learned that the ceiling joists were not sitting atop the side walls, but rather tacked into the sides! Eek!
The house with it's (then) current construction would not hold a finished attic, and we would be lucky if it held a heavy snow.
So, off with the roof, and a new second story.
I was terrified that the new construction would look "new". So we stuck with the natural roof line where possible, and added as many old things as we could.

The door to the bathroom is originally from the house and is amazing. The glass is perfectly imperfect with it's dimples, and seeds!
And guests are happy to know that I finally got around to hanging a fabric curtain in the window :-)

The towel rack is one that I made using an old cabinet door, some paint, and fleur de lis knobs.
There was a tall narrow "dead space" that I desperately wanted to have a laundry shoot in, but the HVAC company stole my prime real estate and dropped a huge duct in the way.
So, in front of the duct, our framers built in a wall shelf for towels, tp, and toiletries.

My inspiration for the shower/tub combo was one that I had seen in a Pottery Barn Kids Catalog. Fiberglass surrounds scream new construction to me, so I knew that wasn't an option. It was either the bead board that I really wanted or subway tile as a backup.
Not able to find what I needed at a reasonable price, I had actually already purchased the tile and was ready to dig in...then, Yay, I found some vinyl bead board and trim pieces at Home Depot. Granted, I had called before and been told they didn't have anything of the sort...but that's a different story. They had it, and I am soooo happy!
The sink in the upstairs bathroom is one of my favorite things in the house.
I started off shopping for a wall mount, trough-style, sink. Kohler made some new reproductions that were close to what I was looking for, but the price tag was out of this world, so I kept searching.
At an amazing salvage shop, I found this beauty!
The base and legs were kelly green when we purchased it, but with my sidekick daughter, we gave her a face lift with a quick coat of a soft pink.

I love the fact that there are three faucets...
No more fighting over sink and/or mirror.
Now all we need is one more child :-)

I found the mirrors at Big Lots for about $10 each. They were an ugly gold color, so I hit them with some light pink spray paint.

The main light in the room is a schoolhouse light.
And the lights over the sink were made by my.
I found these copper shades for $2 each at a local Habitat store, and with a little spray paint, stencils, and a pendant kit from Home Depot, we now have lights numbered 1-3!


The flooring is the same black and white hex dot tile from Home Depot that we used in the Laundry Room.
This is one of the only rooms I actually painted white. I wanted the sink to pop, and the room to feel fresh and feminine.

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Welcome Home Wednesday #3

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Welcome Home Wednesday #2

Welcome to our Classy Coop!










While I would have loved to invite you in the front door, our landscaping/walkway to the front door is not yet in place, so I thought I would have you come in the same way our other guests (and our family) enter...through the laundry room!







Our laundry room, which was originally a covered porch, sits just off of the kitchen.




We left the slanted ceiling, added french doors and a back porch for easy BBQ access, and to let in some much needed sunlight.







The aqua colored corner shelf is original to the house-same color and everything!




Score!





I had to add these pictures with our youngest daughter in them because in the only photo of the original room, our oldest is about the same age and the room looks much different.







I did all of the tile work in the house, and went with this black and white hex-dot tile from Home Depot. It comes in 12x12 sheets and was actually much easier to work with than it looks like.

The old lockers were given to me by my dad, and serve for some much needed storage space. Up top we keep medicine, and cleaning supplies, and down low, the girls get their own lockers for shoes, sports equipment, etc.

The vintage wire shopping carts sit along the wall and are used to sort our darks and lights.
I have an obsession with wire baskets, and love the way the toilet paper looks on display...much cuter than the paper wrappers that it comes home from Costco in.



I found this sink, faucet, vanity combo on Clearance at Costco and it's perfect!
It has a slanted, washboard front for scrubbing out kiddo stains.
The old window is out of my stash that I have for etching projects.
It does not open, and has purposefully been left chippy.
Our kitchen (on the other side) has no windows, so this beauty is a life saver.

