Curb appeal

Alright, I promised you some before and after shots!

When we bought Tara nearly two years ago, it looked like this:

As of about 5 minutes ago, it looks like this:

Yes, it's the same house. The shutters went on today and if you've been following this blog for the past few months, that leaves only three (major) things left to do: gutters, tile, and doors. There's always something to do around here, but we're almost done with this huge chunk of renovation, and I'm ready to sit back and enjoy it!

The shutters have made a substantial impact, but unfortunately they seem to highlight our need for new front doors.

Luckily we have two pine doors in our garage waiting to be painted Rustic Red, and those will take place of the *ahem* special barred glass doors and the doors behind them that sport those lovely octagonal windows.

Personally, I can't wait to get those on, but doors are last on the list according to our contractor. So, I'm forced to sit back and wait. In the meantime, I have my large pots already filled with seasonal color and a Tennessee state flag just waiting to be on display once this front porch is finished.

Happy Birthday to Tara!

Last July 4, Rhett and I spent our first night at Tara. Nevermind that the kitchen looked like this:

Charming, I know. Did I mention we were without plumbing too at that point? Oh, and let's not forget that I was 37 weeks pregnant going to the bathroom in the woods. I don't think our neighbors noticed, but I'm sure they would have been thrilled to know that the Clampetts were moving in.

Needless to say, our first night at Tara was not quite a 4 star experience, but we survived. In fact, if you're one of those annoyingly optimistic people you'd probably say that a rocky start at Tara has made all the things we've accomplished in the past year that much sweeter.

You're entitled to your opinion.

All this has got me thinking, however, of what we really need out of a house. What do we have to have out of a building to make us happy? You can say that plumbing and electricity are non-negotiables, but are they really? Will simply four walls do? And aren't the best memories of where we live memories of when something crazy happened- like when all the power went out and we had to cook over the fire and play Monopoly by candlelight?

This past weekend, our family traveled to south Georgia for Rhett's 75th annual family reunion. The reunion was a lot of fun, and over 225 of Rhett's extended family were there, which really meant that there was a LOT of good food. Although I'm from the South, I'm pretty sure that certain parts of the country should require a passport, because I couldn't find the tiny town (is it even a town?) of Hatley on a map. What impressed me as much as the food and fellowship of all the wonderful folks I met this past weekend was the simple character of some of the buildings.

Here's the Hatley Women's Club:

And the Courthouse, which I am told also doubled as the jail...

Silly to some, I suppose, but I love these simple buildings. They remind me that in some places the buildings we live our lives in were, and still are, free of fuss (though I'm not sure the "jail" makes me feel very safe). For women to get together and do good or for justice to be done in a place like Hatley, they didn't need  a glossy million-dollar place to do it in.

Winston Churchill wrote, "We shape our buildings and then they shape us." Isn't that the case? We have an idea of how we want our buildings to work and function but in reality, once we live and work inside them, they begin to shape the way we do things. It's not because of their ammenities either. Simple structures or even those that are incomplete can make a big impact.

While I'm grateful for the great strides that Tara has made in the last year, I smile when I think about those first few crazy nights at this house last July. Forget that there was hardly a kitchen and I had to run off into the woods to go to the bathroom, we were just so happy to be here.

Happy Anniversary, Tara!

Fine Dining

There have been numerous requests for more photos...so, here you go!

In honor of the upcoming holiday of feasting, I give you (drumroll!) my dining room.

This is one of my favorite transformations because it wasn't flashy. It didn't require hacking anything apart or doing a major overhaul. We really capitalized on what was already in the room, and by simply using paint colors wisely and paying attention to the furniture we already had, we really got a lot of bang for our buck here.

Here's what we started with:

The chandelier was not something I would have originally gravitated towards, but keeping it proved to be a smart decision. You'l notice that there's a lot of natural light the floods the living room and illuminates the dining room. The corner china cabinets represent a sense of whimsy but also evoke something about the 1950s-1960s that I can't quite put my finger on- needless to say, we loved them and kept them, too.

Halfway through...

In this picture, the floors were sanded but not yet refinished. We used a color on the walls called Reisling by Ralph Lauren. I loved it because it changes with the daylight. Sometimes it looks almost taupe, and other times it has a beautiful soft lemony tone. We used bright white on the ceilings and a softer white on the trim and cabinets. The color contrast and the fresh paint really made the cabinets pop!

All finished!

