Gallery 10 - My (new) Indiana Home

This Farm Old House Tour - 2009

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Come on Inside!

My front entrance is directly below - designed in the typical fashion of old houses - a little foyer that leads directly to a staircase to the second story of the house with a door way to a sitting room to the left. A short hallway past the stairs brings you to the back of the house, now the living room. Through the years, the front entrance has been chopped up a bit to provide a little under-the-stair closet and a "buffer zone" to keep out the cold. The entrance to the sitting room is now off the "buffer zone." I think it would be cool to open the original entrance back up, but unfortunately that might prove too "cool." I think the front walls would need to be insulated first. This whole area, including the stairway, the upstairs hallway, the entrance and hall had 1970's green shag carpet which we removed to restore the hard wood floor underneath - except for the sitting room which had sturdy plywood on top of the sub-flooring. We put a new carpet in there.
Front foyer and stairs	The sitting room (above) had served as a bedroom for previous occupants. It had been modernized with paneling, a dropped ceiling, and yes, that famous green shag carpet, which we replaced with the carpet in the picture above. (This room already had a plywood subfloor which Benny wasn't about to take up.) ;) Since we've lived here, the sitting room has been my office, but my dream is to eventually open a doorway off the kitchen and turn this area into a formal dining room/library. We really need a space for family gatherings. The doorway hasn't happened yet, but I figure it's time to step forth in faith with my dining room dream. Perhaps if I build it (the dining room that is) ... the doorway will come - along with French pocket doors, the original high ceiling, and a chandelier. :) I'd also like to have some builtins for books - perhaps with doors to hide any clutter. Besides I now have a notebook and wireless internet - I can work anywhere I please around here - even in the chicken coop! ;) (Momentary detour - View from the chicken coop!)	Hallway and "buffer zone" leading back to the living room

The Great 2009 Picture Framing Project

(press arrow to hear appropriate scream while imagining pulling out your hair)

It all started with this very old portrait of Benny's paternal grandmother - her name was Jenny Norman (right). We've had her picture for years, and for years before that it hung in my mother-in-law's basement in Kentucky. This summer I finally dug her out from behind a dresser and gingerly removed her from the frame and dusted off the mold (the image was on a very thick piece of poster type board, for lack of a better term - they made stuff to last back then). I cleaned the old glass, and refurbished the old frame as best I could, coloring in where mice had chewed on the gold leafing. Even Kramer's Antique Improver couldn't remove all the oxidation (darkness) from the finish. Anyway, I had the idea that this piece would be the focal point of the wall going up the staircase, and that I would frame and hang old photos and portraits all around it to sort of tell a family story. While Benny's maternal grandparents James and Mary Pernetta Couch had lived with them while he was growing up, he had never met his paternal grandma Jenny. She had died when his Dad Cletus was just a boy. Benny decided she should sit on the wall right across from his maternal grandmother Nettie's old oak dresser mirror- which he had converted to a wall shelf when we lived at the other house. So with all of that as a starting point, I started selecting the photos and arranging the groupings. I wanted vintage frames, so I went to Good Will (where else) for a lot of them. I learned a lot when I "pried" them apart. Who knew there were so many different ways of framing something!	Jenny	A shot from the stairway of Mary Pernetta Couch's old dresser mirror
How do you approach having a whole big wall as your pallet? I really had no idea. So I approached it mostly by the seat of my pants. Needless to say, there are a few things that I would probably do differently - when time comes to paint and patch again. I already had pictures of the kids on the staircase wall ascending in stair step fashion - skipping every other step or so. So initially I thought I would contine along that vein - but then I realized that I needed groupings - vertical lines, horizontal lines, circles, and crosses with plenty of space inbetween so the eye could distinguish where one grouping ended and the next began. Also I learned that dealing with all different picture sizes and frame sizes when trying to put together a design was interesting - namely that what you had on hand didn't necessarily make the picture work in the arrangement. Also I learned that using different shaped frames was desirable (so that everything isn't a square). Finally adding in some dimensionality with little shelves and figurines perhaps breaks the monotony of a wall full of one-dimensional photographs. As time went by, I got a lot less afraid and a lot more desensitized to driving holes in those old plaster walls (eek!). So I ended up with several of what I called "Butterfly boo-boos". The name comes from some little 49 cent metallic butterfly wall decorations I had purchased from Good Will not knowing exactly how I was going to use them. :)

 

Cletus, Benny's dad, sits next to his mother Jenny. Benny as a baby rests over Cletus. Overhead and on the other side of Jenny are pictures of Benny's mother and siblings and nieces and nephews.
	A close-up of Benny's baby picture with a little shelf underneath	Here's the little praying girl and goose to match the little praying boy and goose.	Further up the stairs is Benny's senior picture in a grouping and some more butterfly boo-boos.

View downstairs from the landing	This corner shelf came back to us from our friend Denise with whom we spent one afternoon piecing it together like an old puzzle (We're still not sure we have all the parts.) Afterwards, Benny refinished it.	Curio Cabinet next to the stairs
View up the stairs to the landing	View of second floor hallway from the landing
		I reframed two of my grandmother's needlepoint pieces with a matching set of gold oval frames I found at Good Will at separate times. I put one of them at the top of the landing and the other at the end of the 2nd floor hallway. The cat on the bench at the end of the upstairs hallway almost looks real, doesn't he? He is actually a gorgeous piece of metal artwork and a fortuitous Goodwill find. The idea to sit him on the bench at the end of the hall came from our daughter Bonnie whose baby photo hangs just above him. The door to the left is actually our real cat's room, but more on that later ...

Late breaking news December 2009 - the transformation of the old sitting room from a study to a dining room!

	I found the 1930's Art Deco China Cupboard at the fairgrounds in October at the last open air flea market for the season for a great price. It goes well with my grandparent's 1930's dining room furniture - and it's good to see those pieces in a dining room once again.
How quickly the time has flown by this year! Now the days are short and the holidays are upon us. We've just shown Kate and Annie in the Christmas Parade and woken up to our first snow of the season.	Since this room is at the front of the house and has a nice picture window, I wanted to change the room from my study into something more formal and elegant.	The room is actually a combination dining room library, as I kept the computer and library table, a bookcase, and a filing cabinet in the room as well.	A glimpse of the buffet as we look from the Christmas tree back toward the living room.

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