Floor Tile

We're thinking of using this floor tile in the kitchen, breakfast room, laundry and back bathroom. I like patterned tile because it really hides the dirt, and we are surrounded by a huge garden full of leaves and dirt which inevitably gets tracked in. What do you think?

First Week's Progress

Our first week of work was spent clearing out and cleaning up. We've also cut down several overgrown shrubs and heavily pruned some others. One can actually see our front door now!

The goal has been to get more light into the house and improve the views out the windows. We have always been fond of the outdoors and want to enjoy the gorgeous landscape around this house.

We've also started moving a few things into the house. I set up a little work table in the office. I brought an old wind-up clock and we hung our slate chalkboard.

Handy Man busies himself skimming the pool twice a day. Chuckle, snort; it's his new lifetime job.

Merely Filthy

Today I swept and vacuumed and mopped and scrubbed the old dining room and this is the view out one of the windows.

This southeast facing room has five windows and it's wonderfully bright and cheerful now that we've hacked down some overgrown shrubs and removed the sagging shutters.

So now this room is no longer disgusting, but merely filthy. I plan to use this room as my office/crafts room and I already put a table in here to hold my floorplan.

Baby steps people, baby steps.

Secret Garden

Have you ever read The Secret Garden? It's a childrens' classic about a little orphaned girl named Mary who discovers a secret garden on her uncle's estate. Her discovery of it, and tending of it, heals her, her uncle, and her invalid cousin. It's a delightful story which we at Acorn Cottage have read many times.

I felt a little like Mary today while I was hacking back the ivy in our new garden. There's a little playhouse on the property that was covered in ivy, and we unearthed it today. Unfortunately, it's so rotten we will have to tear it down, but I'm thinking the doorbell will grace our new front door. 

Later in the afternoon we opened the shutters and the sunlight streamed in just like the chapter in the book where Mary and Dickon tear the shutters off of Colin's bedroom windows.

I'm thinking we could use Dickon Sowerby's help at Acorn Cottage about now.

Three Weeks and $5000 Later

 the condo is on the market.

We treated this project like a job and were there from 8 to 5 every day. We painted every wall, door, closet, and all the cabinets. We replaced the bathroom floor tile, the bedroom carpets, and all 500 square feet of laminate flooring. We scrubbed the windows, chandeliers, and ceiling fans. We pruned the roses and tidied the flower beds.

It was a lot of work, but we feel "move-in" condition makes things sell more quickly. And the good thing is, we are now physically in better shape to handle the 3000 square feet at Acorn Cottage.

We start that today! Yippee!

We signed the papers

and the deed was recorded, so its official; the house is ours. Here's a sneak peek at the breakfast area. A little rough, eh?

We can't start working on the house though, because we are still painting the condo to put it on the market. Thankfully, the condo in good condition and only requires sprucing up. Home Depot measured yesterday for the new carpet, we are tiling the bathroom floor today, and next week we start on the new laminate flooring.

My Blogging Philosophy

For several years I had a homestyle blog. This was before flipper shows, Pinterest, and Instagram. Visiting other bloggers was a pleasant experience; seeing their latest projects, listening to their thoughts, enjoying their photography, commenting, making friends.

While I was sailing, I made a blog to document our trip. I didn't have good Internet in all those foreign places, so I didn't surf other blogs like I did when I had a homestyle blog. I didn't realize what was happening to blogland. I was out of the loop, so to speak.

Since we've been back, I've been checking out other blogs, and frankly, I'm sad about the direction they've taken. The ads are so distracting that you can hardly follow the posts! And lots of bloggers get their posts sponsored by tool manufacturers, appliance companies, paint suppliers, and furniture companies. I'm probably in the minority, but I don't like that at all.

Another thing I've noticed is homeowners duplicating the style of those remodeling shows down to the smallest detail. So everywhere I look, I see all white kitchens, barn doors, "feel-good sayings", bowl sinks, Mason jars, copper accessories, glass backsplash tiles, and farmhouse sinks.

I guess I've never followed the trends; my last house was an English style cottage with black iron hardware, limestone floor tiles, built-in cabinetry, lots of pictures, books, and old family things, all partnered with a background of rich colors and dark traditional furniture.

Now we are back on terra firma and I'm making another homestyle blog. And I'll tell you this right now:

My blog will never have ads. My posts will never be sponsored. My blog will not look like other blogs because I will not follow the latest trends. I will not buy loads of stuff from Hobby Lobby or Home Goods. I will reuse and repurpose things I already have, or find unique treasures at garage sales or thrift stores. I will use natural plant materials for seasonal decorating. I will continue to avoid buying cheap, plastic junk from China because as a sailor, I saw WAY too much plastic floating in our beautiful oceans, and the less we all buy the better. 

 

What you will find on my blog is a true story of how two retired folks refurbished a rundown house. I'll show you how we repurposed the existing spaces to accommodate our needs, how we replaced doors and windows to be more energy efficient, how we refinished existing wood floors, repaired the holes in the roof, painted, decorated, and modernized this 1947 house. You'll see our personalities reflected in our décor, lots of old family things, and photos and mementos from our travels. I will share sources and paint colors and suppliers when applicable. And there will undoubtedly be posts about food!

I hope I haven't run you off before I've even started, but if you're interested, you are certainly welcome to follow along, ask questions, and share ideas as we navigate our way through this new adventure.

Full Circle

 

Twenty two years ago we bought the ugliest house in this neighborhood and remodeled it into a pretty little English cottage. We lived there for seventeen years and it's the only home our kids really knew. We had so many good times there; family milestones, kids' parties, holiday parties, fun with the neighbors, and luminaries on Christmas Eve. I always thought I'd be carried out of it feet-first, but it didn't work out that way. You can read all about that house here.

Upon retirement, we sold that house, bought a sailboat, and went sailing for a few years. Aboard our beautiful Alden 44, we sailed over 12,000 nautical miles, through the Panama Canal and all the way up to Maine, and it was a grand adventure. You can read all about that here.

Now we want to settle on land again and we gravitated back to our old home town and the same oak grove, looking for another fixer-upper. We noticed that one house (a house we'd always admired) was still vacant, so we made an offer to the heirs of our old neighbor.

 

In the category of "be careful what you wish for", they accepted our offer and we are now the proud owners of an amazing piece of property with a very rundown house, yet tons of potential.

Please join us as we work to turn this house into a comfortable family home. When things get tough, we'll just go sit by the pool until we feel better. Looking at water always refreshed us on the boat; I'm sure it will work here too.