Coneflower Ranch

Not quite a money pit

We are the third people to own this house. We bought it in 1999 from a lovely elderly woman, Bernadette, and her brother. They purchased it from one of the original owners who was the widow of the other original owner. Many of my neighbors bought their homes from the builder and knew the original owners of my house. Over the years, as I've come to know my neighbors better, they have told me a bit about the first owners that explain quite a few of the odd things I've found in this house. Let's just say that decisions they made have cost me money. Bernadette and her brother didn't repair or replace any of the wacky stuff in this house which is why we were able to buy it from them at such a good price. That has been a mixed blessing.

One of the things I really didn't like about this house was the kitchen. Specifically the floor. It was an ugly ceramic tile that wasn't quite even. The first year here we all tripped on it, stubbed our toes on it and generally agreed that it had to go. Everyday I would sweep this horrid thing and when I bothered to mop it no one could tell that I had. Almost every tile was cracked and in spots pieces of the tiles had come up completely. But the roof was leaky and the fridge stopped working. The stove was an inaccurate beast and the dishwasher died just before Christmas. The water heater leaked all over the garage and then the transmission went... the floor wasn't the most urgent thing on my plate.

It has been over ten years of living with this floor.

Oh, did I mention that this floor

was paired with this tile backsplash?

The cabinets were dark walnut. Just so you get the whole picture. It's also on the north side of the house so there is never any direct sunlight in this room. We moved in in September and by the following June I had long since realized we weren't anywhere near ready to renovate the kitchen.

I pulled colors from that hideous floor and bought some paint. By the way, if you ever have to paint over ceramic tile, Zinsser 123 is absolutely the way to go. I painted the cabinets and backsplash with the Zinsser and then painted over it with two colors. One that looked like pumpkin pie and the other like pumpkin pie filling after you mash it up with lots of whipped cream. It brightened up the room and made it all much less busy. I didn't even mind working in there so much.

Then the cabinet doors started falling off. So I made curtains. Curtains are seriously one of the easiest and least expensive ways to solve the broken door problem. Every closet in this house now has curtains instead of sliding doors. Not a one of the sliding doors stayed in it's tracks and a few had no tracks left.

This year we had some money to fix a few of the things that were costing us. The tub was a ticking time bomb and we thought, wrongly thank goodness, that it was nurturing a colony of black mold. The livingroom windows might as well have stayed open year round for the quality work they were doing in keeping out the cold and the bugs. The kitchen window was no better. Sun shines in around the front door and our garage door is no match for the cold or the mice who wander in trying to escape it. 

When Dennis and I were deciding what repairs were and were not a priority those things that were costing money made the top of the list. It was a long list. We aren't going to be able to do it all this year. Maybe not for a few years. We stood in the kitchen drinking coffee and thinking about this when he said, "How much do you think it will cost to get rid of this floor?" We both agreed that whatever it was it would be worth it. To get all this other work done and still have to walk on that floor would feel bad. It's one of those things that chips at your morale day after day. You can be philosophical about it and grateful to even have a floor to call your own. You can make the room work around the flaws and somehow find them charming. But, when you get the opportunity to actually fix the problem, it would be foolish not to.

So we called around and by "we" I mean me. Lowes had the floor I wanted and they use local contractors to install it. It cost about half of what I thought it would. In keeping with the rest of the shoddy "improvements" done to this house, this floor was spot glued on top of a linoleum floor. There was no rigid subfloor as is needed for ceramic tile which is why they all cracked. We aren't sure what was used for grout but we know it wasn't grout. The installers showed up at 9am and by 6pm my kitchen floor looked like this:

It's Pergo Suffield Oak and it's wonderful! Just looking at this picture of it makes me happy. 

Of course now there is no need to keep the pumpkin pie colored cabinets. They are looking kind of old between the new floor and the new window. hmmmm
 
   

We've been busy

This is so satisfying to look at. Our forty year old tub needed to go. It was chipped, scratched and wedgewood blue. Very 70s! The walls have been making nervous. The tiles were being held in place by mildew and gravity because the sheetrock behind them was melting away.

I was so relieved when all the old sheetrock was out and the underlying studs were not corroded and rotten. I really thought that the contractor was going to find a disaster that would double his estimate. I'm such a Pollyanna sometimes.

