Our Uninvited Guest

So, I’m not sure if this would classify directly as a renovation post, more of a “living in an old house that we are still unaware of what lurks in her walls” kind of post.  It’s all part of the journey, right? 

This past Monday was fairly normal.  Woke up, went to work, got kids, came home, made Aidan do homework, and then Aidan and his dad headed out to a cub scout meeting (unrelated, they could WALK to it, another great reason we love where we are).  Different than most days, that same evening I had my dad in town for some meetings in Starkville with extension, so he was spending the night.  He was our first house guest so we were forced to stop putting off organizing the guest bedroom and actually put it together.  Can I just take a moment to thank my lucky stars at how glad I am that my dad was at my house when this situation went down??

Little background on my dad, he works for extension, specifically in forestry in South Mississippi, so he is no stranger to working with the outdoors and little critters. THANK GOD. This would have been a sink of swim moment for me if not.  Not sure which option would have happened.

 

Anyway, we’re all sitting in our freshly painted living room, just chatting, waiting for the rice to cook for our read beans and rice, and we hear a scurry from behind the TV.  If you recall, our TV for the time being is placed directly in front of the fireplace. At first I thought it was the cat.  Oh Gumbo….what are you doing back there playing with wires…

But then, I saw something…something small, and dark, and pretty uncoordinated as it bobbled on the floor around the wires.  My brain went in a million directions in that moment.  Is it a mouse?  A rat??  A giant roach??? And then I realized, it’s a BAT!  They aren’t so good at walking on the ground so it just kind of hopped around on it’s belly.  I was thinking that maybe it was hurt since it looked so uncoordinated, but then it got itself out from the wires, got some room, and ZOOM!!  That sucker took OFF!!!.   

This is pretty much what he looked like...

 

They really do like flying in circles, that’s not just for tv.  I began to scream “OH MY GOD!!!  IT’S A BAT!!!” Jude just sat there laughing hysterically with his mouth wide opened, my dad just watched, wheels turning, and the dog, our giant, stupid, hound dog/chocolate lab puppy, Louie, is barking and chasing it like a lunatic (I can’t totally blame him…it was pretty exciting, especially if your genes have bread you to be a hunter). 

This isn’t my first bat encounter.  We caught a bat at the tennis courts many years ago and actually trapped it in a tennis ball can to get a closer look (safely).  But there is just something different about the fact that this bat is in your house, occasionally dive bombing near your head.  What if it flies upstairs and we can’t find it?  What if we get rabies, or worse (maybe better…) he turns into a vampire?! What if MORE of them come out of the fireplace?? These little guys don’t really live alone…I know that much.

But honestly, in that moment I didn’t have time to think about too much of this, it was more “how do we get him OUT”.  “A TOWEL!” I shout, dad nods, yes, get a towel, or a bag, something we can grab him with.  Because we’re in an older home the rooms are pretty segmented and we still have doors between almost all the rooms.  We had the door closed in the living room leading to the stairs. Louie demonstrates below the door leading to the foyer that was closed...

 

And the door from the dining room to the back bedrooms closed, so the only rooms the bat could really fly was the living room and dining room. 

After about 4 minutes of fabulous flight and lots of screams, he was whacked down from the sky to the ground and we caught him.  Dad brought him outside and off he went.  We were all happy to see him go, I venture to say even the bat. End of excitement. I did burn the rice though.

Let's hope we don’t see him again anytime soon.  We have updated our home to-do list and will be looking up someone to come take a look at how to make sure we get rid of any other bats we may have, and how we seal them off from our house.

 

In an effort to try and be prepared for any other little vampire bat visits I came up with the idea of sealing the fireplace at the entrance with a plastic sheet and tape, JUUUUUST in case.  George said I’m paranoid, but he wasn’t there, he doesn’t understand.  Could you imagine 10 more bats coming through the fireplace in the middle of the night and waking up to that??  I’m not taking any chances. Judge away, I don’t care. He’s obviously not a believer in my idea.  These are the only pictures we had from the adventure but George’s face says it all.  

