
It may have taken ten years but the room I designed to be an office is finally my office and this room, the room that was always meant to be a guest bedroom, is finally my guest bedroom. For those who have been following along you know this all started back when I was trying to make a guest bedroom out of the other, much smaller, far less private, room on my main floor. I can be totally dense sometimes but I finally got there in the end! I am so excited with how this room turned out and to show you my finished office soon too! Read the rest of the post »

The last post I wrote about my kitchen was back in 2024 when I was doing my “ten years then and now” blog posts but besides that I haven’t given you guys an update on my kitchen since 2019! So, my little kitchen might be in need of a makeover and I do have some new things here to share with you guys. I’ve always found that I like cooking in galley kitchens more than any other design so I was happy that this home was ideal for that as I love to cook. Read the rest of the post »

This whole reclaiming my house thing has been pretty cool but this worked out better than I could have hoped for. This room was a back hall with an outside door and big closet when Lodi moved in. He needed a gun room to lock because of his arsenal he wanted to start purchasing. With his arrest he is finally gone for good which has left me with this quite unnecessary “room” totally empty. He talked me into swapping the outside door here with the window in the guest bedroom and adding a wall and door to create this space. I really wish I hadn’t done any of that… but it turns out I might be able to get some use of it! Read the rest of the post »

So last month I shared a lengthy blog post with you guys about making the room that shares the big stained glass window with my living room into my guest bedroom again. Lodi had emptied the room in anticipation of making it into his studio /den. So the room was empty and I still needed a guest bedroom. We’re going to rewind now all the way back to 2015 when I renovated this home and created that room by enclosing the last of the screened in porch. At the time I designed it specifically to be an office. Read the rest of the post »

I forget that this room was a porch once! Writing these once a month throwback posts, my ten year update posts as well as our current blog posts all at the same time has been really cool for me. We’re currently in the middle of working on this little room yet again. This is where it began and from there its transformed a number of times over the years. I think the current transformation in this room becoming Lodi’s den is the one that’s going to stick though I was so proud of this reveal post. I loved how my office turned out all those years ago! Read the rest of the post »

Checks notes: Ok… at this point the snowball effect going on around here has pretty much impacted the whole house lol so I thought I should do a house update with photos and a bit of a recap. It all started with my deciding our television just had to move to a different wall in our living room. (I made the mistake of proclaiming that it just could not go anywhere else in that space and my silly brain took that as a challenge…) I can’t blame it all on that though as I’d been silently just DYING to ditch our guest bedroom and give Lodi a den instead. Read the rest of the post »

This is feeling a little bitter sweet for me as this was the last completely unfinished space since I started on this journey with my home 11 years ago. (I started the renovation in the spring of 2014 and moved in the summer of 2015.) This stairwell needed to be drywalled, taped and mudded, painted and trimmed out. I finished it over the months after one of my nephews came over to help me hang the sheet rock. It was a slog, but, eventually, I got through it. Read the rest of the post »

I lived with our garage with no insulation and no electricity for four years until I managed to save up enough money and motivation to tackle it alone in 2019. It started with moving the electric out from the barn to the side of the building. (I hired that out.) Than I ran the electrical throughout the garage before moving on to insulation. The electrical was no big deal, this was literally a stick building so that was a breeze. The fiberglass insulation though (combined with a 90 degree day) left me on FIRE. I can look back and laugh about it now, the blog post I wrote about it was pretty hilarious, but my gosh what I did to myself that day was just horrible. It actually made me sick! Read the rest of the post »

I’ve talked a lot about our main floor bathroom and the very hard decision I made to take space from the living room to move it to a new location. As with all full gut renovations the foot print of the home doesn’t need to remain in any way. And the old location of the bathroom was pretty much impossible. Its previous access was through the living room, around the incredibly dangerous and steep staircase to the second floor and behind the kitchen. The stairs had to be entirely rebuilt and nearly doubled in length, so that killed any access to the original bathroom UNLESS I wanted the bathroom door in the kitchen… Read the rest of the post »