The porcelain, pig towel hanger is a prized possession that I picked up while thrifting.




A place to leave notes/reminders and drop your keys by the back door.





The wire shelves were another salvaged item. I actually have more on hand, so if you are interested, let me know.















My laundry soap has a home in this old candy jar, and the fabric softener is nestled in the galvanized box.









This photo was taken when we were viewing the house.




My husband always looks at this picture and says, "What were thinking when we bought this place?"




I look at it and say, "What were we doing letting our baby walk around in such filth?"




Do you see that open door? It was sooo creepy, and I am so glad it is no longer! Now we only use the top of that cinder block room for storage and housing our furnace/water heater.




That's all for this week. I had a request for our Master Bedroom this week, but didn't have the time to get it clean enough for photos! Eeek, sorry. Maybe next week! Thanks for visiting our much-needed remodel.

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Welcome Home Wednesday #2

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Welcome Home Wednesday #1

Today I am starting a weekly blog topic:




Welcome Home Wednesday




Featuring The Classy Coop (aka The Money Pit)















In this picture you can kind of see the garage doors-I love them! Oh, and you can also see the high chair on the front porch, we don't really make the baby eat outside...just getting rid of baby gear :-(







Many people have asked to see our home, and after the challenging journey we had to take to get this far, it only seems fitting to set aside a special day of the week to highlight what we Frankus family members refer to as our Classy Coop, aka "The Money Pit".





A quick recap for those of you who haven't heard the story (please feel free to skip over this if you've heard/read it before):

In 2007, my husband and I decided to get back to our small-town roots and purchase a 100 year old home (scratch that, fixer) in the quaint town of Molalla, Oregon. We currently owned a very nice home in a subdivision, but both of us were feeling the walls closing in on us. With the housing market hot at the time, we purchased the fixer with plans of dropping the equity of our perfectly good home into improvements. Little did we know, the housing market would flop within the month after our purchase, leaving our one income family with two mortgages. Skip forward 3 years over all of the extra expenses, surprises (driving up to a shadow box-only 3 walls standing and no roof) and battles, and alas we are home sweet home!

Here is a photo of our home when we purchased it in 2007:









My husband and I had were constantly struggling to meet in the middle during this remodel. My goal was to maintain the character and integrity of the old farmhouse, and his was to make it efficient, durable and practical....oh and did I mention we were on a tight budget?




We were able to save all of the original columns and corbels for the front deck-Yay!




One thing we did have to change was the siding material. My husband really wanted the easy maintenance of the Hardiplank lap siding, but I was afraid it would make it look too much like all of the new homes being built...so we compromised and instead of going with the 6.75" reveal we got the 4" reveal giving it more of a shiplap siding look.









Here we are as the proud new owners...I laugh as I type this because we had no idea what the next few years would entail.







I wanted to start outside and work our way in. As you can see, we still have a lot to do. This summer our goals include finishing the picket fence, painting it, getting gates up to keep our littles safe, sprinkler system, a yard, and the beginnings of some landscaping/flower beds. I envision a full and whimsical cottage garden, but know it's going to be years in the making.












This is the view from our front door. Our house sits just off the road and our little slice of heaven extends via pasture to one side, and down a hill off the back to a little creek.







This is the view I wake to every morning. A stately lilac bush that smells incredible when the winds sweep through, and an open field that I would love to run through.









This is directly off of the backside of the house. My husband added this deck, and I am so excited for all of the summer dining we will do here. In the distance you can see the log mill. We weren't quite sure about it at first, but now that we are here we love it! The sun comes up over Mt. Hood in the morning and rests atop the stacked logs making them look like an artistic sculpture. All day long, we have the hum of mill as background noise.




Next week I will invite you inside, where we'll take it one room at a time. I am hoping to share before and after photos and explain any special projects/techniques we used. If you have any questions, please feel free to ask. I'm thinking of eventually turning this into a linky party so that we can all share in decorating/remodeling ideas.

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Welcome Home Wednesday #1

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