The Search for Home: The Bungalow

This is a house that's been on my list for over 2 years & it's gone down over $120,000 since I've had my sights on it. (Funny how in-demand my favorites are, right?!! ;) It's a bungalow built in 1911, is in the same town my husband works & is about 20 minutes away from my family (parents & grandparents) & where we'd like to be. It's situated on half an acre (wahoo!!!) is I LOVE IT. Below is more how I imagine it would look if I could get my hands on it:

Here is the living room (below) which is really tiny & I would definitely want to knock the right wall down (which is a bedroom) & have it expand the width of the house. How gorgeous are the floors?!! 10 foot ceilings and all of the original details!!! Floor to ceiling windows!! It's been in the same family all of this time.

Here's another view of the living room:

Here's the adorable vintage bathroom with the original fixtures, most of which I would keep:

Love the tub but would have to go with those wraparound clawfoot rods for function:

Here is the dining room & this is the room that does it for me. I LOVE those uper windows & al the woodwork. Although I have to admit that bungalow-lovers would probably hate the crime I would have to do to this house: It would go white... da-da-da-dun! It owuld just have to. sorry.

Here's the kitchen which is situated in the back of the house. It's prettyold, but I think would be pretty easy to fix up.

I'd want it to feel something like this, below (This is maybe my FAVORITE kitchen ever... you will see it again ;) the wall of windows is on my kitchen wishlist.)-- country living

Upstairs there's this little room: A child would go here since they're little people ;) ;) hahaha but seriously I think it's a really cool room even though it's short. The eventual plan would be to put an additon on the house to get it more liveable space-wise.


There are 2 bedrooms on the main level which I would eventually want to open up into living space (once an addition went on.) I drew the floorplans for the addition this past summer & have that all planned out but won't bore you with it.

And finally, here is the awesome screened-in shed:

I think I would want to do something like this (country living) to it:

Isn't that just one of the best little secret spaces you've ever seen?!!! I just want to be there right now. really. They added glass to an old potting shed & I think this would work out with the structure on the property:

How beautiful?!!!!Anyway, my husband says this house is a no-go & I've been working on him for a long time with this one & he isn't budging. He won't go for the neighborhood. :(

"Branch In!"

As I looked out the kitchen window yesterday morning, I saw it: Spring!!! The teeniest little lime green buds on the trees had appeared over the weekend!!! (I think it was that 80 degree weather!!) And they're even bigger today. So, it got me thinking of reaccessorizing & one of the easiest & cheapest (I apologize to those that hate that word but i love it ;) ways to do this is to bring in your yard!! (Or nice, unsuspecting parkland/ public property.... hahaha ok I probably shouldn't have said that! but as long as you cut carefully!)



Even right now before the buds have really even started, look how beautiful the branches in the image below (from House Beautiful) look!








To keep branches alive, cut the stem with sharp pruning shears and put them in warm water containing fresh floral food. Floral food helps keep nourished the branches and also keeps bacteria from growing. (check out http://www.stemsflowers.com/aboutflowers.asp for awesome details on different types of plants.) I'm saying to put floral food in the vase because I just learned this great tidbit of info from the site above, but I've always done it without floral food and had luck! (Also, sometimes they wilt for a bit & come back!! odd.)




Below, I love what I think is a maple branch (correct me if I'm wrong!) and how easy it is to do. It's so striking and probably took all of 5 minutes:

Below is (not a branch!) but a snippet of (evergreen) clematis vine from my old house and it was super-easy to do & they lived for over a month!! (I put them everywhere!!)

Here's some flowering quince from Jenna Lyon's apt featured in Domino:

And some more:
Forsythia is one of my absolute favorite things to bring in!!! You can really force the buds with the warm water & they look so gorgeous when they branches are huge!! (My aunt in NJ has a home office that's floor-to-ceiling windows on 3 sides and it's surrounded by forsythia bushes- can you imagine that in the spring?!!! I'll have to get pics from her!!)

Below on the mantle, I used rhododendron branches to fill up the antique pitcher & since then I really hope to have a rhododendron bush one day!!!

And finally, I couldn't resist this beauty from House Beautiful, although I doubt many of us will be bringing in olive branches from our yards this year ;)

Good luck with your pruning & I can't wait to hear what you do with your branches!!!

xoxo,

lauren

Atlant Bartlett: El Molino

Just back from a crazy weekend in NY (and a long day of flight delays) and I miss my little guy like crazy, so here's some quick eye candy from Atlanta Bartlett's Beach Studios (where I would love to be right now!!):

i'm behind on my blog reading & will try to catch up with everyone this week!!!
have a beautiful day!!!

xoxo,

lauren

I swear I do love color!!!

See??

One of my best friends is getting married this month & I just wanted to give you a peak at her gifts! (haha ok, so this is actually for someone else, but I do love all the color!! :) It's sort of becoming a tradition... when my husband & I got married, I bought a set of Jadeite mixing bowls for us :

To go with my aqua kitchenaide mixer (It's actually has a bit more green in it in person & they blend really well together):

Then I got my other best friend (who was going through a pink obsession at the time-- haha i think she's over it now!) a beautiful set of vintage pink pyrex mixing bowls:

Which work well with her steel-finish mixer: (Unfortunately her new kitchen is red & my bowls will totally clash but they're out of sight until use!)

