Gallery 10 - My (new) Indiana Home

This Farm Old House Tour - 2009

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Welcome to our living room and central hub!
living room picture window from kitchen (below)

 

The living room and kitchen are open with a picture window at each end.

living room in background from kitchen counter (below)
looking back from living room into kitchen (left)
Picture Window View
A lot has changed in twenty-five years. Our current residence, this house, is on the corner of 700 S and 450 E. When I first moved out of Lafayette, the view from this living room picture window (shown above) above would have been of a cow pasture filled with big old trees, part of a hundred and fifty year old farm called Bren Bella. You can still see the old farmhouse in the distance. At that time Benny and I lived lived on the next corner - just a short half mile away on 700 S and 500 E in a sweet little 1950's no-frills ranch. We never drove on 450 East because it was gravel. Anyway, to get on with my story and to explain the transformation, several years ago, the owners of Bren Bella decided to turn it into a sub-division. Bold plans were made to put in 500 houses, a golf course, an airport, a church, and all kinds of stuff. The neighbors (including us) weren't too enthused to see all that progress coming our way. But then 450 East got black topped and became a busy throughfare, and the guy entrusted with developing the subdivision absconded with all the owner's money. So now instead of a pastoral view of an old cow pasture, this picture window looks out on a landscape view of an unfinished subdivision - which is still rather pretty. In general the neighborhood is happy that we don't have 500 more homes out here. And when the few folks who did build in the subdivision got past not having their golf course, they kinda liked having the place all to themselves. In fact they hope nobody else builds out here either! :) The current residents of the old Bren Bella farm house are restoring it in the period. They throw a great neighborhood July 3rd party every year - so it's been a great way for country neighbors, new and old, to meet and greet.

I'm sure more folks will eventually build homes in the subdivision. But for now, as Forest Gump says, "That's all I have to say about that."

 


A peek into our master bedroom and bath

These lovely corner angels were a house-warming gift from our long-time next door neighbor at our other house

Remember the interior "exterior" window on our back porch/mudroom which was added later to connect the main house to the summer kitchen? Well here's what's behind it! Yes, our master bedroom is right off the living room hub and back porch. That's because the master bedroom used to be the old kitchen and because modern concepts of hallways are nonexistent in old farm houses.
While I did most of my shopping at the second-hand stores this summer, this helped me be able to afford new curtains and bedding for our bedroom. The previous owner was THE curtain guru. I kept most of what she did, except that I replaced her well worn floral panels with beige ones from Walmart. A couple of years ago, Walmart had some really pretty winter Wolves and Horses western blankets that I knew Benny would love. I figured the beige panels would blend with any season - my summer florals or Benny's winter westerns.

Actually this room is still fairly private, considering most of the traffic in and out of the house routes through the back porch, and we have this huge exterior window looking into the mudroom. No, really. The country is a pretty quiet and peaceful place. No one around but us chickens. ;)
So the only problem with this arrangement is that the only bathroom in the main house is now accessible all the way through the master bedroom and to the right. Luckily there's also a bathroom off the summer kitchen,so our more inhibited overnight guests (most people) aren't entirely out of luck. Hey, it's an 100 year-old farmhouse - just be glad there's indoor plumbing!

This lovely woven afghan over Benny's mother's cedar chest was left over from our Antique Booth days.
When indoor plumbing was added to this house at some point, the owners sectioned off a small part of the old kitchen, a logical place for a tiny, cozy indoor restroom - no need for much room - a toilet, a sink, a bathtub. I love it actually - so easy to clean! This is the one room that we completely redid before we moved in - we put in all new fixtures, including a single unit tub/shower, redid the floor, and painted. No linen closet, so this past winter, Benny added the shelves, and my little white free standing shelf unit moved out to the back porch.

All in Good (Will) Fun and Garage Sales

This sofa (below) is one of this summer's garage sale finds! I loved its firmness and its extra length. It has one single pillow that extends the length of the sofa. Our other sofa is a lovely antique, but not firm or long enough for folks to lie down comfortably.

I was surprised that I really like the oriental fabric on this sofa - which gives a more modern and formal look like the one in in my paternal grandmother's apartment in the Bronx. The sofa needs to be re-upholstered, so I may stay with a similar pattern, and when my area rug wears out, get a more formal area rug - preferably oval.