  

Honestly, I do not mind bats.  They are good to have around for the sake of keeping down on insects, and they are pretty cool to look at (outside that is).  I might even invest in a little bat house for them to live in once they are evicted from our fireplace.  I found some pretty cool ones on Etsy, and might even get handy enough to build one. Maybe a family trip to Carlsbad is in the cards, this may have been an omen. Either way, it’s a fun little adventure I’ll be keeping you guys posted on.

The Power of Paint

We started our process with updating this house pretty slow.  MUUUUUUCH slower than we initially anticipated. Although we didn’t officially own it until January 11^th, we actually moved in back in mid-December because our other house sold so quickly and the renters that were previously in this house had moved out leaving it available for us to move in early!  We moved pretty slow because for the majority of the time it was just me and George.  The move was also done during week days, not a weekend, and we both have these things called full time jobs that made it a little more difficult.  We did have help from his brother Bryan and a good friend in town, another Brian, but they did more of the heavy lifting since I’ve been told I can’t do it because I’m all pregnant, and it was mostly for just one day.  Most women would be excited by being told to sit on the couch, but I’m not really one of those women.  I probably ended up carrying more boxes than my doctor would like (I snuck them by my husband).

Anyway, we got our last box moved over the night of Dec. 19^th and then the morning of the 20^th, we headed out of town for the next two weeks for the Christmas break.  We had family coming in town (to Ocean Springs & New Orleans) on both sides from NY the first week, and San Diego the second week, so we didn’t really have an option of just skipping family time this year just because we were moving.  We don’t see those family members often enough to brush them off. We had this great plan to leave the kids with my parents on the 31^st, come back to Starkville and have a 4 day painting spree of the house.  No distractions with kids or giant puppy, or work! Unfortunately, our Christmas break was less than ideal for several reasons (maybe one day I’ll disclose fully how absolutely miserable it was), and that wasn’t able to happen.  Cue driving 5 hours back to Starkville with both children and giant puppy to a home filled with unopened boxes.  Did I mention that the cold decided to officially hit the south that week as well?  That will be a post all to itself.  Don’t you worry.  I take cold very seriously. Don’t like it, don’t like it one bit.

So instead of painting all those 4 days, we’ve had to paint mostly in the evenings and when we’ve convinced kids to go upstairs and watch Star Wars Rebels, again. Keep in mind we don't get home until after 5pm, have to help kids with homework, have to make dinner, and then just do any other random item around the house before we get into painting.  This usually doesn't start until 8pm which is not the best for lighting and taking pictures :/ sorry. I had all these great plans to take photos on my lunch break as well but this past week has been pretty dreary outside making less than ideal light inside.

My first item to tackle was all the trim in the house, and there is a TON.  It was this lovely brownish-green color.  Not horrible considering the light walls and keeping in theme with the historic home, but not our style at all.  White, baby.  You’re gonna be white, and you will be beautiful. Unfortunately, since the trim was so dark it took a solid 4 coats to get my final approval. Here is a glimpse at a before picture of what the trim looked like. Super dark...

  

It was so dark that it took 4 coats of paint to get the job done.  Here is a pic of painting the trim behind the dining buffet.  You can see the huge color difference...

And this is what just one coat looked like...

 

I will say painting that little bit of trim was the most difficult for me.  I had a huge piece of furniture I had to squeeze myself between, and when you are 5 months pregnant it's not so much fun.  This space seemed much more daunting in my eyes than it does over the computer screen. 

We opted to start first in the living room. 3 large windows, two small windows, 2 book cases, a brick fireplace, and tons of molding for baseboards, crown molding and door casings. The difference of white paint literally updated the living room by decades.  It did take FOREVER because there is so much trim, and don’t forget that brick fireplace.  That is miserable to paint incase you are wondering. Then we added in a new paint color, and BAM, look, it’s like a living room straight out of a magazine! 

   

 Ok, maybe not a magazine, more like a renovation blog that is starting off pretty ok considering our ridiculous time constraints. Either way, HUGE improvement to this space.  Even though the walls are now darker with a grey-ish brown, with the white trim everywhere it brightens the space up tremendously! We got our paint from Lowe's in their Sherwin Williams selection.  We've been happy with their color options and the sample sizes are pretty giant. 

