colonial farmhouse
My Home Could Be In a Movie
It’s true! My home could be in a movie. Yours could too! What? Why? How? Is this a dream? A few weeks ago I submitted our Colonial Farmhouse to be listed as a potential filming site with the New Jersey Motion Picture and Television Commission. Most every state is going to have a government entity that promotes tv and movie filming. The process to submit your home for consideration is probably different based on the state, but it shouldn’t be too hard. I’m also assuming there are multiple ways to get on the radar of location scouts and connecting with your state’s film commission is just one of them. For…
Built-In Computer Desk Reveal
I love typing the word “reveal” into a blog post title. It makes it sound like I’ve really got things dialed in on the home front, doesn’t it? So, let’s run with that utter nonsense sentiment and talk about our built-in computer desk. THE DESIGN DILEMMA We live in a colonial era farmhouse that has plenty of weird spaces character. Case in point? There is a narrow, awkward space on our second floor that is a real head scratcher. It’s bigger than a hallway, but not big enough for a bedroom. It is more like a landing. I’ve come to realize ‘landing’ is just a nice word for “you have to…
The Case of the Closet Mystery
Old houses are full of mysteries and today’s post is about the Case of the Closet Mystery. Mysteries are not to be confused with surprises. Surprises are unpleasant discoveries that, without fail, pop up every time there is a project or home repair. Surprises inevitably result in any combination of the following: more time spent on a project, more money spent on a project, more Tylenol taken to get through a project, more trips to Home Depot, more grey hair. Mysteries are just things around the house that make you wonder why something looks or operates a certain way. One of the things I’ve wondered about frequently is the closet…
Back Staircase Before and After
Our Colonial Farmhouse has a front staircase and a back staircase. The front staircase has gorgeous trim work and is located in the center of our home. The stairs made an appearance in my music room post. Then there is the back staircase. Oh, the back staircase. These stairs are tucked away in a far corner of our home and are a shortcut from the kitchen up to the bedrooms. When we bought the Colonial Farmhouse the back staircase was steep, narrow and ugly. The stairs weren’t inherently ugly. It was more bad bridesmaid dress kind of ugly. However, I saw the potential in those stairs. If fact, it was…
Navy Blue Sunporch Reveal
One of the most charming exterior features of our Colonial Farmhouse is the sunporch. There’s just something about a sunporch that gives an old house some added character. It’s probably all the windows. Here’s a refresher on what the exterior of our Colonial Farmhouse looks like with the sunporch. Ignore the landscaping for now. This is an improvement from when we moved in. From the inside of the house, there is nothing charming about our sunporch. Zip. Zero. Nada. It has cracked windows. The windows that aren’t cracked look like someone let a toddler finger paint with window glazing. Some of the window grids are askew. There are rotting tongue…
Music Room Before and After
I’m not sure if I’ve ever done a proper ‘before and after’ room post because that’s just not how I roll, but there’s a first time for everything! Today I’m going to show you pictures of our music room before and after because I’m at a stopping point in this space. Basically, I’ve called it ‘good enough’ for now. Or maybe ‘much better than before’ and I’ve moved on to other projects. Yes, there are still things to do in the music room. Will they get done? Definitely. Probably. Let’s not hold our breath. Last week I showed you my piano harp art. The piano harp art may be the…
I Painted Our Front Gate
Try not to be jealous, but we have a gate to nowhere. Well, not nowhere. If I walk from my front porch straight down the uneven sidewalk (thanks a lot, tree roots!) to the gate it leads to my mailbox. Two steps past the mailbox is certain death. People drive way too fast on country roads! I could also walk around the driveway to the mailbox and never have to use that gate or trip on the uneven sidewalk, but where’s the fun in that? I suppose if you want to get technical about things (apparently, I do today,) it really isn’t a gate to nowhere. It’s just a plain…
The Surprising Way We Cleared 75 Feet of Bushes
When we bought the Colonial Farmhouse it wasn’t visible from the road. This is saying a lot about the amount of overgrowth happening on the front of our property because the Colonial Farmhouse sits only 20-feet from the road. It should be visible to the naked eye. To further illustrate how overgrown the bushes had become, we didn’t need window treatments. No one driving by at night could peer in the front windows – at least not on the main level. I don’t even have a good picture of the overgrowth because there was nothing photogenic about the situation. Here’s this one though… Can you see the road? Or the…
The 1971 MLS Listing For Our Colonial Farmhouse
I rarely answer my phone for numbers I don’t recognize. Half the time I don’t answer my phone for numbers I DO recognize. Therefore, it must have been fate calling one sweltering summer night when my phone rang and I decided to answer. After all, every once in awhile I do need to make sure I remember how. The person who sold us our home was on the other end of the line. He had found the 1971 MLS Listing for our Colonial Farmhouse in some papers he was sorting through and called to see if I wanted it. Do I need air to breathe? Do I need shoes that are…
Removing Rotten Trees and a Chainlink Fence
Last week I shared how we cleared a sight line to the pool and in that post I mentioned another section of our property that we’ve also been working on clearing and cleaning up. This was the back of our house when we moved in. There was nothing wrong with the back of the house, but there were some areas we knew could be improved upon fairly easily. The chainlink fence is what really bothered me. It wasn’t the prettiest fence ever built. It also made that space unusable since we don’t have a dog and don’t have plans to get a dog. The trees are what really bothered Handy…
