Where do I even begin? The adventure began for us on New Year’s Day. We came across this old 1938 house in the heart of New Prague. We had decided it was time to move on from our old place and this house was just too good of a deal to pass up. Andy and I are no stranger to home renovation. Prior to his new job he started in September, he was a hardwood floor guy for 10 years. This is an amazing skill to have when working on old houses! I think anyone else would have been scared off when they saw the house but Andy and I saw the potential and it had this great “homey” feeling to it. We took possession on January 1st and I made sure to take these before pictures before we got into anything. This process was such a labor of love and every spare moment was spent working on the house. That’s tough to do with three boys and nothing to do at the new place! As I looked through the photos to prepare this post it still doesn’t seem real. We’ve lived here a week but it only feels like a moment. We absolutely love it here and since it’s still a work in progress, I’ll start with the main floor tour. The house is roughly 1,000 square feet and is a two story flat roof with a basement and walkout roof deck. It has 3 bedrooms and 1 and 3/4 bathrooms. The main floor is the kitchen, dining room, living room, and there is entry from the 1 car garage. The basement has an additional family room area, laundry room, and 3/4 bath. The upstairs has three bedrooms, a linen closet, and a full bath. We moved from 1,700 sq ft down to 1,000 so we have to be very smart and organized in our new space. Although it is smaller, since it is 2 levels and a basement, it still feels roomy enough since we all occupy different spaces at different times.
When I saw the kitchen, I knew immediately that I wanted to paint the cupboards and give it a farmhouse theme. Although it’s not technically a farmhouse, I gave my Instagram progress updates a hash tag of #farmhouse108 signifying the address as I was inspired by this amazing blogger and her farmhouse adventure. When I saw the cupboards underneath the sink were inset, I knew immediately I wanted to put an under sink curtain in. I had already started designing in my head before anything was ever even signed!
EVERYthing in this house was blue. I couldn’t wait to get new paint on the walls and our first of many trips to Home Depot ended up being a big one. Paint is an inexpensive way to transform a room, but when you’re painting an entire house from top to bottom- walls, doors, trim, ceiling… it adds up very quickly! View of living room:
View into dining room area:
Aerial view of the living room from the stairs:The very first thing we did on work day one was tear up the carpet. That paisley just had to GO! We had no idea what the wood floors were like underneath but we lucked out and they were beautiful red oak floors in great condition!This was the end of work day one. I went around the entire house and took down all of the window treatments. We had to leave some of the blinds up for privacy reasons as we didn’t have anything to replace them immediately.The next phase of destruction was the kitchen. I had plans to put up beadboard wainscoting and it worked out great because when Andy tore down the fake tile paneling, the walls underneath were in pretty bad shape. There ended up being 4 layers of various wallpaper to tear down. Of all of the projects we did, the kitchen wallpaper was one of the most annoying. I’ve never worked so hard just for the right to paint! It was not a one day project. I would get so frustrated with it that I could only do a little at a time. I did a lot of thrifting and bargain shopping in the process and came across some great deals! One was the white cast iron sink. $40 on craigslist and the pick up location was just a few blocks from the new house! New cast iron sinks typically range from $200-$300, not including the faucet which is typically another $100-$150. This was a great score!This was the typical state of condition of the house. Crap was everywhere and we had one tiny table surface to eat off of. The boys and I would stay there overnight on Saturdays so I could get lots done while the kids slept. We tried to make it as home-like as possible but we pretty much slept on air mattresses and ordered take out.This is a sampling of the kitchen wallpapers!The first night we slept there- I had my nieces over to help and we stayed in the basement. That was the only time we stayed down there, after that night we decided that we’d sleep upstairs from that point on!Thrifting has been a big part of the process! Interior design really compliments the OCD tendencies I have. I love to have something to focus on and I literally spent all of my waking hours looking at thrift stores, Craigslist, Etsy, eBay, and other places to find exactly what I was looking for at the time. My relentlessness always paid off!I knew that I wanted to paint the lower kitchen cupboards a vintage green color and have white upper cabinets. I’m so thankful for my husband who just went along with whatever I decided. I know a lot of couples would probably argue or have conflicting ideas. Andy is so great at letting me have my way when he sees it really matters to me.
During my research I discovered Miss Mustard Seed’s milk paint. It was so fun to work with and I ended up using a 50/50 mix of Luckett’s Green and Kitchen Scale for my lower cabinets. As soon as I discovered her, I researched where to buy the paint and coincidentally Carver Junk Company started carrying her line that week! I’m telling you, the stars were all aligned for me during this design process! I painted cabinet doors at our old house in small batches in the evenings. Milk paint was a lot of fun to work with and I will definitely be playing more in the future.We got the floors coated the weekend of Valentine’s Day. The kitchen floor was truly an amazing discovery. Andy pulled up the old laminate and found old 3″ fir boards (mostly full length) in great condition. He told me that this floor is pretty much priceless. This type of fir is very hard to come by and it’s truly a rare gem! The middle picture shows the layer of cardboard crap residue that was left after ripping up the old linoleum. We lived with the floor like that for weeks. The kids hated to walk on it because it was so dirty looking and full of dust and wallpaper scraps. The day he started sanding that away was a glorious one! Clean beautiful boards were revealed!Here is a beautiful shot of the red oak floors after the third and final coat of polyurethane was applied. I love how they lightened up to look more like white oak. Andy told me that the old red colored floors had a lot of wax on them which gave them the reddish tint like in the set of before photos.I love this moment captured of my two youngest enjoying the wide open space right before we moved in.FINALLY! The after photos and the big reveal! The kitchen and dining room are by far my favorite rooms in the house! The kitchen paint color is Martha Stewart Bone Folder (cream) and all of the trim is Martha Stewart Pickett Fence. The dining room paint color is Martha Stewart Sisal. The countertops are butcher block from IKEA.I sewed my sink curtain and matching cafe window panels from an old fitted thrift store sheet I found!I found this pine farmhouse table on craigslist for $100 and it came with 4 chairs. I knew I wanted to refinish it for the new house but Andy wanted me to wait until summer. Yeah right, I had to have it ready for when we moved so we compromised and he said I could refinish it in our old house, but after we moved out. We lived without a dining room table for a week but it was well worth the wait and all of the work!I’m so in love with my dining room! I literally just stare at it and smile.The little display on the right- two shelves, tea cups, cutting board, pitcher and metal cup all were thrifted and cost in entirety $8!My white gauzy vintage table runner cost a whooping $.25 at a thrift store!The vintage plates hung on the wall were also thrifted and cost $.69 each! I love how the pattern coordinates with my colors. The living room is made up of most of our old furniture with the exception of the brown tufted ottoman. My husband hates that piece, but I am in love with it! It was found at a thrift store for $14!I am a big fan of groupings of photo frames. Although I love the look of a big canvas in modern homes, something about mismatched frames feels homey to me.The turquoise desk was also thrifted for $7 and painted with Miss Mustard Seed Kitchen Scale. It’s been a popular hangout spot for the boys, which is where they do their homework and play on the laptop.An overhead view of the living room. My husband used to never let me put down an area rug over “his floors” but since this house was a refinish, he’s not as attached to them. One day he casually mentioned that we could put a rug down and the very next day, this rug was purchased! It was another amazing steal. It currently sells at Target for $150, but I found it brand new on Craigslist for $75!That concludes the tour of my main level living space. We are still working on our upstairs bedrooms/office and the basement is a future project. If you’d like to continue to follow my projects- find me on Instagram @oliviare #farmhouse108. Thanks for reading! I will post future progress here as it’s completed.
BEFORE/AFTER SIDE BY SIDES: