My Indiana Home

Gallery 10 - My (new) Indiana Home

This Farm Old House Tour - 2009

Welcome to Our Upstairs

Hallway

Our second story consists of one very narrow hallway betwixt two bedrooms, one facing the front of the house and one facing the back.

I want to mention one key fact at the start. There is no running water upstairs.

I never really owned a house with a second story before. I've always wanted an upstairs. However, when I finally got one, I didn't understand how to live in it. Of course some functionality was readily obvious:

With old linoleum floors, the upstairs bedrooms became a great place to keep a litterbox. Also, since our dog Hazel doesn't do stairs, I could safely keep Butterball's food bowl upstairs. So the front bedroom became known as Butterball's room. Not many cats have their own bedroom!
Spare bedroom space for the occasional overnight guest is the second obvious use of upstairs space. For the first two and a half years, our friend Mark rented the Summer Kitchen from us, and his family would come on Memorial Day and Thanksgiving to visit him. Then Mark got married and moved into a beautiful old Victorian home in town. And our daughter Bonnie took his place (for a while they overlapped - so Bonnie lived upstairs while Mark lived downstairs) when she moved back to Indiana from Myrtle Beach. Now her out-of-town friends stay upstairs when they visit.
Spillover storage space was the third obvious use! Like I said, you can never get enough storage space in an old house.

Over time with people coming and going, and Benny's winter remodeling projects, and my working fulltime, the upstairs rooms seem to keep "coming "undone." (Right now I'm scattered about up here working on a photo album project, writing this piece, and catching up with my bookkeeping.) But I really want to have a nice, "drop-in ready", welcoming space - so this summer I spent quite a bit of time on the upstairs bedrooms. Will they stay put this time? Well, we still need to do some remodeling work, but now I understand better how to live on the second floor of our house. In an old farmhouse with no concept of modern hallways or spaces for privacy, the second floor is a quiet, contemplative, reflective space up in the trees, where we can dwell perhaps a little closer to God. It's a guest space for the overnight visitor, - so we need beds and dressers and yes, overflow closets. It's a playroom for visiting grandkids and it is sometimes my workspace, so we need window seats, and rockers, and desks, and trunks and toyboxes and underbed storage and play space and mirrors for "dress-up." And yes, it's the cat's room, and I keep a running commentary on that fact in my decorating themes. One thing to keep in mind about furnishing the upstairs - since the hallway and staircase are very narrow, the furniture has to be dainty and lightweight - or at least break down - so that we can get it up the stairs and wrap it around the landing!

But the main thing is:

I discovered I really enjoy spending time up here.

No bathroom or running water upstairs. If anyone has to go to the bathroom at night, they have to go down the stairs, and traverse the house front to back to get to any running water. This inconvenience to our modern ways has lead me to some humorous commentary in my decorating themes - such as this chamber pot in the hallway.

A shot of the landing from the upstairs hallway. The stairs and upstairs hallway were also covered with 1970's green shag carpeting when we bought the house. We pulled up the carpet and Benny refinished the stairs and the hallway subflooring - old pine boards. We would like to eventually strip and refinish all the upstairs woodwork ... but that may or may not happen. ;)

I love bears dressed in vintage clothing - even better are vintage bears in vintage clothing, but these bears are new. They are outfitted in baby clothes from my uncle's side of the family.

A shot down our hallway from the landing. A little cubby space with a bench marks the end of the hall, with a doorway opening into each bedroom.

Back bedroom looking to front bedroom

Front bedroom looking to back bedroom. The transom and the door were completely painted over so I've taken them down for Benny to refinish.

Front bedroom

Back bedroom

The front bedroom is better known to us as Butterball's (the cat's) room - for reasons already explained above. Except for the summer kitchen, it is the least modernized room in the entire house. The window is modern, but the two pine doors with their fixtures are original to this house. This summer I took them down, along with the transom, for Benny to refinish. Both had been completely painted over, even the glass.

