Saying Goodbye to 2019 and Welcoming 2020
January 13, 2020
We love taking a look back at the moments of the past year. We started off 2019 with big plans to accomplish and complete a lot of projects that year.
January 2, 2019
We began the demo on the upstairs bathroom. Our girls had been begging to do their bathroom and promised lots of help. What started as what we thought would be a small project, one year later we are still not finished with the upstairs bathroom. We did however uncover an original window, hidden by the bathtub surround that was installed in the 1980's.
January 20, 2019
We had our first snow and it looked beautiful blanketing this old house.
picture here
February 1st
We pulled up the old nasty carpet and rotted wood floor in the wash room. Carrying laundry back and forth from the garage, tromping through the snow and mud was getting old and we decided to go ahead and put a washer and dryer in our house. While connecting the lines, Jerome found and old mason jar under the house. This is the first real thing we have found here.
February 21st
The stripping, sanding and staining of our antique dresser was complete. This set for our bedroom was and amazing marketplace find. Beautiful wood and details were hidden under several coats of black and cream paint. The chest and mirror to this set are still on the "To Do" list for 2020.
March 4th
I did demo to the long closet in the small upstairs middle bedroom. I pulled up old carpet, stripped layers of wallpaper, scrubbed the walls and floors and began designing how that closet would work most efficiently for us. The girls hate this closet, they insist it is a haunted spot in the home.
March 28th
Jerome finished installing the bead board in the kitchen while I fixed a big pot of jambalaya.
April 17th
We started pulling the aluminum and vinyl siding off of the front of our house. The original German siding is in amazing shape and I dream of the day I get to take a paint brush to it.
May 19th
We started removing the paint from the floors upstairs. It took us ten days to completely finish the floors but the end result was very much worth all the hard work we put into it.
May 30th
Natalie, our oldest daughter, graduated high school. We finished up the floor project the day before her graduation.
June 1st
We celebrated Natalie's graduation with a party here at our home.
June 7th
We took a much needed vacation to the beach.
June 29th
We pulled the rest of the aluminum siding off the front lower face of the house, uncovered the rest of the original bead board ceiling on the porch and found the fish scale siding on the front of the porch.
July 2nd
Our daughter lost her baby to a missed miscarriage. It was supposed to be an exciting day, she was having an ultrasound done and a heartbeat could no longer be heard. Our year seemed to stop on this day. We were all grieving and grieving for her. She kept the vintage bassinet I had surprised her with in her room for several months until she was ready to pack it away.
August 7th
I added a German schmear to the fireplace, only to hate it and spend the entire day scraping it off. I then painted the fireplace white and absolutely loved it.
August 24th
Our family dog, Molly, of 13 years passed away. Natalie, who had lost her baby, was outside with Molly when she saw that something was wrong. My husband and I went running outside, we tried our best to save her while the kids stood around us crying. We buried Molly that night in our backyard. I have seen my husband cry only a few times. This day was one of them. Not just for the loss of Molly but to see his daughter experience such sudden losses in such a short time.
We celebrated our daughter Katie's birthday here at home. We also surprised my mom with a birthday cake and dinner celebrated with her granddaughter.
November 11th
We launched our candle business, c.1921 Candle Co.
December 31st
We had a New Year's Eve party and dressed up in the 20's style.
This year, 2019, was a tough year. We had a lot of loss and grieving.
Our hopes for 2020 is to live each day in the moment and enjoy it. We too have plans for projects this year, but we are going to take it slow and enjoy the process. Here is to hoping for a great 2020.
Cedar Shake, Fish Scale, Bead Board & German Siding
July 28, 2019
I had always hoped there would be original siding underneath the aluminum siding that was put on the house in the 60's. It wasn't until we started the kitchen renovation that we had our answer of what was underneath the old faded aluminum siding.
When we replaced the kitchen windows (no worries, they weren't original windows) and opened back up the original window space to let more light in, we uncovered original German siding. What shape the siding was underneath was a mystery. It would remain a mystery, as we were in the middle of a huge kitchen renovation last summer and there was no way we were about to pull off all the siding and start another enormous project.
We knew there was original bead board, it is painted a beautiful green and was underneath sheets of plywood. It had been covered up for years. Why I am not sure, but I'm glad it was covered up years ago rather than removed. Our curiosity got the best of us last summer and we pulled down just one sheet of the plywood on the porch ceiling just to see what was underneath.