I like to give you the view of the room as you see it when you walk in the door, but of course since this is about the dining room more than the living room, I included a picture of just the dining room for good measure. Quite a contrast from the first photo, right?

The room, as large as it is, needed a bit of color and a bit of texture, and hopefully that's what it now has. Don't worry, I'll talk more about adding those aspects to the dining room and living room in the next few posts. :) Until then, Happy Thanksgiving!



No smoking, please.

The USPS has been pretty good about realizing that we now live at Tara, as most of our mail arrives where it should and we no longer get mail intended for the previous residents. Every now and then, however, we get a piece of mail addressed to one Uri Snellbaker. Seriously. I cannot make this stuff up.

That someone actually named their child Uri Snellbaker is news enough, but the mail sent to Mr. Snellbaker is nothing to sneeze at. We don’t get Uri’s credit card bills or juicy love letters, nor do we get catalogues, high school reunion updates, or temple newsletters. Camel, Virginia Slims, and Marlboro seem to be the only ones who think Uri resides at Tara.

We don’t need Angela Lansbury to clue us in on the fact that Mr. Snellbaker liked a smoke.

But, with apologizes to Ayn Rand,

Who is Uri Snellbaker?

Loving some good gossip, I like to imagine that ol’ Uri was Mrs. Hershey’s lover. (The plot thickens!) Perhaps he was a tobacco tycoon who stole Mrs. Hershey’s heart sometime in the 80s and continued to be her on-again/off-again smoky sweetheart through the next two decades. Maybe he was her brother (boring!) who came to live with her as he endured treatment for emphysema. Maybe he lived next door, but didn’t want his wife to know he smoked, so he had his smoking literature sent to Mrs. Hershey’s? That last one’s too far-fetched, and the second option is boring, so we’re going to go with the juiciest story.

Uri Snellbaker was Mrs. Hershey’s smokin’ suitor, her cigarette courter, her burning beau, her puffing paramour, and her smoldering steady (love thesaurus.com!).

Unfortunately, I didn’t arrive at this conclusion solely as a result of the USPS. No, rather when we bought Tara, it smelled like an ashtray. Being pregnant and hormonal, I told Rhett that if there was one thing I was allowed to pitch a fit about, it was the smell. When the house was made livable, I told him, I was not moving in unless the smell was gone.

I know that fifty years ago no one knew how terrible cigarettes were, and I’ve seen enough Mad Men to realize that times have changed. But seriously. In 2010, a house shouldn’t smell like a bar.

Before we moved in, the smell of cigarettes poured out of every crevice, and as my mother-in-law washed walls her water became quickly tinted with yellow as the decades of smoke began to be freed from the house. Washing the walls and shelves, refinishing the floors, painting the walls, ceilings, and trims didn’t entirely get rid of the stench, and to date our painters have used over 35 gallons of Kilz on the ceilings alone. If this is what smoking does to the inside of a house, I don’t even want to think about what it does to the inside of a body.

As with any home, the smoking stench has mainly subsided and the house has started to smell like us rather than the local bar.

However, every now and then in certain sections of the house I can smell the faint lingering odor of cigarettes. Perhaps because it is Halloween or perhaps because I am a bit of a romantic, I imagine that it is nothing more than Uri coming for his mail.

Kidding around, take 1

Here’s a shot of our oldest daughter’s room before the renovation. Kids rooms are easy and a lot of fun, basically because anything goes. The phrase “anything goes” would describe her personality, too.

This room was one of the first to get completed- the tiniest clients can have the biggest opinions, and to avoid having her cry nightly for our old house we had to give her the coolest room possible. So we did.

The room has a lot of natural light (which this photo doesn’t show…my bad.) We painted the walls, ceiling, trim, and closet, tore up the carpet in favor of refinishing the hardwood floors underneath, gutted the electrical (including the disgusting ceiling fan) and at the end of the day…

Hey kids, don't try this at home.

We officially sold our old house and bought Tara right after Memorial Day weekend. The baby was due (and came!) 2 months later. About the timeline, I wouldn’t recommend it.

Here’s what the kitchen of house looked like when we bought it. As I chronicle the renovation, I’ll go room by room and delve into more detail (get excited to see the ancient Thermador and the cool vintage lighting!), so first we're going to go back to visit Tara in her former glory. This is the view of the kitchen from the den.

All I can say is this: she’s not a looker, but she has a great personality.