6 Month Progress on the Colonial Farmhouse

It’s time for a 6 month progress report on the Colonial Farmhouse.

Sure, we’ve lived here longer than six months. 8 1/2 months, actually, but who’s counting?

Let’s not get bogged down in the timing.

The truth of the matter is I didn’t think about writing a 6 month progress report until now.

While this progress report is almost three months late, I’m only sharing progress that was finished within our first six months of living here because that makes it better.

Buckle up blog friends because it turns out we’ve made more progress on this Colonial Farmhouse than I thought!

KITCHEN: June 2019

Ah, ambience. Just makes you want to go all Julia Child in this kitchen, doesn’t it?

At least, the version of Julia Child where there is HEAVY use of the cooking wine.

KITCHEN: December/January 2020

Someday (crosses fingers) we will remodel this kitchen, but I’m happy with the cosmetic improvements we’ve made to the space.

I no longer have to cook dinner with my eyes closed because the kitchen is ugly, so that’s a plus.

I have a fighting chance of keeping all my fingers now.

LIVING ROOM: June 2019

Our living room really wasn’t that bad compared to the rest of the house when we moved in.

You see the potential, right?

LIVING ROOM: December 2019

Our living room is a lot cleaner and brighter now thanks to fresh paint. I even painted the ceiling and I’m still patting myself on the back for accomplishing that feat.

I have hung some additional art since I took this picture.

I do need to think about pillows for those built-in seats, but I’m not in a big hurry. No one sits there anyway.

DINING ROOM: June 2019

The first room of our house, which we use as an entry and a dining room, sure did make an impression when we bought the Colonial Farmhouse.

Please note I didn’t say a GOOD impression.

What you can’t tell from this picture is that the worst thing about this room was the dirt and pet hair. So. much. pet. hair.

DINING ROOM: August 2019

We took down the ceiling fan and painted the dining room, but that’s about it.

I have made changes to the dining room since I took this picture, but I’m too lazy to take a new photo for you. I probably shouldn’t admit that.

I painted the back of the fireplace black. I also have dusted underneath those logs…more than once. Go me.

MUSIC ROOM: June 2019

The room we are using as our music room used to be a formal dining room. It would have been an extremely inconvenient location for a dining room since it is so far from the kitchen.

MUSIC ROOM: October 2019

I knew right away this would be the perfect room for my ball and chain piano.

Here is the music room now from almost the same angle.

All this room needs now is a new light to replace the chandelier. For the record, I do have the new light in my possession. The problem is installing it is going to be more complicated than we anticipated.

MAIN STAIRS: June 2019

Painted stripes on the wall, wallpaper on the risers, painted wood decals…what’s not to love about our main staircase?

MAIN STAIRS: October 2019

As is the theme with pretty much every space in this house, all I’ve done is peel back the layers. Without all the “extra” it feels like our home can breathe and the architectural details have a chance to shine.

Our main staircase is actually very pretty without all the flowery details to distract you.

Perhaps I’ll eventually go crazy with color and pattern (anything could happen), but for now I’m enjoying the quietness of this area.

For the record, I do still need to paint the balusters. As it turns out, I need to be in the right frame of mind to tackle a project that tedious. At least, that’s my excuse.

SUNPORCH: June 2019

Our sunporch needs a tremendous amount of love in terms of new flooring and new windows.

None of that will happen for awhile, which means this space was the perfect candidate for what I like to call putting lipstick on the pig.

SUNPORCH: October 2019

Here is our sunporch now and this photo was taken from roughly the same angle.

The only thing that changed in here was the paint.

Our outdoor dining chairs (Target still offers them) are wintering in the sunporch because I’m digging that tone on tone look!

BACK STAIRS: June 2019

The back stairs or kitchen stairs are one of my favorite design features of our Colonial Farmhouse. They are a huge waste of space, but I’m opposed to getting rid of them.

These stairs also had wallpaper on the stair risers. This has been a theme.

BACK STAIRS: November 2019

The back stairs look so much better without all the farm animals tracking your every movement.

I used black porch paint on the stair risers and it has held up very well.

The back stairs lead into our kitchen and I feel it is important to acknowledge that I have not hung art on the kitchen walls. Well, I hung something above the stove, but I don’t think that counts.

I don’t mind having a few blank walls. They require nothing from me but dreaming about possibilities.

OFFICE: June 2019

The only things that have stayed in this odd space we call our office are the computers (duh!) and the mini-blind (sigh).

Maybe mini-blinds will make a comeback.

OFFICE: December 2019

This built-in desk is, to date, our single, biggest functional change to how this house operates for us.

My kids use this space every day. Minecraft is important, after all.

When you walk through this part of the house, the desk feels like it always should have been here. As a side note, I like that I can always see what my kids are doing or watching on these screens.

BACK OF THE HOUSE: June 2019

The back of our house wasn’t terrible when we moved in, but there were some easy things we could do to clean up the landscaping.

BACK OF THE HOUSE: July 2019

We removed the rotten trees (the stumps have since been taken down) and the chainlink fence.

The deck still needs some love, but I’ll probably work on that this spring and summer when the weather warms up. Eventually, I think the deck needs to extend further along the back of the house, but we need to knock a million other things off the to-do list first.

FRONT OF THE HOUSE: June 2019

When we bought the Colonial Farmhouse it was not viewable from the road due to all of the overgrowth. It was like our own private jungle oasis. Except, this is kind of laughable since our house sits SUPER close to the road.

In another couple of years, the brush would have overtaken the house.

FRONT OF THE HOUSE: August 2019

You can see from this picture how much brush had to be cleared. It was over 15 feet deep in some places and at least that tall. We tackled some of the work ourselves and then a hero stepped in to do the rest.

We still have so much work to do on the landscaping, but at least now we can see what we have to work with.

POOL: June 2019

Wait. We have a pool?

Yeah. That was the problem. There is a pool behind all of that overgrowth.

Handy Husband cut that scrubby tree/bush down because it was completely unsafe to not be able to see our pool from the deck or house.

POOL: July 2019

When we took out the dog run behind the house we found a whole bunch of stones that had been buried under, repeat after me, all the overgrowth.

We used those stones to build a path to the pool from our deck. Before you pat us on the back for that progress, I should tell you that we haven’t properly set those stones in the ground yet. Although, if we wait long enough, nature will do the work for us.

The building to the right in the above photo is our Carriage House. It’s where our guest room is located.

Well, this concludes our 6 month progress report on the Colonial Farmhouse.

Are you exhausted? I think I am. Ha!

Believe it or not, there’s stuff I haven’t even blogged about yet! It’s not that I’m holding out on you. It’s just that there’s only so much time in the day.

I am happy with the progress we’ve made so far, but we’re definitely running out of low hanging fruit. Most of the work we’ve done is cosmetic, but this spring and summer we need to tackle at least one of the bigger systems issues with this house: roofing and/or electrical.

I guarantee you 9/10ths of the battle will be in getting a contractor to show up.

Thanks for following along with our progress. I hope it is fun for you and that you pick up an idea here or there. Here are some other posts from the last six months that didn’t make it into this post. 

Our front gate is painted! 

Master Bedroom Fireplace

Outdoor Table Makeover

My Dining Table is Now a Coffee Table

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