Our multitasking is also at a new level as we were able to paint the entire living room during the College football championship game.  Even a man can multitask, look at that…so proud…

 

It’s kind of depressing that such a long task for us amounts to such a boring blog post, but such is life.  Thankfully, paint was a great way to instantly update the space for very little money, and for that I am grateful!

Next areas to paint include the rest of the trim, room by room (There. Is. So. Much.), the foyer, and then we’ll head upstairs for color explosion.  Some of the best advice we’ve received is doing the house room by room so we’re not in completely disarray all the time, so we’re doing that.  So far it’s working out well!  Now that we have the painting of the living room and dining room done we just need to fix the drafty window problem, get a rug, decorate the book cases, hang some art, hang some curtains, mount the TV (this was a fierce debate but the only option for this small room, and that buffet will be leaving the space completely), and add some personality.  Overall, very proud that we were able to transform these two spaces.  Again, we still have a lot to do to make these rooms "complete", but it's amazing the power of paint! 

     

Before & After- Living room

   

Before & After- Dining room

House Tour

Now that we have the house, how about we do a quick (that’s a lie, this is not quick) walk through of our space to give you guys a good idea of what we’re working with.  The good, the bad, and the whaaaat?! There’s plenty of all to feast your eyes on. Keep in mind these photos were taken before a single box was moved in, so it's much more chaotic now! 

When you walk in the front door you are greeted by a very small, closed in foyer.  This house was actually originally build as a duplex (upstairs and downstairs) so this foyer could be used by both tenants and there is a door to enter the bottom half of the house on the right, and a large wide staircase that leads upstairs to the left.  Let’s start downstairs. 

   

Opening the door, you walk into a good sized living room.  Nothing to write home about as far as size, but the natural light and architecture put it as one of my absolute favorite spaces in the house.  It’s at the very front of the house so the huge windows on the front porch pour in tons of light.  There are also two good sized windows flanking the brick fireplace.  And that fireplace is pretty great.  Lets not forget the built-ins around it.  Nothing too snazzy, but it gives the space a great look and it’s easy to see the huge potential of the space. Keep in mind we have additional living space which makes this size doable. Oh yeah, and every room has these floors, pretty stoked.

  

The living room connects directly to the dining room.  This room is much smaller than we would like, but we have plans to making it much more livable, and honestly how often do we really need a ton of seats?  Maybe a few times a year, tops?  Just like the living room, there is serious potential elsewhere for seating during holidays so I'm not worried. We’ve got vision people, don’t worry.Those big great windows will actually turn into french doors in the next couple months.  

      

Off the dining room is the most lovely (sarcasm….) room in the house.  The kitchen.  So, I’m not sure what to say about this room.  I mean, other than it’s horrible.  However, it IS horribly BRIGHT! One entire wall is windows so that is a plus, we just need to gut the entire thing, oh yeah, and knock down some walls (that might enclose a staircase, and the 2 year old HVAC…), and build completely new (you’ll learn how difficult this task is in a later post, but for now, just use your imagination).  This room is going to be, by far, the most expensive and biggest project of the home.  But isn’t that the case with any kitchen in any house?  We do a huge amount of cooking so our kitchen is very important to us and we’ve had this reno in mind from the moment we saw the house, so no worries (at least not yet). This space will be absolutely unrecognizable when we're done.  And don't worry, we're hiring someone, noooot doing this one ourselves!!  We’ve got a plan. 

 

So, back out into the dining room, and through this door that brings you to a little bitty hallway (would we call it that?) that has three doors leading to the guest bedroom, bathroom, and master.  You can't see it in the picture but there is a lovely little telephone table on the right, and the super convenient air intake at our feet.  Careful with the stilettos ladies.  Lets do guest bedroom  on the left first…

 

So big and airy!  Four big bright windows!  Beautiful hardwood floors, this room is going to be great, but don’t forget we have to get room for our new kitchen from somewhere…

 

Next we’ll explore the main downstairs bath.  Thankfully the previous owners redid the flooring and installed tile all around (which is very nice), but we see a new vanity in the making.  Oh yeah, and there is a kinda scary window in the shower that is slowly rotting away with every shower taken, so we’ll be tending to that shortly as well. 