As usual with these throwback posts I’m just so glad that I’ve had this blog over the last ten years. Its really been an amazing diary for me. So much of all of this I would have just forgot. I had completely forgotten about those fun canvas art pieces I made one night with my best friend. I had those for years before moving on to something different in this space. I had also forgotten about the pipe I used for the shelf of here before replacing it was something a little “fancier” for the space. The galvanized pipe hardware got another home in basement! Here’s what the bathroom looks like now. Read the rest of the post »

Now that I have the TV relocated and all of the patching and touching up done I can finally move on to redecorating our living room. I didn’t mention them in my last post (because it was already too long…) but I have a rocking chair issue. Currently I have three of them that are suddenly in the way. Of course I love all of them… However, one thing is for certain, our living room cannot house one of them anymore and our guest bedroom, as soon as it transforms fully into Lodi’s den, won’t have the space either. Read the rest of the post »

Of all the “rooms” in this house my office has definitely done the most traveling. Or, I should just say, my computer has landed just about everywhere on the main floor and I’ve managed to make it work over the years. When I first renovated this house I pegged the “new” room I made by enclosing the screened in porch as my future office. Guess what? That’s not my office and will probably never be my office lol. However, the extra (counter top height) outlets I put in the closet have worked out awesome for what is now actually Lodi’s gaming setup complete with a PS4 and TV. Read the rest of the post »

A throwback post the first reveal of our master closet from March 2016! Over the years one thing has remained for certain for me, I love I have so much hanging space for my clothes! It definitely makes me feels spoiled lol. I saw a little trick online for using a belt hanger for hanging jeans and my gosh I don’t know how I ever lived without being able to hang my jeans before. I just hang them by a belt loop and all of my jeans are right at hand and take up almost no space at all in my closet. (This is the hanger if you want to check it out.) I also use the same hanger for all of my tank tops, camis etc too.
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Its really funny to me how things snowball around here. It all started with the post I wrote about how our living room is our most difficult to arrange room and how it has evolved over the last ten years. It included my proclamation that there was only ONE wall where the television could ever go… Well, not two days later, I was standing in the living room with a tape measure and Lodi looking at me with an: OH NO expression. Read the rest of the post »

Our second floor master suite. One of the first certainties before I started the renovation was that the second story of this home was going to be my master suite. Its only a half story, meaning its a glorified attic space. At 500 square feet (minus the stairwell) its not a big space. But having a real “master suite” that’s on its own private floor makes me feel all kinds of spoiled. I chose my favorite room in the entire house for the bedroom. But, in hindsight and weirdly enough, I really wish I hadn’t done that now. Or, at least, I wish I had at least THOUGHT about it during the renovation. Read the rest of the post »

Our basement has certainly come a long way from the stone walled storage area it was when I first moved in. We really lucked out as its almost unheard of that a 1915 farmhouse would have a basement under it with nearly ten foot ceilings. Back in that day basements were mostly just little cellars and most of them you couldn’t even access from the inside of the home. (My grandparents’ put in the interior stairwell in the ’50s.) I would love to go back and find out why the original builders dug it so deep and to also thank them! Read the rest of the post »

WOW my first ever master bedroom reveal from back in early 2016. Eight years ago this room definitely looked very different than it does now lol. I’ve had several of these come out over the years and I can honestly say the bedroom as it is now is definitely my favorite. About the only thing I’ve considered going back to over the years is maybe moving the bed back to under the windows. But with the attic wall situation up here there really aren’t a whole lot of options. Read the rest of the post »

Our extra room. We’re getting to the point now where calling this our guest bedroom isn’t exactly accurate anymore and will be entirely inaccurate once we move forward with our future plans. This room didn’t exist when I started the renovation ten years ago. It was the last portion left of the screened in porch that was wrapped around two sides of this home in 1925. Over the years my grandparents enclosed one portion after another. They created an entryway, an interior stairwell and then a main floor bedroom for them as everybody got older. It killed me to lose the screened in porch. Everything about it was ideal. It was South facing and wonderfully big… Except that it was only twenty feet from a stupidly busy dirt road. Read the rest of the post »

Our living room is the intersection of our home. If you want to go upstairs, you have to go through the living room. If you want to go out to Lodi’s room, my game room, the main floor bathroom or our guest bedroom, you have to go through the living room. And you enter the room from a whole other entrance entirely. Not to mention the six foot glass doors that take up one wall that go out to our deck and the massive stained glass window on yet another wall. This all adds up to what is absolutely the most challenging room of the house when it comes to furniture placement. Read the rest of the post »