So, to carry on the tradition & bring a little vintage-fun to Mo (the bride-to-be) I went out searching for these vintage pyrex mixing bowls (I have known for years this is what she was getting!):

I went to an antique fair & found all but the green bowl at one booth & then went on to comb the other booths for the missing link. To go with her mixing bowls, I also found her a paisley-patterned apron, potholder & dish cloths online (by Elizabeth James) in bright & happy colors:

And the dishcloths:

So, I'm off to NY for the weekend for her shower & bachelorette!!

have a great weekend & I'll be back Monday!!

xoxo,

lauren

The Seach for home: "The Farmhouse"

warning: I'm trusting you to not steal this house from me. ;) (really though, haha)

Well, are you surprised? ;) ;) The house we're loving now is a farmhouse that was built in 1889. (Camila guessed it & Kelly was close with a barn-- I'd SO take a barn!!! It's another dream of mine actually haha) Anyway, the house is about 25 mins away from where we're at now & is on an acre of land. (we want land SO badly) It's only a mile and a half from the new grocery store (which is really important to me for convenience!) and is being surrounded by brand-new housing developments. When we walked into the house the couple living there thought we were crazy to want to live in the house & not tear it down because that's what everyone's doing. [Which I think is really sad-- this place is so beautiful & has so much history, I couldn't imagine tearing it down!!]

I love the front of the house: It's already white & I'd love to paint the tin roof red (ok, maybe silver) --see below-- and add some black shutters, fix the porch swing & layer it with pretty pillows, add hanging ferns in the summer, hudrangeas all around it-- ahh it could be gorgeous!!!!

Below is a view of the house from the backyard. (check out all that land!!!) It's hard to tell from the pics, but there's this perfect meandering stream throughout the backyard with 2 (really old but possibly gorgeous) little bridges over it. I think in the Spring when everything's lush & green it would look like something out of a fairytale.

Moving farther out is definitely a scary proposition for us. I'd love to stay near my parents & this is where I grew up & everything is just so convenient here: DC, Tyson's and even the country. (I would definitely be closer to Lucketts though if we moved here!!!) Below is a little tour of the inside of the house. Here is the room I'd use for the dining room/ sitting room:

I'd do a central pedestal table probably stacked with books & pretty things & have some wingchairs in the room that could be pulled up to the table for dining or working or projects. chandelier, lots of linen, you know the drill. The floors are the original wood plank floors (covered by carpeting & linoleum in places) painted brown. They'd be going white straightaway, like in Darryl Carter's Virginia farmhouse, below:

The plaster walls are the originals made out of sand & horsehair. The owner of the home was born in the house & lives there with his wife. (They seem like really nice people.) They covered up some of the plaster walls with 60s faux wood paneling (see below) which would be coming down asap. I'd also want to do french doors in the back of the kitchen (below) to a deck:

Here's another shot of the kitchen. To begin with, we'd simply paint the cabinets white because of budgets constraints & then attempt to do out own concrete countertops & find discounts on SS appliances. And let;s talk about the CEILINGS... As you can see, there are drop ceilings throughout the main level & I am DYING to tear them off & expose the beams & plaster ceiling!!!! I cannot even tell you how excited that gets me.

Here's the teensy living room, below. Again, the paneling would be coming down, the ceilings would be exposed & you have to picture white wood floor & linen sofas. The big dilemma is where will my hutch go? I think I have a spot for it.

Picture something similar to this: (from Honning & Flora)

Here's the laundry room/ sunroom. I'd definitely attempt some sort of laundry hiding ... and I'd ditch the door (or disguise it with curtains) so I could use that wall. I'd probably float my little desk & maybe do shelving on the long wall. ?? this room is SKINNY!

Goiny upstairs, there are 3 bedrooms & I'd want the hallway to look something like this (belwo, Atalant Bartlett):And here are the 2 bedrooms:

I cannot tell you enough how beautiful the walls are. They're like something out of Mount Vernon... (the smoke houses & such) When my husband & I opened the little doorway to go up the stairs & saw this curving tiny staircase & the walls we just looked at each other & it was like we had ESP. we LOVED it. It was like a time warp.

This is what I'd want to do: ( a little window enlargement in the first bedroom pictured) pic from Atlanta Bartlett-

Anyway, after coming home & having my parents roll their eyes at us & basically trying to reign us in (not my dad- he's all go for it because he's a dreamer like me) we started doing some research the next day. So here comes the bad news...

Well, the house is on 1 acre but most of that acre is on a floodplain, (the beautiful brook!) meaning you can't build on a flood plain. This is why no builder has snapped this place up yet. (Same as last time!!!) It's also less than 25 feet from the road & you wouldn't be able to put a flush addition on because you can't build within 25 feet of the road. (In a couple of years we hoped to put on a huge addition-- don't worry, we'd make it look like it had always been there...) I would put a room like this (Below, Darry Carter's LR) in the addition:

And here's the rest of the "bad" list: the gravel road it's on is being converted to a 35 mile perhour paved road (arggg!!! this is a HUGE NEGATIVE), we would need new: electricity, septic, central air & heat & probably plumbing... ($100,000+) So, that is a lot of money which is okay if the price for the house is low enough, but it isn't getting me up & running & out the door to put in an offer asap.

I also now know (looking at comps & finding out how unbuildable this lot is) that the house is WAY overpriced. It's only been on the market for a month & I doubt the couple living there would take the offer we'd be willing to give. But... maybe after it's been sitting for a while & they've found out about all of the lot's restrictions, they'll come around if we're still interested. I also feel like the market is still going to drop & we don't want to just jump in when we have this awesome opportunity to wait it out...

So it's not off the list, but I'm not gagga for it. Time & cost will tell!! what are your thoughts???

xoxo,

lauren

ps- I forgot to mention that the house is WAY under our budget so even with all of the $ needed to get it up to code, we're still under budget. (that's my favorite part of this house!! ;)