I'm excited to report that in this weeks Chicago Tribune, a few fellow houseblogs along with One Woman's Cottage Life were featured in an article entitled True-life Confessions of the Weekend Warrior. Other houseblogs included in the article were House in Progress, Nightmare on Elm St., and Chicago Two-Flat. These and other great blogs are worth checking out if you haven't done so already:)I wanted to also mention that though it wasn't posted in the article, lol, my husband is indeed the other "remodeler" here at One Woman's Cottage Life. Most of the time, I have the easy part which is coming up with more projects for him to work on:) He knows he's in trouble when I get that pensive look on my face and say..."You know, I've been thinking...." or "I just had a great idea!" I'm just waiting for the day that he responds by quickly turning on his heels and running away while sticking his fingers in his ears and declaring, "LaLaLaLaaaa! I can't hear you!!!!! "
So first I wanted beadboard...and then I thought painted brick pavers would be really neat, but now, I'm thinking little one inch travertine tiles would look pretty, too! (And no cutting!) The travertine gives kind of a warm look to the laminate. Which backsplash would you use? The countertop shown is what we'll be installing...
When you're working on an ongoing remodeling project with lots of dirt and drywall dust, and you have two dogs that shed...AND you have a child with allergies (or you have allergies yourself), carpet is absolutely out of the question, or at least it is in our house. I'd rather have no carpet at all than dirty carpet and let's face it, carpet at it's cleanest is dirtier than we care to know:) We're holding out until the very end to put our wood flooring down but until then, we have to make do with subflooring. I painted it an antique white about a week and a half ago and thought I'd share a photo of what it looked like after one coat. I applied two coats but forgot to take photos afterward. If you want to do this as a long term flooring solution, I would prime first and use a really good quality floor / porch paint, or else use several coats of polyeurothane over your paint choice...(And do lots of other research first because I'm not an expert:)
I've never lived on a farm and I'm not quite sure where or how my interest in farm life and country living developed. I am from the South and from a very "southern" family, so that explains some of it. I know that the life of a farmer and his family wasn't easy but there was a certain simplicity to it all, it seems...beauty and closeness to the earth. How I do love reading about farm life and country folks and ways! Eventually when we're finished with our cottage, I'd like to try my hand at growing a bit of food for the table, but until then I just live vicariously through books. As I mentioned in my last post, I'm currently reading Once There Was a Farm, A Country Childhood Remembered. This book particularly interested me because it is a memoir written by a 71 year old woman by the name of Virginia Bell Dabney. In 1917, her mother left her husband in Chicago and moved her father and two young daughters to a 160 acre farm without plumbing or electricity in Virginia. Her mother was extremely hardworking and smart and so far it has been a delight to read about how efficiently she ran her farm and cared for her family.I read the following paragraph and just loved it. I'll never think of eggs or hens the same way again:)
Get Your Own! View Slideshow Well, our guests have come and gone. I have to say, the week before their arrival was a killer for me. I have never worked so hard in my life trying to get this house clean and presentable. You may have heard me refer to our home as a "construction site". It is like a construction site in the sense that I can never seem to get rid of the dust, nothing ever seems truly clean, everything (like furniture and other belongings) is always being shuffled around, supplies like paint and tools are (were) everywhere we turn ... ugh. So, for a solid week hubs and I worked on the house. We organized closets and rooms, painted the living room and hallway floor again (it's just subfloor - our hardwood will go down last), made our guest gutted bathroom a little less scary, scraped paint drops off our old ugly linoleum in the kitchen and put down several coats of floor shine, took ALL remodeling supplies that were piled up in our dining area back to the garage (we have a TABLE, folks!), put our cabinet doors back on, mowed the yard, weeded all the landscaping beds, mulched, pruned trees, added lattice to the bottom portion of the deck (I got to use the table saw and nailer to cut and put up all the trimwork myself - yay me!), painted part of the exterior, pressure washed the entire house and deck, and cleaned, cleaned, and cleaned! I couldn't believe how much work the house needed to get it back into decent shape. *sigh*So like I mentioned, in this whole cleaning process, we managed to unearth our dining room. I wanted to share a few photos...I thought our next project was going to be adding beadboard around the dining room and kitchen and then adding the pine ceilings, but I think we've decided to first remove the door to the laundry room that is in our dining area. Hubs wanted to take this door out months ago when we were doing drywall work in the kitchen and dining area. However, I wanted to keep it because our pantry is also in the laundry room and I didn't want to walk through the living room to go through the other laundry access door that's in the hallway. My mother suggested, though, that we could buy a pantry cabinet to go in our kitchen and paint it up just like the cabinets (see the mock up photos below). I think it's a neat idea so that's what we're going to do. It may be a while before we can purchase a plain pantry to trim out, but we're going to go ahead and get that doorway walled up in order to add our beadboard.(click to enlarge)Just to show how far we've come with our dining area, this is what it looked like before our remodeling work began. You may be intersted in seeing some of the demolition photos.Let there be light!We'll soon be taking down that white door to the laundry/pantry room. There is another door to the laundry room in the hallway that we can use. I know the table is off center with the ceiling fan, but the fan/light will be replaced and moved to the center of the table after we put up our new plank ceiling.I recently gave my farm table legs a little makeover. I painted them the same color that my walls are going to be, then aged and distressed them a bit more. Because we'll be adding white (or off-white) beadboard halfway up the walls in here, the legs won't blend in like they do now.I bought this digital print on canvas last week. It has all the colors that I just adore...nice and cheerful, too! (And just $39!!!)We have space in the kitchen to add pantry cabinets. See that wall space left of the black dishwasher?A pantry cabinet would fit there perfectly, I think:) Thanks, mom, for the idea!I think I'm going to go cozy up with a book now. It's called Once There Was a Farm: A Country Childhood Remembered and looks like a good one!
I'm on the run getting ready for a cookout here tonight, but I wanted to take a moment to let you know that you can now access my site through a couple of different domain names.Just remember www.onewomanslife.com & www.onewomanscottagelife.com . Either one will get you here:)Have a beautiful weekend, everyone!
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Other houseblogs included in the article were House in Progress, Nightmare on Elm St., and Chicago Two-Flat. These and other great blogs are worth checking out if you haven't done so already:)
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