By contrast, my Seventies Bedroom looks to the back of the house and has been completely modernized. It has been paneled, has a drop ceiling, and two closets. The linoleum floor is a much newer floral pattern utilizing the oranges, greens, and yellows that mark the seventies color pallet. The seventies bed cover was left over from our antique mall and flea market activities. My Great-Aunt Sadie's and my grandmother's crocheted afghans and pillow covers are from that era. So I have enjoyed accessorizing this bedroom.

The old black trunk which traveled with me to South America fifty years ago serves as a window seat and storage. I found the little gold trunk at Goodwill for about $5.00. Storage space for linens, old photos, toys, and scrapbooks in an old house is at a premium so I grab it up as I can. :)

A close-up of grandmother's needle point pillow and piano bench covers. Along with framing and hanging old photographs on the stairs, another summer project was finding pillows for all the old needlepoint, crocheted, and quilted pillow covers I had inherited through the years. Good Will is a great place to get inexpensive throw pillows! I try to get cotton pillows that would stand well enough on their own without a cover.


Benny's mother's Jenny Linde bed long predates the seventies, but sits in the Seventies Bedroom under the window. In front of the bed is Bonnie's grandmother's Art Deco cedar chest.	Mammy Ruth's old bureau with her picture on it - when we got the bed and the bureau, they had both been antiqued green.

To the right and left of the bed are two cozy cubby holes flanked by long narrow closets. I made one cubby into a sitting area when the day bed came upstairs. The other is a dress-up and reading area with one of my granddad's old walnut bookcases.


A sweet little oval back rocker in front of my grandfather's other bookcase (he built a set) anxiously awaits the day I can afford to recover it!	The other front corner of the room conveniently provides space for a trunk, an extra chair and a full length mirror.

Later this summer, I acquired a wooden window seat bench with storage at Trader Buck's Flea Market , so the old black trunk shuffled to the foot of the bed and the gold trunk moved to the Seventies Room.

Play room space - Since this is a playful area of the house, I decided the wall would make a great place to hang some of our extra chairs from Benny's refinishing days. I found the child-size white cabinet at a garage sale this summer and I use it to store Butterball's food.

As already mentioned, the two separate and unrelated facts that there is no running water upstairs and that our cat lives upstairs has given me some opportunity to use humor in my decorating, for instance the liberal use of cat decorations and chamberpots and wash stands and wash pitchers. For instance on the right side of the room is a little privacy screen and litterbox for the cat. On the left side of the room I chose to put a privacy screen and corresponding area for people. I use the appropriate signage in each case. ;)

A convenience area for desperate overnight guests

Likewise for kitty


Guest room space - a library table/hideaway desk, a washstand, and my grandparents' 1937 Sears Catalog poster-bed add to a house-guest's comfort on our second floor.
	Above the newly refinished doors and transom are back in their rightful places! An old library table with a pull out writing area works well for a computer keyboard. I bid on one like this when I went to an auction with my next door neighbor this summer. It went too high, but then I found this piece at Trader Buck's Flea Market and it was in better shape!
Addendum: Later this fall, a lovely Tall Boy Oak Chest came available from my Aunt who is beginning to downsize. She originally bought it from us and had Benny refinish it for her, so she gave it back to us. Butterball's room needed a chest of drawers, so I did some moving around to fit it in. The little child's cupboard fit perfectly behind the door, and the old washtub folding stand went downstairs to the Entranceway, which seemed oddly appropriate to the old photos hanging there. Not quite showing in the photo below is a swan painting that Benny did as a child that I recently hung. It is hanging just to the right over the little blue shelf. I guess I've also turned this room particularly into our own little art gallery - my drawings, and photos, and Benny's paintings, and our friend Julie Soposky's poster that was mounted on the back of Larry Giroux's antique car that drove us to our reception on our wedding day. Somehow it all seems appropriate to the child's playroom. Oak Tall Boy Chest

Benny's Swan Painting

Back to Tour Starting Point

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