Colonial Farmhouse 3 Year Anniversary
It is our 3 year anniversary of living in this amazing Colonial Farmhouse. Woohoo! She’s a good one and we are so honored to be her current caretakers.
Were you here when we bought this place? Can you believe 3 years have already passed? I can’t!
As I reflect back on it, most of the last 3 years feel like a blur. I guess that’s what happens when your lives have forever been altered by a global pandemic, remote schooling, working from home, and all sorts of other “regular” life adjustments while working on a fixer-upper.
It’s a good thing I took pictures of how this Colonial Farmhouse looked when we first moved in! Either the mayhem of the last 3 years or my selective memory (Some of these projects were painful!) has caused me to forget how far we’ve come in fixing up this place in the last 3 years.
Here are a handful of my favorite transformations thus far:
KITCHEN THEN AND NOW
Here’s our kitchen on the day we moved in in June 2019.
I always have to say this is not our stuff in the photo. It was left here. You can bet I kept some of that stuff too. Do not look a free gift horse crockpot in the mouth.
Here’s how the kitchen looks now. The view is just pulled in a little tighter.
Same cabinets. Same sink. Same faucet. Same tile. Same counter. Same floor. Same trim. Same wainscoting. Same windows.
The only thing we’ve really changed is paint. Oh, and we removed the wood stove.
Someday we’d like to gut this kitchen and create something more classic-looking, but until then, we’ll tip our hats to the power of paint!
LIVING ROOM THEN AND NOW
Aside from the being dirty, it really wasn’t that bad in the living room when we bought the Colonial Farmhouse.
Here’s a current shot of the living room taken at sunset.
The glow you see is not from the lights. It’s from the setting sun. It’s one of my favorite times of the day.
Folks really knew how to position a house hundreds of years ago to maximize the light.
UPSTAIRS BATH THEN AND NOW
This upstairs bathroom was a special, special place when we moved in. It was best appreciated as quickly as possible in the dead of night with all the lights off.
When it came time to give this bathroom a facelift, believe it or not, we intended to just remove the wallpaper in this room and switch out the mirror and sink. It was going to be a quick fix.
(Famous last words of anyone doing a DIY project.)
Upon further investigation, that was not possible. The vanity was held together with a wing and a prayer and mice had definitely been making themselves at home underneath it. I loathe mice.
Now we have a custom-built vanity made by Handy Husband. If you want to read about how we built the vanity to fit a console sink, click here.
Much better, right?
What this picture doesn’t show you is that we still have a blue-tiled shower. It matched the previous blue sink and toilet in this space.
I’d like to tell you that someday we’ll replace the blue shower in this bathroom, but it’s kind of growing on me. Plus, we don’t use it, so it’s out-of-sight, out-of-mind right now.
BACK PORCH THEN AND NOW
We took a very narrow, awkward wall on what we call our back porch (it isn’t climate controlled) and turned it into a very fun area for drink storage.
It’s like I have my own shop now! I won’t admit how much satisfaction I get by arranging the cans and bottles so that the labels all go the same way.
We also store extra laundry detergent, cleaning vinegar, water in case the power goes out, etc. out here too.
P.S. I gave up drinking Diet Pepsi this year. I’m so proud of myself!
P.P.S. I just drink more coffee now.
BACK OF HOUSE THEN AND NOW
From a distance, the back of the house when we moved in wasn’t all that bad.
It just had some extra things we didn’t need like rotten, thorny trees and a chainlink fence.
Here it is now all cleaned up and ready for some plants and new siding.
Crossing my fingers one of those things happens sooner rather than later, preferably the siding.
One more from the backyard because this view makes me happy.
We have been able to transform many aspects of this Colonial Farmhouse in the last 3 years because there was a lot of low-hanging fruit.
Also, we seem to enjoy working on this old house in our spare time.
Hmmm. Let me clarify that statement.
We seem to enjoy the results of the work we’ve put into this old house. We also enjoy dreaming up ways to restore and renovate the spaces around here. It’s the middle part of those projects that cause us to question our sanity. Ha!
In all seriousness, we are so happy to be spending this season of our lives in this Colonial Farmhouse in rural New Jersey. Who knew we’d like New Jersey so darn much?!?
We often think about the other families who have lived in this house over the last 200 plus years. They lived through things like the growing pains of the founding of a new country, The Civil War, the 1918 flu pandemic, Prohibition, the Great Depression, two world wars, 9/11, etc. Did this home provide them the same sense of safety, security, and comfort that this house has brought us in the last three years?
We certainly hope so.
What does the future hold? Who can guess at this point? All I know is we don’t take any of this beautiful, messy, complicated life for granted.
THANK YOU for supporting us in big and small ways as we document our lives living in this Colonial Farmhouse. The journey is a little bit sweeter when shared with you.
We also love hearing from you. You can always leave a comment (I have to approve it before it appears.), send an email, or reach out on Instagram or Facebook.
Here are some other blog posts you might enjoy!
Colonial Farmhouse Two Year Anniversary
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