This Old House Tour- Main Floor

For those of you who have wanted to see some of the inside of our home, here it finally is.  Almost 1 year ago, Grandpa and Grandma moved into their new house, and we moved our things into this house.  We have made quite a few changes but still have many that we hope to make in the future.  Our house has 4 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms (after we added one upstairs last winter).  Part of it is over 100 years old and used to be a log cabin.  It is old, a bit uneven, and very loved!

This is our entryway/laundry room. I wish that we had a more formal entrance, but this is certainly practical.

The old bench was a school desk at the old Nora Township School down the road.  It works wonderfully for the baskets that hold all our hats and mittens and hides all our boots and shoes nicely below.

Our big old farm kitchen.  Grandpa and Grandma remodeled it about 6 years ago.  Until then, it didn't even have a dishwasher. We spend lots of time in this room!



Looking from the kitchen into the dining room.  You might notice that the door frame between the two rooms is very wide.  That is because the wall between the rooms is an old log wall from the original house.



This old kitchen cupboard came from my grandparents when they moved off their farm last spring.  It also holds many old kitchen utensils from them.  The little electric "fireplace" helps keep the kitchen warm when the winds blow.  The big sliding door to the deck lets in lots of nice light, but it gets a bit drafty in the winter.

The dining room looking into the living room.  This flowered carpet needs to be gone as soon as possible, but we haven't tackled the flooring in this house yet.  The old sewing machine came from the family that lived here before Mike's parents bought the place. Apparently it was in the house when that family bought it back in the 1950's.

Our computer hutch that looks like a pretty china cabinet when the doors are closed.

Off the dining room, there is this uninsulated front porch.  In the winter, it makes a great walk-in freezer! On my to-do list is making curtains to replace the unsightly blinds hanging from these windows.

Our recently painted living room.

Pretty old piano from my grandparents.

The main floor bathroom. We recently had all the trim boards (window, door and floor) replaced with these old trim boards Mike's dad salvaged from the house Mike and his dad grew up in before they tore it down a few years ago.  I think this trim gives it so much character, plus it has some sentimental value.

As a side note, if I may pat my own back, I sewed this curtain as well as the ones in the living room in the last 2 weeks.  I don't do much sewing, but I really like to make my own curtains so I can get exactly what I want.

The guest bedroom.  The old desk is from Mike's grandma, and the chair (and the matching one in the front porch) are from my grandparents' old house.

I'm rather slow at putting things up on the walls in this room.  It has been painted for almost 10 months now.  Note the floral carpet here as well that needs to go!

So that's the downstairs for now.  Our next big project is to redo the walls in the stairway.  Currently, they have at least 7 layers of wallpaper on them.  Stripping them would be nearly impossible, so we are looking at other options.  There are 3 bedrooms, a bathroom, and an old attic converted to a playroom/guest room up there.  All bedrooms have wallpaper that needs to come down and painting to be done.  The stairs have the same lovely floral carpet that must go, and Nora's room has some even more interesting carpet with a large pink tropical floral/fern pattern. (We call it her casino carpet!)  I wouldn't count on that update for another year, but here's hoping it might be sooner!