 

Now, here comes the moment you’ve all been waiting for, the MASTER BEDROOM! Oh….not what you were hoping for?  A little small?  A little gloomy and dark? Yeah, so what.  All I do in my master bedroom in sleep, I mean, we do some other stuff too, but this is a family blog, nothing inappropriate here.  I do have three kids, that had to happen somehow you know!  Ok, back to the bedroom.  Thankfully, right off the bedroom is another little room.  

 

When the house was advertised as 5 bedrooms, this was actually the room they were referring to, so honestly the house is 4 bedrooms, with a sitting room off of one of them. This sitting room was actually an addition put on the house…and it’s a little wonky.  There is an obvious slope in the middle of the floor and the temperature of this room is about 20 degrees cooler than the center of the house in the winter.  I try to stay out of this room as I prefer to stay warm and feel like I'm actually inside in the winter.. 

 

Included in this addition is also the third bathroom of this house.  A little sad looking, not gonna lie, but I see some serious potential.  There is a shower behind the door you can't see in this picture as well. We can work with this. Now lets travel back to the foyer and head up those stairs.

 

I. LOVE. THESE. STAIRS. No really, I do.  The natural wood is awesome.  It’s super wide so furniture was a breeze to move up.  It has a huge window that allows a ton of light in the stairwell as well.  Also quite lovely is that in front of that window hangs a cool little pendant light  with an Edison bulb that you can see from outside the house.  It’s adorable. It’s the little things. 

 

At the top of the stairs is a door that opens to the second floor….

 

Dejavu anyone?  Oh yeah, remember when I said earlier this was built as a duplex?  That means the footprint of downstairs and upstairs is exactly the same.  So we’ll speed through this part pretty quick. 

Same great fireplace in living room (This is the new kids living room).

 

Same cute little dining room (this will serve as homework room, art room, music room). 

 

There is a bit of a change in the kitchen, as this room isn’t the kitchen, it’s actually the laundry room!  Though this room seemed small for a kitchen, it’s pretty awesome for a laundry room.  I see tons of potential in this room as well.  

Oh yeah, and you want to see the scariest part of the house…it lives behind that white door in the laundry room…Ever wonder what was living downstairs between the kitchen and guest room?  It was this…

 

The scariest, darkest, most dangerous little staircase you will ever feast your eyes on.  I mean, come on, this is what horror movies were made of.  Can you imagine the lights going off in the house and having to crawl down those steps to flip them back on? HA!  That's what my husband is for, I would die. Oh yeah, and if you aren’t sufficiently creeped out yet, just look up.  

 

Yeah, that’s the attic entrance.  If satan had a doorway to hell in a stairwell, I’m pretty sure it would look like this.  This picture was actually taken with a flash so I've never seen this entrance look so bright.  In real life, pitch black... It’s actually quite amusing to me as I show friends one by one and see the looks on their faces. "See the scary staircase?" (frightened faces) "now look, UP!" (faces of sheer horror). Again, it's the little things.

Ok, close that door, pretend it doesn't exist. Back to bright and happy rooms. 

Next is the boy’s room.  Though we have the ability to give them their own rooms, we’re not that nice of parents.  This room is a great size and they’ll be sharing it. The whole upstairs is basically white, which is a great starting point, but we’ll be infusing a good bit of color up here because really, it is totally for the kids.  That doesn’t mean we’re letting them make all the decisions (remember, we’re not that nice), but we will let them in on the design process.  Ex: Of these three colors, which do you prefer.  Thankfully they are still small enough that I can convince them to pick what I want.  It’s working so far. 

 

Same little bathroom as below, that needs another new vanity and top. 

 

The back bedroom is the twin to the master downstairs but doesn’t have the addition on the back.  This room will eventually be for our 3^rd little bundle of joy.  Until then, it will serve as our makeshift guest bedroom until we get our lives in order. 

Whew!  So that didn't take a long time at all, right?? We have so many big plans for our new home and can't wait to have you guys follow us on this mission.  I hope this little tour gave you a good run down of what we have to work with and you can see the potential like we did!  

In the beginning...

