Thursday, May 19, 2011

Home Tour - The Living Areas

Welcome to Day 3 of my home tour!  Yesterday I believe I said I would show you our bedroom areas today, but actually I'm going to show you our living areas.  The reason?  Well, those areas were somewhat tidy yesterday and I got pictures taken of them while they were so.  Our bedroom areas right now...not so tidy.  


Anyhow, welcome to our living areas!  There are a lot of pictures.  I tried to show you as many angles as I could.  A video probably would have been more effective.  But, I figured we'd go this route.  Keep in mind this is a tiny old farmhouse still in fixer upper status.  Here goes...


Our home actually has 3 door across the front that could be used as entrances.  We use 2 of them regularly.  This is the view from middle entrance that takes you directly into the dining/kitchen area (the biggest area/ most open area of our house)

If you turn right after coming in that middle entrance there is a doorway leading into our (small) living room.  This is the view from the doorway.

Standing inside the living room looking toward the right.  I do love my orginal, built-in corner cupboard.

Standing inside the living room looking toward the left at our entertainment unit.  I got this beauty off of Craigslist for a really sweet deal!  It's actually probably too large for our living room.  But, I like it anyway.  To the left of the unit is another door that leads to the front porch outside.  We do not use this entrance at all.  But, my husband tells me that originally this room would have been the 'parlor' and when the girls of the house had young men come to visit they would enter & exit via the parlor doorway and visit in the parlor.

Standing in the living room doorway looking out toward the dining area/kitchen.  You will see almost straight ahead another doorway.  That goes out to a sunroom/enclosed porch area.  Right now it works as a mudroom/daddy equipment room/dog's room.  I don't actually show a picture of that room (because it's really messy).  But,  one of the entrances to the house (that my husband uses most often) is at the front of that room.

Looking from the sunroom doorway toward the dining room.  You can see the middle entrance and the doorway to the living room.

Standing in the sunroom doorway looking at the other end of the room.  You can see more doorways (I often say this is the house of doors).  Starting at the right of the picture is a doorway that leads to 2 more doors...one to the basement and one to the computer room/junk room (which I will show another day on the house tour).  Immediately to the left of the desk is the doorway leading to our stairs going upstairs.  And, right to the left of that is the door to our downstairs bathroom.

Looking from the dining area into the kitchen.  That divider wall/ countertop is something my husband added.  Originally this room was completely open.  We put it in for additional cabinet/counter space.  In retrospect I almost wish we had left it open and used more of a floating island space.  

Standing at the desk area looking into our kitchen.  The refrigerator used to be where the desk and cupboard was.  But, I got tired of the refrigerator being the first thing you saw when coming into the house.  So we moved it out into another part of the sunroom.  Notice that the cabinets on the left do not match the cabinets on the right.  When my husband added that wall/counterspace we were pretty poor, so we used cabinets (probably circa 1970) that had been given to us for free.  When we redo our floors this summer I would really like to paint/distress my cabinets too.  Oh, and the doorway leading out to the area with the fridge actually has pocket doors.  Kinda a cool feature if they didn't stick every time I tried to open or close them.

A closer look at the refrigerator area.  The dresser beside it used to be a changing table in the nursery.  Now I use it to store the boys' games.

The entire sunroom area is completely undone.  The walls are still as they originally looked when we bought the house.  And, it's unheated, so it's freezing in the winter.  Plus there are corners at each end of the sunroom that are starting to rot out and need fixed.  Anyway, straight ahead is another pocket door that when you open goes into the other portion of the sunroom that I didn't show you.  Also, it's hard to tell in this pic, but beside the fridge where the mop is hanging there is a small broom closet.  The ONLY closet downstairs and the ONLY original closet in the house.  We added closets to the upstairs bedroom.

Looking the opposite direction is the door that leads out to our deck.   This is one of the doors the boys frequently go in and out.  It's not entirely convenient when I am trying to cook or work in the kitchen.

The last picture is looking through the kitchen the opposite way.




There you have it.  Our main living spaces.  There really are a lot of doors, right? And, it's tight.  Especially when we want to entertain.  But, for now, it works.


Ok - tomorrow I will do the bedrooms for real!


(P.S. - I've forgotten to mention that I would get a kick out of having a tour of your house!  If you decide to play along and do a home tour post, please leave me a comment so I know to come and take a look.)

8 comments:

  1. Wow! Your house has loads of unique little features. Oh and the doors just add to the wonderful farmhouse character. Reminds me a lot of the house my mother grew up in. I really like your kitchen cupboards. Don't know if I'm brave enough to do my own house tour tho. :)

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  2. Cute house and so much character :)

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  3. We have a gazillion doors, too. We recently painted our school/play room and after the four doorways into the room, three windows and two bookshelves, there wasn't much to paint!

    We have three entrances to the back of our house. We only use one. It's real confusing for first time guests- I'm sure you can relate:-).

    I think your home is lovely. I love old houses that are kept simple. Keep those photos coming!

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  4. I love your home. What character it has and with all those doors, so neat. Thanks so much for letting us take a peek.

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  5. It's beautiful and it has such character! I love it.

    When we were younger and my Dad was in his first charge the church had an old farmhouse for us to live in. We also had tons of doors. There must've been a reason for it. I guess we'll never know.

    Thanks for sharing!

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  6. Wonderful improvements! I spent many hours as a child visiting my grandparents in this house, so I have many memories, and you've kept so much of the original look that all those memories pleasantly come back!

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  7. I think it is so funny that these old houses don't have closets! What did people do back in those good ol' days, anyway? It is so strange to think that they didn't have as much of a need for closets, I guess. Less excess to be stored away?

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  8. I am one of your husband's second cousins...my mom shared your link with me. :) Thank you so much for allowing me to peek into your home! :). For so many years I have been curious to see what Grandma & Grandpa Stauffer's house looks like now! I really like what you did with it! It brought back some fond memories of days gone by! God bless you and your family!

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