Rather than prints and paintings, the living room had a horizonal row of dishes on the wall when we first saw it - and I liked that look. So for five years I've been wanting to display some of my favorite dishes, but wasn't quite sure how and was reluctant to mar Benny's nice paint job. Then I came across this pair of matching dish shelves at Good Will (above). Since my friend Marilyn, who is the shelf guru, also inspired me to want to put up some shelves, I snapped them up - $5.00 for the pair.

My daughter Bonnie helped me hang them. (She made the mistake of lending her handheld level and ratcheting screw driver. She hasn't gotten them back yet!) :) I put one shelf over the sofa and one above the washstand.

When we first bought the property in 2005, we spent most of the summer working on the house before we moved in. Well, at least Benny did. I mostly spent the summer running to various factories for a stop-gap parts inspection job. Still, I did get to do quite a bit of work on the house - cleaning, scraping, washing windows and curtains, etc.

The living room (pictured above) had good wall to wall carpet. However, the previous owner told us a hard wood floor lay underneath. I had always wanted hardwood floors. Our old 1950's ranch had had them, but termites had eaten away a portion, and we never got around to restoring them. So when we bought this house, here was my opportunity to get hardwood floors!

The master bedroom, just off the living room, had very old green linoleum over the original subflooring because it used to be the kitchen. When the new kitchen was added on, the old kitchen became a bedroom. The previous owners added a closet and just built it right over the top of the linoleum. My friend Marilyn and I thought we should pull up the linoleum and refinish the sub-flooring which consisted of old pine boards and put down area rugs. Benny said that would make the bedroom too cold, and suggested moving the carpet from the living room into the bedroom. Wellll ... first I wanted to see how the pine boards would look. So I did some research and purchased some tung oil which Benny then applied to the subflooring. All well and good. Until the water heater came on (the water heater closet is also in the master bedroom.) When the pilot ignited, the flames quickly spread across the entire bedroom floor - and Benny got the "hell outa Dodge." The flames subsided just as quickly, but after we finished mopping up the smoke, we (mostly Benny) decided to go with Plan B - moving the living room carpet to the bedroom, - a very practical, economical, and warm soluton. ;)

After Benny and Mark, our boarder, removed the living room carpet (and I pulled up a whole lotta nails), I used Kramer's Antique Improver to refinish the living room hardwood floor. Benny put on one coat of Shellac. I found the area rug at Lowe's. The floors are easy to maintain - when things start looking a little dull I simply bring them back to life with a little more Kramer's Antique Improver, which also makes a good cleaner, or with Bees Wax. This year, during my spring cleaning I used Murphy's oil soap.

As mentioned previously, the living room is open to the kitchen which was added later. The concept of hallways as we know them didn't really exist for old farmhouses. They were mostly built in big squares sectioned off into rooms - and then extended onto as the years went slowly by.

So there are two bedrooms right off the living room as you enter from the kitchen - the current master bedroom (formerly the old kitchen) - and the former master bedroom - which we'll visit later. On the opposing wall, a doorway leads to the front of the house and the upstairs.

bedrooms off the living room
door to front entrance
 
 

Closer Looks Around

Benny saved my grandmother's buffet (above) from going to the junkyard when she moved into town from the farm in the late '80's. I wish I had a before picture of it - it was practically in pieces. But it was obvious she loved it and had worked on it the best she knew how through the years to keep it functional. Who knew what beauty it concealed! My grandparents purchased their furniture from Sears in the 1930's.

My Great-Aunt Firma's painting hangs over the buffet. To the right are two smaller scenes that she gave me for a wedding gift. Great Grandmother Abbie's kitchen clock sits on a shelf to the left.

The buffet has sat in various places in the living room, but its final destination will be the sitting room along with the rest of my grandmother's dining room set. I want to convert the sitting room, now my study, into a formal dining room. I would like to reopen an entrance way directly from the living room into the sitting room - just off the kitchen. Preferably with sliding french doors. But one step at a time. In an old farmhouse, rooms have to serve multiple functions, and it has taken this house a few years to teach us the art of how to live here.

The clock shelf came from one of Benny's colleagues at Milestone Contractors. He owned a home on historic 9th street hill in Lafayette, and decided to downsize when he retired. We sold a few pieces of furniture for him, and bought a few pieces from him to sell, and he threw in the shelf. I was going to sell it on ebay, but when Aunt Claudine gave me Great-Grandmother Abbie's kitchen clock, Benny refinished the shelf and hung it for me.

