Porches and Petals

It has been a long time, but I am finally back with a new post! The whole home renovation process has been one of the most involved and overwhelming things I have tried to do in my life, so I have not kept up with this blog like I had originally intended to. For this post I decided to share some of my fall decorations, since fall is one of my favorite seasons to decorate for.  I just love the fall colors!  The pineapple vase is from Walmart, and I bought it a couple years ago but last time I checked, they were still selling it. The flowers are also from Walmart.  I just love them!  The rich colors look amazing! The tiny pumpkins are from the Dollar Tree.  The Dollar Tree always has lots of cute decorations, for every season! These amazing orange glasses were prchased from a Goodwill store in San Antonio, Texas, many years ago.  The orange color is so gorgeous, and rare!  I think these are the perfect fall/Thanksgiving glasses. ...

Here are my latest before and after photos.  The area is the dining room, which is right off the living room.  In place of the new chandelier from Home Depot , there used to be a ceiling fan.  I'm not a "fan" of ceiling fans, so that was one of the first things to go.  The very first thing to go was all of the old carpet that covered the floors in almost all of the rooms. As I've written previously, one of the things I first loved about this house was the paneling, and this area off the living room that I have chosen to use for the formal dining area.  Not long after starting the process of buying the house, I envisioned an all-gold dining and living room.  Part of that vision was gold curtains.  Well, after purchasing the fabric online from Ebay , I realized they were way too sheer to be used without backing.  Since taking these photos, I have added off-white muslin to make them opaque. As you can see, under that old carpet we...

Here are photos of the first completed project in our new house.  I decided to start with the pantry because the room was small, and not too overwhelming to paint.   Unfortunately, the winter weather kept us from doing a lot more the past few months.  Frankly, it was just too cold and miserable for anyone to want to work on a house that needs so much done, inside and out.  Now that we've been having many days of warm, Spring weather here in Virginia, we've already gotten a lot more done. My dad, James, helped me paint the walls of the pantry.  Unfortunately, it took several coats to get good coverage. We  used Olympic Assure with primer.  For the floor, we used a grey by C& M Coatings that was purchased at Lowe's. It's amazing how much cleaner and fresher a coat of paint makes things feel!   Before Before shot of pantry floor Pantry after new paint After

Welcome to Libertad's home renovation!  In this blog I will be chronicling the renovation of this 2-story house built in 1904 that my husband and I just purchased this December.  As you can see, the house needs a lot of TLC.   Here is a back shot of the house.  It was listed as as 2874 sq. feet.  There's a lot of rooms, and tons of space!  Since taking this photo, we've already removed the piece of chain link fence that was behind the guest house porch.