Our kitchen. When I tackled this place ten years ago it was really a deep breath and I just jumped in. There was no other way to do it lol It was all or nothing and this is what I wanted more than anything. Though I was quite terrified! Of all the projects and rooms of this house I definitely tackled this kitchen with the same attitude. I’d certainly never built a kitchen before! But with all of the new walls and builds in this home behind me I had all the tools and, at least, some experience then to back me up. Read the rest of the post »

With my ten year anniversary of starting work on this place I thought it would be cool to do a look back through the years. Some of these rooms have changed A LOT over the last decade and some of them weren’t even real rooms when I started! Our entry was only half this size when I first purchased this place. The other half of it had been my grandparents’ wood shed for as long as I can remember. The door to get to it was outside right beside our front door. It was my mom’s brilliant idea to incorporate it into the house and my gosh of all the changes I made to the house that may have been the best decision of all of them. Read the rest of the post »

I don’t think I could ever have enough flowers blooming in my yard all summer long. Most of the perennials were here when I purchased the house though everything needed lots of love and time. I saved every perennial I could find – no doubt most of them were planted by my Grandma over her over fifty years here. My aunt, mom and I have walked the yard many times for them to point out where my Grandma’s flower beds used to be all over the farm. Read the rest of the post »

So, after lots of work and more money than I wanted to spend (because I never like spending money) I have officially turned our workshop into JUST my office! Well, I call it my office anyway, but Lodi started calling it the game room and that’s definitely going to stick though it is my office 100%. This really does feel like a den for chillaxing, reading, playing etc. I do quite a bit of work here but even I have to admit that I still probably use my desktop more for gaming than anything else. There’s even enough floor space to set up a card table. Read the rest of the post »

The final reveal of our office workshop! I’m sure its old news at this point but I’m just so happy with my new office here. How long has it been since I moved it from the entryway? Over 6 months for sure! But every time I come in here I am still just smitten and so glad to have it. Finally some space to work and play. I think just about everyone can identify trying to work from home without actually having a real office. Whether we’re trying to work on the couch with a laptop or at the dining room table… We can make it work but frankly there is nothing like having a REAL desk… not to mention an actual dedicated office space. Read the rest of the post »

A new design for our entryway. So I did a rug count in the house a while back and ended up feeling quite annoyed with myself actually. How many rugs does a 1,500 square foot main floor actually need? Apparently it was 19?! Now that was just seem borderline silly lol. To be fair most of them were the rag rugs that I love and a few came from my Grandma so I loved those even more. However, the majority of them had also seen better days. I started removing rugs or replacing them with more toned down and better alternatives. The entryway redesign here was my first opportunity to do just that! Read the rest of the post »

So, it is interesting that we love this new redesign so much because it is LITERALLY my old layout plan for the living room that we tried and hated a few years back. There’s only one difference and I refuse to believe it’s actually why we hated this before. When we tried it back then the sofa encroached into the “hallway” by several more inches, making walking behind it feel kind of tight… Could that be it? A few inches on that side of the room? I talked about why we hated it before and it was because the room felt closed off… but somehow now, it feels bright, intimate and open all at the same time. Read the rest of the post »

Master Bathroom and Master Closet Tour it dawned on me this is the first time I’ve done a full reveal of these two rooms together. WAY back in 2015 was the last time you guys saw the closet and, even then, it wasn’t much of a reveal. You know I’ve been working on our master suite second floor for nearly a year now. I refused to stop until every. last. thing. I could think of was completed and / or fixed. I’m very happy with how it all turned out! Read the rest of the post »

I admit in the past I haven’t done much decorating for the holiday around here. There was just always this little thing about budget lol. Not to mention generally far more important projects that I needed to put my dollars and time into. Things are changing around here though. We’ve managed to take several big projects off our plates so I realized we could afford to do a little holiday decorating. Read the rest of the post »

Garden tour, a little walk about in early July! I won’t say things got “away” from me here on the blog due to the wedding but I definitely feel like I’m playing catch up on so many things I want to share with you guys! June (the month of our wedding) definitely went by in a blur for us. What also went against us was the fact that we had such a horrible, cold, miserable, very late, rainy, freezing, absolute nightmare, spring! I planted our vegetable garden three weeks later than last year and was concerned it was still too early. Because of this, when it did suddenly warm up, our farm just kind of exploded in just a few days. Read the rest of the post »