It wasn't until this summer that we decided to go ahead pull the rest of the plywood off to see if the bead board extended the entire porch ceiling. To our excitement, it was all there! Just a few pieces missing but it looked great!
My husband started peeling back years of cover ups on the front porch.
We removed the aluminum siding on the front porch area to reveal beautiful German siding that is in perfect condition.
We removed all the plywood that covered the porch ceiling....and the light fixture I couldn't wait to get rid of.
Before I continue, I want to share a "BEFORE" to better give an idea of what our house looked like before removing some of the siding. Our house is covered in a mixture of old aluminum siding in desperate need of new paint, vinyl siding and metal soffits. We had already started peeling back the layers of aluminum wraps just before I took these, I knew I wanted a good before picture.
My husband took a peek what was under the vinyl siding on the front face of the porch, looked at me and said, "you are not going to believe what is under here!".
I was beyond excited after removing the aluminum siding to see that the original German siding looked so good.
But taking a peek under that vinyl siding, I couldn't contain my excitement and could not believe that such gorgeous detail had been covered up!
After removing the all the vinyl siding he started removing all the soffits around the porch.
And the gorgeous detail didn't stop with the fish scale siding.
Little by little we started to see a glimpse into the past. A little bit of what our 1921 home originally looked like.....and it was beautiful.
We have our work cut out for us.
There are a few pieces of quarter round missing, lots of paint stripping, priming and painting to do, replacing the porch banisters and railings (not original to the house we discovered) and also some decisions to make on paint color.
But when we are finished, it will be gorgeous!
And the "AFTER".
My husband was taking a much deserved break. We picked an extremely hot Saturday to start this project.
One Year & Twenty One Weeks.
July 24, 2019
One year and twenty one weeks.
That is how long we have been in our old 1921 farmhouse.
We have started many projects, some of them completed, but a lot of them still in progress. I had planned to keep up with this blog when we moved to journal our move and restoration of this 1921 farmhouse. But time has passed quickly and life has been very busy.
Since moving here we have:
Painted the bedrooms upstairs.
Painted the living room, dining room, bathroom and our bedroom.
Completely gutted the kitchen.
Exposed a completely hidden brick chimney in the kitchen.
Started renovation on our kitchen in June 2018 (it's one of those projects still in progress).
Pulled up flooring in the laundry room.
Researched the history of our home and previous owners.
Pulled up trim from the upstairs hall.
Found a signed stair tread from the builder of our house.
Sanded and refinished the original wood floors upstairs.
Completely gutted the upstairs bathroom.
Pulled the plywood ceiling off the front porch only to find original painted bead board.
Began pulling off the aluminum siding to find the original dutch siding.
Pulled off the vinyl siding on the porch face to find beautiful trim, cedar shake and fish scale siding.
Planted eight blueberry bushes.
Put up a wooden picket fence.
Completely renovated the apartment above the garage for a photography studio.
Realized that Jerome's dream of having a garage will only be of use for storage as the entrance is to small for a vehicle to fit through.
Gutted the closet under the stairs, or as the rest of my family calls it....the Harry Potter closet.
Shiplapped the back hall entrance (almost finished).
Linseed oiled the downstairs.
Stripped and refinished the front door (the only completed project I can think of)
Hosted Thanksgiving dinner.
Taken two very much deserved vacations.
And many, many more projects that I know I am missing.
I thought it would be wonderful to put our one year and twenty one weeks here in a short film, enjoy!
So I guess you can say we've kind of been all over the place with projects.
We've started a lot of projects but only completed a few (alright....just one completed).
So tonight we are sitting down, making our list and are going to make ourselves finish the projects one by one.
In the meantime, I will be blogging what we have done so far. I have a lot of pictures and videos to share to catch this blog of mine up to date.
That is how long we have been in our old 1921 farmhouse.
We have started many projects, some of them completed, but a lot of them still in progress. I had planned to keep up with this blog when we moved to journal our move and restoration of this 1921 farmhouse. But time has passed quickly and life has been very busy.
Since moving here we have:
Painted the bedrooms upstairs.
Painted the living room, dining room, bathroom and our bedroom.
Completely gutted the kitchen.
Exposed a completely hidden brick chimney in the kitchen.
Started renovation on our kitchen in June 2018 (it's one of those projects still in progress).
Pulled up flooring in the laundry room.
Researched the history of our home and previous owners.
Pulled up trim from the upstairs hall.