Great-Grandma's clock had quit working but we are (1) fortunate to have someone in town who repairs these clocks and (2) lucky enough to work with someone who knows this. It cost about $200 to have the clock repaired, but it is fun to have it working again. And we have finally gotten to the point where we don't even notice all that chiming. :) My grandfather was born in 1896 (to give you an idea of the clock's age). Just think of all the history the old clock has seen!
Closeups of buffet

Seems like you can never have enough of some things - among them being unique little dishes and coasters. And the best place to find these is - you guessed it - Good Will. Actually the teapot (pictured above) is part of an entire tea set which belonged to Cousin Charlotte, who lived close by my grandparents in rural Fountain County just outside Wallace. Charlotte's husband Bert was deceased, and his brother and sister, Icel and Thurman, lived with her. Charlotte used to have my grandmother and me over for cookies and tea at Christmas and other special occasions when I was a girl. Charlotte knew I enjoyed the tea set - it was so thin, translucent and delicate! She left it to my grandmother who in turn passed it on to me. Too bad we still don't have teas like Cousin Charlotte and Cousin Icel did ...

After I found the coasters above, the cute cat coaster set that my daughter Bonnie had given me several years ago from Jeannine's Cat House on the Outer Banks made its way upstairs to the cat's room (more on that later).

Bonnie's Cat Coasters

Amping it up with Lamps

What living room discussion is complete without lamps? Lamps are fun - so many choices and designs through the years! When Benny and I married 26 years ago, we had more nice lamps than we knew what to do with - he had won a set of sturdy wood base lamps trimmed in brass which would look nice in a den or a family room. He also had a pair of brass lamps with a more formal look for a living room. Additionally I had my mother's tall glass globe and ornate brass/wrought iron lamps from the 70's. All very nice, but somehow too tall and over-powering for the old farmhouse. Took me a while, but I realized that I wanted old-fashioned lamps from the 40's and 50's. They just seemed to go so much better.

As we finish up in the living room, I don't want to forget the kerosene lamps. They have a place firmly seated in my childhood memories of my grandmother's little farmhouse. She kept kerosene lamps around and would often light them when the electricity went out from a thunderstorm.

Benny's had a couple of old kerosene lamps for ages - one from his grandmother, and one left by previous owners in the other house. A few years ago at the fairgrounds flea market, I came across some copper oil lamps that mount on the wall and just recently picked up two more like them at Good Will. We also have acquired a few smaller pieces over the years. One of my little projects this summer has been cleaning them, mounting new ones, and putting some kerosene in them. This past winter our kerosene lamps came in handy when I came home from work around 7 one evening to a cold pitch-black house. The electricity was out in the neighborhood. My husband had gone to bed early to stay warm. So I fired up the old kerosene lamps and they supplied us with light and heat for an hour or two - and I learned a thing or two about how to handle them and how hot they get - ouch! The key is that you never fill them too full, and you turn the wick way down.

The plug had broken off this old oil lamp that my grandmother had converted into an electric lamp. Benny rewired it for me when I was out on the east coast visiting family in the hospital this spring.

I wanted green glass on the other end of the sofa to complement the lamp shown in the top left photo. Before we ever dreamed of moving here, I'd purchased an old painted rose globe lamp at one of the barn sales at this estate. Partly because it reminded me of a lamp my grandmother used to own, and partly for my booth at the antique mall. Through all our sales, this lamp never sold, so I decided to put it into use. However it was missing the top piece, and as I was messing around with it, the metal base broke. What to do, what to do ...? I first turned to eBay and I did find a green globe but I should have read the fine print because it was way too large! I've since learned that Good Will is just the best place to find old lamp parts! No shipping charges! At the moment I have several lamps which I'm going to take apart and recombine and hopefully finally get my 2nd green and rose globe lamp and maybe one or two more. :)

For now the rose globe from an old lamp is gingerly resting on top of a lamp from Cracker Barrel lamp which lost its top several years ago.

The beautiful doily under the TV came from the Jeff Antique Show last year and only cost $3.00! And we bought the Eisenhower stand that the TV is resting on from a neighbor vendor at the Rockville Covered Bridge Festival a few years ago. An Eisenhower table makes a pretty decent entertainment center for an antique!

The old brass floor lamp shown above used to sit in my grandmother's living room. Benny restored it for me. Zooming into another detail - framing and/or reframing some of my grandmother's needle point work was one of my projects this summer.

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a big thank you to the folks at American Blinds Wallpaper and More for the lovely vintage wallpaper backgrounds!