Master bedroom tour, the final completion of the entire redesign of our second floor bedroom. Woah guys how many months has it been? I started on our second floor last winter and am so so thrilled to show you guys the final completion of the bedroom portion. (I’m just finishing up the closet and bathroom too.) There was nothing wrong with our old master bedroom it really just wasn’t US and we were both ready for a change. Read the rest of the post »

Basement Bathroom Reveal, adding a touch of girl to this little space because it was starting to feel like a man cave and not in a good way… I am not a girly girl by any means (as I’m sure you’re all aware at this point…) but even I can attest a balance between masculine and feminine in a space is a real must. Outside of this bathroom our living room feels like just the coolest underground speak easy and I totally love it. But with Lodi’s wood furniture and black leather couches no matter what I do it will always feel at least a little like a bachelor pad. Read the rest of the post »

Basement living room reveal. So it all started back in 2014 when I purchased and began the renovation of my Grandparents’ 100 year old farmhouse. I was single and the basement had a separate entrance so I immediately tackled it with the intention of putting in a rental suite. It was a ton of money and work that all went for nothing a couple of years later when my husband (now ex) decided that renters were a NO. I used this unfinished space (what a total waste) as my workshop for awhile until I threw him out in 2017. So, I emptied the space to, once again, try to move forward with the rental idea. A lot of life happened in the years since but, finally, all of my time and money down here is no longer for nothing! Read the rest of the post »

Lodi’s Room Reveal complete with New Light Fixtures! Starting at the beginning… When I renovated this home back in 2014-2015 I designed this as a wide hallway which included a huge closet made specifically to house a 6 foot chest freezer. At the end of the hall I put our “back door” which included a doggie door in it – which was a great straight shot out of the house for my big dog at the time. In 2018 I got rid of the chest freezer and I was playing around with making this wasted area into a reading nook / day bed / dog bed area and putting up some kind of gate so I could lock dogs back here whenever I needed to… Read the rest of the post »

Besides a random peak here and there from reveals and projects of other parts of the house this is the very first time I’ve ever posted about our back hall! This hall, Lodi’s room, our Guest Bedroom, and even a bit of the workshop, used to be a wide open screened in porch. (Sorry for the before pics but they’re the best I have. Hopefully the before and after floor plan as well as the renovation pics help somewhat.) I designed this back hall during the renovation to be a “T” each wing going to a bedroom and, before we made Lodi’s room, to a hall and big closet and back door which was just wasted space until we started work on all of it. Read the rest of the post »

To get the garage to its current state feels like a huge accomplishment for me! To recap I started in the early spring of 2019. First I had to clean the whole place out, get everything off the walls and then haul yet another pile of crap to the dump. Then I ran power, insulated, covered the walls, installed the doors, put EVERYTHING back where it belongs, made a path and enclosed my stock tank complete with a barn door on top of it! Read the rest of the post »

Autumn Deck Reveal with updates and lots of new seating and additions! OMG Where on earth did this summer go!? I can’t believe its so far into November already and I still have so many fun things Lodi and I finished this summer and fall to share with you guys. I decided after so many changes to the deck (Check out the old reveal here) that I definitely needed to share a new deck reveal with you before 2020 was over and I missed the lovely fall colors! The biggest changes are all the seating we removed and replaced with new! Read the rest of the post »

Main floor tiny bathroom reveal! This bathroom was the most difficult and annoying of the planning issues I had here during the renovation. (To get the whole scoop check out my post all about it here.) I think I made the practical choice on where I ended up putting the bathroom but, really, there were few options and I didn’t like any of them. But now that its fixed and finished I kind of love our tiny bathroom now! First though let’s take a trip back to what this little space looked like before. Read the rest of the post »

I’m so excited to finish the new guest bedroom reveal! My old country girl design and library just wasn’t right anymore and this room needed attention badly. It needed to grow up,l become more unisex and also become a lot more comfortable for any guests or friends that might stay. It all started with a new far more grown up paint color called Flannel Gray by Valspar. From there I tackled the challenging furniture layout and now moved on to the final touches, design and completion. Read the rest of the post »