Found a signed stair tread from the builder of our house.
Sanded and refinished the original wood floors upstairs.
Completely gutted the upstairs bathroom.
Pulled the plywood ceiling off the front porch only to find original painted bead board.
Began pulling off the aluminum siding to find the original dutch siding.
Pulled off the vinyl siding on the porch face to find beautiful trim, cedar shake and fish scale siding.
Planted eight blueberry bushes.
Put up a wooden picket fence.
Completely renovated the apartment above the garage for a photography studio.
Realized that Jerome's dream of having a garage will only be of use for storage as the entrance is to small for a vehicle to fit through.
Gutted the closet under the stairs, or as the rest of my family calls it....the Harry Potter closet.
Shiplapped the back hall entrance (almost finished).
Linseed oiled the downstairs.
Stripped and refinished the front door (the only completed project I can think of)
Hosted Thanksgiving dinner.
Taken two very much deserved vacations.
And many, many more projects that I know I am missing.
I thought it would be wonderful to put our one year and twenty one weeks here in a short film, enjoy!
So I guess you can say we've kind of been all over the place with projects.
We've started a lot of projects but only completed a few (alright....just one completed).
So tonight we are sitting down, making our list and are going to make ourselves finish the projects one by one.
In the meantime, I will be blogging what we have done so far. I have a lot of pictures and videos to share to catch this blog of mine up to date.
The Story of Finding 1921 Darling
July 25, 2018
The listing picture for our 1921 home.
For sixteen years we have lived on a little country road with a good piece of land and happily raised our babies. Both of our families live here in WV and we've made this little town our hometown over these past sixteen years. We always talked about moving south, near the ocean, to warmer weather and a bigger city. We always loved living near the ocean before we moved back home to West Virginia and always planned to move back near the ocean once our kids were all grown. We have talked about moving to Charleston, South Carolina for several years now.
My mother was never happy with the idea of us moving south again, further away from home and family. She would always eagerly send me emails of new listings with older homes. She knew an older home was always something we dreamed of having and making our own. The number one thing on our list for a new home was and older home, a fixer upper. Most homes she sent were located in an area we didn't want to be. We honestly were not considering staying here, we had always wanted to move south. Being the stubborn woman that I am, sometimes I wouldn't look at the listings my mom would send, simply because we wanted to move south, not stay here in WV. But the day my mom sent me this listing, I opened the email, looked at the home listed and realized it met all the things that we wanted in a new home, except one, and that was to be in a southern town near the ocean. Our list consisted of six main things, a fixer upper or older home with some good character, a master bedroom on the main floor (which is not easy to find in an older home), a place for my photography studio to be located outside the home, a garage for my husband, a place close to town rather than in the country and a location in the south.
At dinner that evening, I showed my husband the listing that mom had sent me earlier that day. He couldn't believe it met everything on our list, other than not being located in a southern town. We talked with our kids at dinner. We wrote down all the pros and cons of moving. We did some serious talking of whether we wanted to move to a home here in WV or stay with our dream of moving south. In the middle of conversation, my husband noticed that the house in the listing looked very familiar. As it turns out, the house in the listing was the home where one of his sailors in his unit grew up. Katie P is a friend we've all gotten to know through my husband being in the Navy. My daughters have babysat her daughter a few times. He contacted Katie P to ask her if this was her home and as it turned out it was. We talked more about moving and what we would have to do to get our home of 16 years on the market.
Two weeks before Christmas we decided to begin the process of buying this home that was built in 1921. We started making our lists of everything we needed to do and little by little everything fell into place. Christmas last year was a little bittersweet. We were excited about moving but knew that this would be the last Christmas in our home on Hollands.
We had a little bit of snow a few weeks later. School was canceled for the day, we slept in that morning and the girls went out to play in the little bit of snow that had fallen. As I was stood in the kitchen washing dishes and looking out the window watching my girls play in the little bit of snow, I realized this may be the last snowfall that I get to watch them play in the backyard. So many memories had been made at this home on Hollands Branch Road, but it was time to move away and make new memories in our new home in town.
We moved into our new home the beginning of March and have already made so many new memories in this new (old) home. Our life and the whole moving process have been a little chaotic since March. I knew I wanted to start a blog to follow our life, our move and all the projects in our new home. We have been in this new home for almost 21 weeks now, today I am finally able to sit down and write the first real post for this blog. I can't wait to share more stories as we begin making this 1921 Darling home our own.
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