Little Victorian

"Decorating is about creating a quality of life." A Hadley

Meet the Prairie House

We are all moved in to the new house!  It is quite different from the Victorian.  It’s a Frank Lloyd Wright style (and not too far from where he lived and went to school actually).

The Prairie House

The Prairie House Front

It was designed by an architect for his aunt and uncle and finished in 1961.  We just purchased it from their son, so we’re only the second owners!

The fireplace is pretty much the focal point of the whole house.  (These pictures were all taken immediately after closing last week.  The curtains have been taken down and hundreds of boxes have been moved in.)

Prairie House Fireplace

Prairie House Living Room

Prairie House Hallway

The front door is to the left in this picture, and that hallway has a coat closet, laundry closet, and bedrooms.  The back of the house is all windows, and it was hard to capture, so I took a panoramic.  I’d love to do a video tour once the boxes are unpacked.

Prairie House Windows

The kitchen is on the back side of the fireplace.  It still has the original wall oven and cooktop, which are adorable, but not quite as functional as we’d like after 55 years of use.  We’ve been grilling a lot and using a mini fridge + cooler for the last week and a half.

Prairie House 1

Prairie House

We’re currently using the space this photo was taken from as the office, and we’ll probably use the space in front of the island as the dining room.  The piano was in the house when we came to see it, and the owner was happy to leave it for us when we asked for it!  It needs some work, but we’re excited to have one.

We also have linoleum for daaaays, so we’re deciding what to replace that with.

The master bedroom:

Prairie House Bedroom

The second bedroom is similar, just smaller.

And we have some landscaping ahead of us too.

Prairie House Back yard

Before we get to work on any fun stuff, we have a few repairs that need to be made, and lots and lots of stuff to unpack.  But I can’t even express how excited we still are every day about owning this place.

Christina

Goodbye to the Victorian…and the Craftsman

The Victorian closed and officially belongs to someone else now.  We’re currently living in the big Craftsman as you’ve seen in the last few posts, but things just haven’t worked out like we thought they would, and this month, we’ll be moving…again.  We’ll be in the same general area, work is good and we like the area, it just wasn’t meant to be with us and the Craftsman.

living room 1

I repainted the downstairs blue gray a few months ago, it opened up the room so much. (It used to be a dingy yellow-brown.)

kitchen 2

The plans changed literally as I was unpacking one of the last boxes.  So I turned around and started packing back up.  Hence the lack of blog posts about what we’re up to.

We will be moved into the new house by the end of the month, where I will unpack, hopefully for the last time for a long time. 🙂  I can’t wait to show you guys the new house, it’s really, really special and there will be SO much to blog about.

Christina

ORC Final week! The bedroom makeover is done.

The last 5 weeks of the One Room Challenge just flew by.

We took another week off the ORC bedroom makeover last week because we were at a point where we’d have to spend money to continue, and when you’re paying for two houses, money isn’t exactly in abundance.  (Anybody want to buy a cute Victorian?  Please?)  We were also kept pretty occupied half the week by the sewer pipe that backed up and flooded our basement.  Fun!

The Hubs found me a dresser on Craigslist, though!  I think it’s amazing and gorgeous, and the price was a steal.  It was also, literally 5 houses down from us.

bedroom before and after

It’s a nice, cool brown, not too yellow, and not too red, so I didn’t even want to re-stain it (in the future, I might want to make it a couple shades darker).  The hardware was a little drab though, so I rubbed them with gold Rub ‘n Buff to brighten them up.

Rub ‘n Buff gold leaf color is what gave the headboard a little makeover too.  I just needed something quick, cheap, and easy to make it a little less…IKEA.  It’s not bad!

The chunky knit throw has been waiting to be made for a long time.  The deadline for the One Room Challege helped me finally get it done…as did learning how to arm knit (I told the story on Instagram).

budget bedroom makeover

I can’t wait until we own the place and I can pull up the green carpet and the laminate that’s underneath it.  Obviously, the room is still lacking a lot, like curtains and lamps and a rug…they’re all still at our other house until it sells.  Are you sure you don’t want to buy a Victorian?

Back to the room…the biggest job here was the painting.  It started with filling in all the grooves in the paneling, priming, and painting the walls.  There area total of 7 doors and 5 windows in this room.  All the doors were painted with the wall color, and all that moulding was painted black.  (Actually, it’s not done yet, most of the moulding still needs to be finished, and the windows need to be painted white.)

rental bedroom makeover

The ceiling!  We were still working on that Tuesday night and Wednesday.  The Hubs brought pizza, wine, and painting supplies home with him so we could just keep working through the evening.

chair

The chair was another steal…only $5 at Goodwill.  And the kitchen area still looks the same as it did two weeks ago.  We’re just going to pretend it’s not there until we can renovate.  All told, this temporary makeover only cost the price of the Craigslist dresser, 2 gallons + 1 quart of paint, $10 on random things at Goodwill, and one $5 tube of Rub ‘n Buff.

Hopefully by next Spring we’ll own the house, and maybe we can give it the real makeover for next year’s One Room Challenge! 😀

All the other participants have their final posts linked up too, you should go here to the One Room Challenge page to check out some great before-and-afters!  I really appreciate Linda from Calling it Home for hosting this challenge, a deadline and accountability always work wonders for me actually getting stuff done!

Christina

I’m in love with this color combo (ORC week 4)

We had too much going on last week to make any progress on the One Room Challenge bedroom makeover (click here to see our first 2 weeks).  I did get the walls and most of the ceiling primed, but that was it.  This week, however was much different.

Here’s what it looked like a couple weeks ago:

panel walls before

wall

The grooves in the paneling have all been filled so they look like real walls.  Everything was sanded and primed and the walls and moulding have been painted (partially).  Everything still needs a second coat, and still some cutting-in, but I love the color combination of the light stone walls and the almost-black trim!

I already had a quart of the navy-black in semi-gloss, but after testing it out, I went for satin finish instead.

bed

The ceiling still isn’t painted. 😲 I was supposed to do that before painting the walls, but I ran out of white paint and the work had to continue.

I was sooo, so happy to paint over all 4 colors that were in the kitchen area with the same color as the walls.  And I actually think it’s a pretty cute kitchen now!  Too bad it’s in the bedroom and not our actual kitchen.

bedroom3

Kitchen

We’re still trying to figure out a way to minimize the kitchen look and utilize the space for something practical.  It turns out kitchen cupboards make horrible clothing storage, and we still don’t have a place to put our clothes.

Still to do:

  • Second coat of paint on walls and moulding
  • Paint ceiling white
  • Paint doors in wall color
  • Paint window frames white
  • Makeover bed frame
  • Makeover night stands
  • Replace yellow mini blinds with bamboo (curtains are still back at the other house) 🙁
  • Buy dresser/make clothing storage
  • Decorate

Totally doable in 2 weeks, right?  Click here to see all the other participants in this spring’s One Room Challenge!

Christina