Farmhouse living room reveal! OMG you guys this room took me over 5 months to finish – UGH Finally though, we have arrived at the new living room. It probably seems strange and even silly but buying a new sofa meant something to me. Throughout the entire home almost every single piece of furniture here I’ve either inherited or I built. The few other pieces besides I picked up at either thrift stores or garage sales. I literally only have one “new” thing and its my dining room chairs which my mom bought for me as a gift MANY years ago! Read the rest of the post »

DIY Farmhouse Kitchen Reveal, somehow I took space AWAY from my kitchen and yet I ended up with MORE storage and a bigger feeling space! In this kitchen I will always think of my amazing Grandma Charlotte who lived in this home for over fifty years before me. I was thrilled that this old farmhouse could become mine and ecstatic at the notion of creating my very own farmhouse kitchen. This space was a VERY long time coming for me. I had no idea it would take me from early spring of 2014 until right now, to finally create and finish the kitchen of my dreams. But, ya know what? It was worth it! Read the rest of the post »

I should have posted a reveal of my entry way back when I first “completed” it in 2016. But, honestly, it never felt truly “done” until now. The wood stove happened and the entire room needed to be repainted because of smoke damage and then, because I had it cleared out I went ahead and gave my floors some TLC too. Finally though I was able to take my time and put it all back together again! Read the rest of the post »

Finally we have come to the reveal of my new laundry room! Yep, I am no longer calling it a closet – I believe this space deserves to be labeled a real room now. First I tackled the heavy lifting, recycling my old kitchen pantry here in several places, building custom shelves, trimming it all out and painting the whole room. From there I added some color and then, finally, I was able to put it all together with some serious organization. Read the rest of the post »

Well I finally made it – here is my finished brand new workshop reveal! This was a LONG time coming: My first post about moving my workshop out of my basement came out in MAY OF LAST YEAR. I lived in a constant state of digging through boxes, looking for one tool or another, and going absolutely bat shit crazy lol. Read the rest of the post »

My outhouse reveal! After building my outhouse I couldn’t wait to dress it up! To be quite frank the last thing I wanted this little outhouse to feel like was an actual outhouse. (I have nightmares of the creepy, spider-filled, half-rotted places I remember using when I was a kid. To be fair it was better than having to go in the woods – but still.) I was on a mission to make it as comfortable as any of the bathrooms in my home. Read the rest of the post »

Making a new office, creating spaces in an open plan. With my becoming a single gal I went back to my old plan of putting a rental suite in my basement. But then I needed to figure out where my workshop was going to go! So I moved it to my biggest bedroom on my main floor but then I needed a guest bedroom so I lost my office lol. Read the rest of the post »

Master bathroom refresh for a newly single gal, how I’m making myself my own luxury retreat on the second floor of my home. If you’ve ever checked out any of my Inspiration Boards then you know I am in love with the natural look and textures of bohemian interior design. With both my master bedroom, and now my bathroom, my challenge was: how could I give myself the bohemian look while still staying true to my 100 year old farmhouse? Read the rest of the post »

Master bedroom reveal, bohemium meets farmhouse! I drooled over this rug for MONTHS before I finally decided to spoil myself by buying it! I lived with it without a rug pad for several weeks, putting off the purchase. But then Rug Pad USA contacted me and asked if I would like to do a review of one of their rug padding and it was perfect timing! With a new rug, two “new” lamps and a new comforter it was WAY beyond time to share with you my newest refresh of my master bedroom! Read the rest of the post »

My new guest bedroom and library! A lot has been going on around here at Grandma’s house. Lots of changes. With the divorce final and so many hard days behind me, my cousin said, “I know you’ll be fine because you’re Stubborn and Busy.” We’ve decided that that’s going to be on my tombstone, “Here lies Tarah who was stubborn and busy.” And we have all agreed that my two grandmas would be very proud as they too, were VERY stubborn and busy women. So, on to the first of the big changes that I’ve been working on: here is my BRAND NEW guest bedroom and library! Read the rest of the post »

