The attic space has so much potential! It's around 700 - 900 square feet depending on how you include the dormers. It is already equipped with heating, cooling and a bathroom. Right now it's my 17 year old girl's dream come true...a gigantic room of her own with a bathroom!

It order for this to be a 17 year old girls room instead of a 7 year old girls room, I had to cover the lavender walls and dark purple accents. I painted everything but the bathroom Sherwin Williams Pure White. (It truly needs a second coat of paint but since so much future demolition is going to take place in this space, I decided to hold off.) I also added these lovely white cafe curtains on all four of the dormer windows.  As you can see these windows are just the right height for our little  Maggie dog!

My daughter Carolyn has her full size boho decorated bedroom in one of the dormers, a desk area in another, a living room/reading area and a sleepover area with two twin mattresses. It's really a space made for a teenage girl!

​Attic space in older homes is often surprisingly large and often converted into living space along the way. Once upon a time, the original owners stored things up here. I imagine some old trunks, suitcases and odds and ends. The storage would have been limited to what would fit up the staircase and through a 27 inch wide doorway. This limit is still imposed today. Thus, the beginning of the current drywall job problem. So many small odd pieces of drywall were tacked up with visible seams joined together by the wrong kind of drywall tape. The carpet is worn and I can feel several holes in the floor boards underneath the carpet. 

Our current plan (after our daughter leaves for college) is to:
1. Remove the worn carpet and assess the 100 year old floor boards underneath. (My guess is they are not in great shape to provide the subfloor support needed.)
2. Salvage what 100 plus year old floor wood we can to repurpose in this space or elsewhere.
3. Improve electrical wiring while everything is open and exposed from the top down.
4. Reinforce and/or add support to attic floor.
5. Floor the main room of the attic with new subfloor.
6. Frame this large space to create an open area with a dormer at the top of the stairs and two small bedrooms with dormers in each. 
7. Electric, lighting, drywall and flooring in new rooms. 
8. Update the attic bathroom.  (The sink needs to be moved and a stand up shower needs to be added to make this bath more functional. I would love to replace the huge garden tub with a small soaker tub.)

I know this sounds like a big job and at times I'm overwhelmed by it. However, this will make a wonderful space for our kids when they are home from college or come to visit. It will be a more functional use of space for the future!

This is going to be a big project to tackle Fall 2020. Wish us all the best!!!

​What do you do when your high school senior, football playing, weightlifting son gets the aqua room in your new home...you paint it NAVY BLUE! And since he is now off to college and this bedroom is your husband's future study, you get to take your time with the details and styling it. 

When we moved in this needed immediate attention because, well, I just couldn't make my son live with it like this too long!

Downside: Aqua walls with dark purple accents complete with child's cute hand prints on the back of the doors.
Upside: Tall ceiling, large windows, original hardwood floors, doors, fireplace (inoperable) with mantle.

I set to work covering the aqua walls with Sherwin Williams (SW) Salty Dog paint. This shade of navy is lighter than the ever popular SW Naval. I love SW Naval but it felt too dark for a bedroom this size even with the tall ceilings.

The inspiration for the colors in this room started with this lovely painting which I purchased at Tuesday Morning some time ago. I've always loved the peaceful blue shades of the sky and water combined with the rich warm tones of the grasses on the shoreline. The little rustic rowboat is waiting for an afternoon of exploration and fishing.

For the furniture in this room I went with my Grandma Little's mid-century modern bedroom suite! Not my favorite style but it reminds me of her and the 1950's bedford stone home my grandpa built for his family on their farm in northwestern Indiana. The light wood, straight lines and casters go nicely with the masculine navy and accent colors in this room. Once we transition this room to my husband Keith's study, the furniture will all change. So I am enjoying these beauties here while I can.

I also included a large beige outdoor rug with navy design. Outdoor rugs are an inexpensive indoor option for high traffic areas with kids and pets! It doesn't matter that they were intended for outdoor use. "Outdoor" just means they will keep up with the wear and tear inside my house! I've received many compliments on this rug and now the truth is out. It's just an outdoor rug I picked out at Home Depot a few years ago.

The bedding I purchased at Target this fall except for the large lumbar blue ticking pillow available in my Etsy Shop and my handmade rag quilt with denim leaves. This rag quilt is one of those that I had in my shop but when no one snatched it up, I couldn't resist keeping it for myself. It's my favorite and when my son comes home from college for a visit, that special quilt goes in a drawer!