Hey Guys!  And welcome to the first post of our home blog Tudor Revived.  I’m not normally the person to start up a blog, but I’ve had SO many requests from people that want to follow us on our journey of renovating our beautiful 90 year old home that a blog seemed like a no brainer.  If you asked me 6 months ago if I’d be in this spot I would have LAUGHED at you.  Really.  6 months ago I was happy inside of our 4 bedroom updated home with a huge beautiful backyard, perfect for our two little boys, grumpy cat, giant dog (and baby on the way).  We had all the space we needed, loved our neighbors, and honestly, were content.  But sometimes, content just doesn’t cut it.

We’re that family when we get bored we load the kids up in the car and go on drives around town to look at neighborhoods we admire and dream of one day living in, but no neighborhood stood out to us more than the historic district in downtown Starkville.  Is it the most beautiful neighborhood? Not completely.  Is it the safest neighborhood? Actually, it totally is but you might not assume that… Are some of the homes old as dirt and beg for someone to buy them up and make them beautiful like they once were?? Yep, they sure do.  Lets not forget that downtown is in the middle of huge changes itself.  Renovations of homes, businesses, and entirely new and exciting other opportunities are popping up all around, and that’s something I’d love to be close to.  Unfortunately, homes rarely come available in these areas, and if they do, they are way over our budget, or they’re snatched up too quickly for us to even take a look. Honestly, very few are actually listed with an agent, they usually sell through word of mouth in the neighborhood. 

However, one day while driving down a particularly picturesque street downtown I noticed a home for sale (through an agent?!) and it didn’t look too snazzy, but did look like it had plenty of space.  I looked it up, and IT WAS IN MY BUDGET! Whoa!  Called agent, so excited, I want to look!  Darn…already under contract, big shocker.  So then I thought, well, since most of these homes are word of mouth, I might as well let people know that I’m interested.  Again, not because I’m in a hurry, but who knows when my ideal fixer upper will come available?  It could be 5 days or 5 years, but it was worth letting some people know, right?  So let them know I did.  I reached out to several friends that lived in the area and told them if they heard of anything to please keep me in the loop.  So of course, 5 days later I received the same email forwarded from 3 friends with exactly the info I was looking for.  The description read:

“The house was designed by H.W. Stevens and built in 1929, in the Tudor Revival style. It is a 5 bedroom/3 bath (3/2 downstairs, 2/1 upstairs) house with approximately 2417 square feet. We have the original plans for the house.

The second story has a great deal of additional living/public space and a large laundry/utility room. Two bathrooms have been refinished and the floors are hardwood throughout.”

And lets not forget the picture that followed: 

Needless to say, this email was a shocker.  What?!?!  OMG…look at that brick (swoon)…Hardwood floors throughout?! Loads of additional living space?! 5 bedrooms and 3 baths?!?!?! IN MY BUDGET?!?! Surely this was a hoax and too good to be true.    

Later that same day the hubs and I drove by the house and we remembered it for sure.  “Oh yeah!  There used to be that creepy house next door to this one with coffins in it, remember that??” (I’m not making that up, it really did have coffins). Next to this house sat two vacant lots where two older homes were torn down (there are plans there, no need to worry).  Behind the house is the school district bus barn and mechanic shop, and just a house away are the city railroad tracks, but luckily I doubt our little town will every see a train on those tracks since they shut down several years ago (I’m pulling for a rails to trails personally).  We had several groups of friends live in this house over the years and knew it had been a rental since I was in undergrad.  We were convinced the inside would be ripped to shreds and not worth our time, but hey, why not look.  We went in with very low expectations in the home and honestly thought we would write it off the moment we stepped in the front door.  Low and behold, we loved it…

It had all the beautiful features I drool over like the original hardwood floors, and built ins, the glass knobs, the fireplaces.  Granted, it needed some TLC, but honestly that's what I was looking for!  I'm crazy, I know.  The family living in it was very clean and had it decorated nicely which made it much more appealing as well.  And that upstairs…wow.  The entire upstairs would be kid haven.  I can send my children upstairs to play with nerf guns or light sabers or legos, or sit on their bean bags and watch WALL-E AGAIN.  It was perfect.  There was a bit of an issue downstairs, but we’ll get to that later. It was just more inspiration for my ever expanding pinterest board.  We both left in shock because we thought we would hate it, and all the sudden here we were, hugely considering it, and ultimately, (surprise) we now own it.  It’s official, signed the papers and all. We’ve got LOTS of plans….so get ready!!