The tub fit without a hitch

This is such a vast improvement I still smile whenever I walk into the bathroom. Of course, now, the forty year old toilet is looking a little shabby
 
 
 
 

It's curtains for me

As I mentioned in an earlier post, our house was in a rather neglected condition when we bought it. The previous owners were an older, retired brother and sister and the house was really too much for them. I can only speculate but I strongly suspect that they were following some realtor's advice when they had everything painted white. Everything that wasn't wood paneling or hideous wallpaper that is. Whoever did the painting for them painted around whatever furniture was up against the walls. When we moved in and all of their furniture was gone we had walls with some odd colored rectangles on them. We also had enough hardware attached around the windows in each room for three or four different types of window treatments.

I had put off painting our room because it wasn't urgent and it was going to be time consuming. Dennis worked nights so I'd get out of bed in the morning and within a few hours he'd crawl in. There wasn't really an opportunity to take the room apart and really go to town on it. Fast forward nine years and he went to Afghanistan leaving me a big block of time when I could totally trash my room in the hopes of bringing new life to it. I hung shelves and repaired and painted the walls then ran out of steam. He came home on leave and broke my stride. I'm not complaining mind you, but I still haven't painted the door frames.

With my goals for this year in mind I'm starting in my room. Yes, that probably is cheating but I don't care. I figured I'll do the few remaining things for my room and that will give me the oomph to go on to the next room. I started the new year by making curtains. Nothing exciting and heaven help me I can't get them to photograph well.

I painted the room Arizona Tan. The color on the website looks nothing like the color on my walls which bears little resemblance to the color in this photo. Well, maybe a little resemblance. It's a golden tan sort of color. I like it. Dennis likes it. Win/win. I was strolling through JoAnn's Fabrics checking out the remnant table when I came across a bolt of fabric that was nearly the exact color of the walls. I couldn't believe it. Better yet it was on sale for $7/yard. Score! Some pressing, a hem and a rod pocket later and voila! Curtains! I'm quite pleased with myself. I've been looking for the right fabric for over a year.

Next time I'll tell you about the Christmas ornament that inspired an afghan.

Happy New Year!

So here we are again. At the beginning. Even though I know it's arbitrary, and that any day on the calendar can be a new beginning, there is something about January. I think it could be the collective energy of everyone agreeing that this is the beginning of the year. It could be the collective feeling of relief now that the pressure of the holidays has been released. Whatever it is I feel motivated to start fresh and at the same time I feel the desire to hibernate. Together these two things manifest as nesting. The cold and dark of winter here in the Northeast keeps me close to home. Spending so much time indoors has me examining my surroundings and I find myself dissatisfied with what I see. More than that I actually want to do something about it.

We've lived here for ten years now. The people we bought this house from did nothing to it. When we moved in there was still a wallpaper mural from the early 70's on the wall of our dining room glued in place above a wood paneling attempt at wainscoting. All the rooms were like that. Nothing had been updated since before Carter left the White House. It took over a year to undo the ickiness partly because it was so time consuming in itself and partly because I had little babies underfoot. It was discouraging to remove wallpaper in the bathroom and discover it had been used to hide gaping holes in the sheetrock. Every room took weeks of prep work and several coats of paint. We went through pounds of spackle and the end result was less than thrilling. Buying the house took all our money and the mortgage was a big portion of our monthly expenses. There wasn't a lot left to spend on repairs and updates. We did what we could but it has always felt temporary.

Time has moved on and the mortgage no longer eats every other dollar we earn. Little by little we've started repairing and updating the important things. We got a new roof five years ago. Expensive and not at all sexy but oh so necessary. I even invited some friends over to stand on the lawn with me, drink tea and admire the new roof. We replaced the windows in all the bedrooms and the bathroom three years ago. It was always a bit unnerving to take a shower next to a window that was iced over on the inside. This year we are tackling the exterior doors and maybe some more windows. Again, not all that sexy but it will be nice to sit on the sofa and not have a breeze blowing on my neck from the closed windows.

As I was thinking about new windows in the living room it dawned on me that the paint job is nearly ten years old. I looked around the house and it all looked like it needed to be freshened up. For the first time in a long time I actually feel like doing something about it. I don't make New Year's resolutions. Instead I set goals for the year. Some years they are ambitious some years not so much. This year I'm giving my home a makeover. Not a big remodel or anything but it's time to toss what no longer serves or inspires and make color choices that make me happy and liven up the living spaces.

I have no idea what that will look like.