I also added my Grandma Little's 1950's sewing desk. It still houses an operable sewing machine. The top of the desk folds back and the machine flips out from underneath. I haven't used it in a while as it does miss some stitches but again, it reminds me of her and her home.

I still need to paint all the trim and the mantle in this room SW Pure White. I will also need to strip the paint off the original doors of closet and bedroom and then stain the wood to match the floor.  Won't it look fabulous!

When I first walked through this little Folk Victorian home I was in love! But still, in so many of the rooms I thought, "Oh, that has to go!".

Well, this is exactly how I felt about the light fixture in the Central Hallway.

Here it is close up!:

​The two modern looking pendant lamps hung oh so low. The previous owners must have had artwork displayed here and thus the track lighting. This however was not our plan. I really wanted to rewind our little home back to a older, vintage, classy look.

And then there was the tired mint colored paint which extended up the stairway. It looked like something I would have painted a little girl's room in once upon a time. In addition to the mint, I could see where the previous owners had color coordinated the hallway with the dark overwhelming teal in the dining room. And as held true through most of the original first floor, there was two toned cream/beige trim. Yep, someone had tried to "touch up" all the trim with a completely different shade of paint. 

So after finishing the walls of the dining room, I started on the makeover of this adjacent hallway. The dining room had been recently transformed with Sherwin Williams (SW) Vanillin and a mostly navy rug with some rich color accents. Beyond the dining room is the navy bedroom (future study) I painted SW Salty Dog.

The central hallway also adjoins to our vintage pink bathroom and the still bright baby blue kitchen. I wanted to keep it neutral since the space touches so many areas and at the same time tie this in with an overall color scheme.

So I chose to paint above the chair rail with SW Paperwhite and below the chair rail with SW Salty Dog. Paperwhite is two shades lighter than our dining room color Vanillin. And Salty Dog is the same paint color as the navy bedroom. I also continued with my trim paint choice for the house, SW Pure White, on all the trim and chair rail. 

So I hit my target! The color choices remained classy and neutral while tying into an overall color scheme. 

Now back to the light fixture!

​I would tell you the model number and all that of our new beautiful bronze light fixture but it's out of production now. So sad! This information would be of no use to you. I've seen similar fixtures in stores here and there though so the look wouldn't be hard to replicate.

I love the dark bronze finish and the elegant look of one single pendant light fixture in this hallway!

I'm so please with how our hallway turned out!

In these pictures I still need to finish the SW Pure White trim around the dining room and paint the flat part of my stair steps SW Tres Naturale. I would also love to tone down that bright baby blue in the kitchen with SW Sky High.

More to come!...

We're not quite finished yet but I'm so happy with the transformation thus far that I had to share! The dining room is at a central location in our home and is used daily. Yep, it's practically the hallway. I will also use this space to make
Our Ginger Cottage pillows! And we will eat special meals around this table. This is not the typical modern dining room that never gets used. Quite the contrary! So the space had to be neutral and useful to our family.

More details on how we decorated this space:

I love the new paint color:  SW 6371 Vanillin! This color gave the room a warm, soft, classical look. I'm pretty faithful to Sherwin Williams so you'll find that all my paint colors are their products. I love the shade of teal that the room was before...but so.much.teal! Wow! I had to soften things up.
​Vanillin hit the spot!

The rug is also new. I needed a 9 ft x 12 ft size which are rarely found in stores. Honestly, I was a little afraid to purchase a large, expensive item online. I'm old school and I like to see and touch the things I buy from a store. I feel blind when I shop online. So to ease my discomfort with a large online purchase, we scoured Lowe's Home Improvement online store.

I found this beautiful rug! It ties in with another adjoining room I just painted a shade of navy blue (more on that later) and also our living room which is a washed out blue gray color. Our Christmas tree will go in this room so I had to choose rug colors that would look good in any season, especially around the winter holidays. You can't go wrong with a traditional rug that brings in some navy, sage, dark red, light blue and beige. Winning colors from Lowe's with Mahal Ghorda Navy/Natural Oriental Area Rug! 

We added some of our favorites to this room:
Amish Rocker from Keith's parents
Cane Rocker from Grandpa Zook
Tall Cupboard refinished by my Grandma Zook many years ago
Antique China from my mother
Artwork mostly thrifted
Table and bench Amish made that Keith and I purchased years ago
Antique chairs given to us years ago and I refinished some time ago
We love this room filled with these useful treasures!

I still need some curtains for those 99 inch high windows. And I need to paint all the trim which is a grand mess of oil based paint and touch up with I'm not sure what. Anyway, it will be fun! Stay tuned!