A post all about one of my favorite “rooms” of my house: the outside deck and my dance floor! When my grandparents’ lived here this was their least utilized outside of the home – the only way to reach it was to walk all the way around the house! My plan to add this deck came naturally and was one of the first things I was certain I wanted to add. With the depth of the deck 11 feet all the way around I chose to use 12 foot green treated deck boards that I put in as tight as I could together and then cut off along the edge with a skill saw. Read the rest of the post »

A post all about my farm house living room! Beneath that old blue carpet were several layers of linoleum that wonderfully protected the hardwood for many many decades. This is not a big room nor was it an easy room to plan. First the staircase had to double in length (because the old one was so steep it was like climbing a mountain!) and, because of the staircase covering up its entryway, then the bathroom had to move and the living room absorbed that problem too by giving up even more space. Read the rest of the post »

I am so excited to finally show you guys the before and after of the entire little house remodel! It took me about fifteen days in total to get this place up to snuff and around $3,000 to complete it. I had a serious plan and took a few hits when that plan collided with reality – I also tried a new product (styrofoam ceiling tiles!) for the ceiling in the main room and in the bathroom. I also purchased the most expensive plywood I have ever purchased (nearly $100 for a sheet!) that my husband helped me cut and get into place in the kitchen for the counter tops. Read the rest of the post »

Several times in the past couple of months I’ve hinted at showing you guys my master bedroom refresh! It all started when I decided to move the head of my bed from under the south facing windows to the east wall. It opened up the room so much – I can dance up here now! But it left me with a couple of issues, the first big one was that I could no longer use my washstand as my bedside table (not enough room any more) and neither could I use the dresser for the other side. So, on I went thrifting on the search for bedside tables, their makeover was a fun and easy one, check it out here. Read the rest of the post »

Oh I am so excited to finally show you my kitchen reveal! You guys have heard me talk many times about how it took me fifteen months to renovate my grandparents’ 100 year old farm house. It was a tremendous amount of work but I did get the majority of it done and now I’ve been living here for a year in August! I know, I know, you can throw tomatoes at me, I have not yet given you guys the complete home tour. Read the rest of the post »

Before we can truly start in on my office reveal we have to start by going way way back to literally the day I started remodeling the house. This room used to be what was left of this old house’s screened in porch. Back in the ’50s the other part of the screened in porch had been enclosed to create an entryway and my grandparents’ bedroom (so they could sleep on the first floor and their two girls could get the two bedrooms upstairs that is now my master suite). This part though remained a screened in porch and one of my very favorite places in my child hood. Read the rest of the post »

A Master Bathroom Retreat, my gift to myself! The total amount of months it took me to complete my renovation was fifteen. I spent almost every day after work at the house, almost every weekend and it just about killed me. Going into the renovation I knew it would be one of the hardest things I had ever done but also, what I wanted to do more then anything I had ever wanted to achieve in my entire life. This master bathroom was my treat to myself. The double slipper tub (*swoon*) was the one splurge I gave myself for all of my work and I have never regretted it! Read the rest of the post »

A throwback post from March 2016! Over the years one thing has remained for certain for me, I love I have so much hanging space for my clothes! It definitely makes me feels spoiled lol. I saw a little trick online for using a belt hanger for hanging jeans and my gosh I don’t know how I ever lived without being able to hang my jeans before. I just hang them by a belt loop and all of my jeans are right at hand and take up almost no space at all in my closet. (This is the hanger if you want to check it out.) I also use the same hanger for all of my tank tops, camis and bras too.
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My master bedroom reveal! I know I know I know, we’ve been living in the house 6 months and I still have not posted anything resembling a reveal of the rooms besides when it was empty and we first moved in! I’m sorry guys, you are allowed to throw tomatoes at me. The truth is I’m just not an interior designer so making the rooms pretty for pictures really stresses me out. I don’t feel like I am any good at dressing rooms up at all but I guess this is how I learn! Read the rest of the post »

May 5th, 2020. Since this post first came out all the way back in August 2015 my Grandma’s House has changed considerably. She and I have both been through a lot of times (both good and bad) to see the light finally now. Since August 2015 I got married, lost my doggo best friend, threw my ex husband out for good, tackled my entire home in every way and, after two years as a single gal, was joined here by Lodi, the love of my life and his two sweet doggos, Annie and Link. Read the rest of the post »