I could post pictures of the kitchen while the renters were still here, but it’s rather gross and disgusting. I think the plan was to keep the house as

Window looks into the Puppy Room

nasty as possible so no one would want it.  Too bad it didn’t quite work with us.  We have a habit of seeing around those things.  Of course, it helps when you have a spouse who tends to be messy.  Seems it doesn’t bother him as much as it does most people.  Still, it was pretty bad.

I’m not much on white kitchens, especially since I have 3 boys, counting Scott.  Can’t keep it clean.  Even if I lived by myself, I have this need for color.  My ex husband always wanted things white.  I love color and the affect it has on a room.

Not Much on Stainless Steel Sinks

My kitchen isn’t very big.  I had a huge one at the other house and the amount of wasted space always bothered me.  I’d looked at a house years before with a small kitchen and said I’d never be able to stand it, but after living with a kitchen the size of my current bedroom, with a breakfast area added on, I decided that it was just too much space I didn’t need.

For canning purposes, we’re lucky that there’s a room to the left of the cabinets with the open area at the top.  It was once a back porch.  That’s where my great grandmother’s kitchen cabinet is.  There’s a table in there as well.  We use it as a butler’s pantry.  It’s a great place to put our things that are cooling or to put vegetables out of the way on processing days until we can get to them.

From the Dining Room

What you can’t see in the pictures is the layer of cigarette smoke all over the cabinets.  And the grease.  We don’t fry anything, so the grease really bothers me.  And the smoke… well, that was just too disgusting.  I cleaned everything about 4 times to get it the way I wanted it.  On the view from the dining room, the stripes are actually pieces of ribbon.  She had painted over the wallpaper and used ribbon to hide the seams.  Great idea, huh?  Even hid the fact that water damage had caused the plaster to fail on the opposite wall.  Until I got to cleaning and found the plaster falling lose and sliding down to the floor behind the wallpaper.  Scott learned about plastering very quickly.

All of the walls are plaster except for the ones that are brick.  Because two porches were enclosed to make 3 rooms, we have brick wall that’s been painted.  Awful to paint, but I like the affect.  And I love the archways we get with the plaster. There are 4 of them in all in the original part of the farm house.

So why post old pictures?  Because the repaint job in the kitchen will be done for the most part this weekend and I was looking back through the way it looked before I posted the new pictures.  We’ve still got a long way to go.  My dressing room and the bathrooms are the major projects.  And now, Elijah’s ready to turn the garage into his room.  Should be interesting to see what he does with that.  Last time I let him pick colors he picked light blue and yellow.  The time before that it was purple and banana.  I’m beginning to see yellow as a theme.  Just hoping we can sort of go more earth tone this time.  Like the rest of the house.  Just wait.  You’ll see.