Hallway Renovation Featured Today on the Barn Light!: a Peek at the Before and After

 There is a nice feature of our hallway renovation on The Barn Light today, which is the style blog for Barn Light Electric, where we sourced the fixtures we used in our renovation.  It is always so nice to take a moment to step back and take a look at where we started, and all of the hard work we've done!  Here are some highlights from the feature, and you can always click over to read the full piece.

We love what our fixtures do for our space, and how they help accentuate the unique character of our converted barn home.  Thanks so much to the folks at Barn Light for getting in touch with me about a feature, and for encouraging me to finally take some photos of the finished hallway before we mess it up!

Oh, and shield your eyes a little, but here is the before image, just for fun.

When we first pulled up the carpet and discovered this green floor I kind of loved it.  But man did I get sick of it, and I sure don't miss it at all!  Sometimes I don't really realize how much my surroundings effect my state of mind, but looking at this old photos make me remember how I think I kind of closed my eyes in the hallway a lot, to pretend it wasn't there.  But since it is the central part of our home, there was really no way to avoid it, and I'm really glad that we have now fixed it up.  It is a relief to the eyes!

Under Renovation

Remember in the previous post, when I was complaining about how un-photogenic everything is at this time of year in Vermont?

Well, our house is still under renovation, and as exciting as that is, and as amazing as I hope it will look in the future, it's not very photogenic either.  Quite the opposite, right now, actually.  But here are some pictures anyway that will give you a little bit of a sense of what is going on around here without hurting your eyes.  Mostly everything is either coated in plastic or covered in drop cloths to protect the finished part of the house from the work that is getting done on the unfinished part.  The plastic coated hallway in the bottom photo is totally Dexter-worthy, don't you think?  And see the pink tile in the second photo?  Those were the tiles under the tiles of our shower.  Lovely color, right?  And we have also discovered a hidden window, which was covered up in some previous renovation, curtains still up on it and everything.  Unfortunately is is a window facing the wall of a previous addition, so it's not going to be able to be a real window again, but it will be a great storage nook.

We are leaving for 10 days in California in just a few minutes, and I'm hoping this will become the before, of a before and after post.  I am so looking forward to getting home and seeing what our rough space has become! And while we are at it, if all of the snow could melt, and the mud could dry up, that would be great. Thx!

Our Bedroom in the Barn: Before and After

You know how when you move into a new place, you only have so much time, money and energy to fix it up exactly the way you want?  And then you get the the point where one or all of those things run out, and you're done?  Well that happened to us with our bedroom.  I've been wanting to do a bedroom before and after post for, well, 4 years, but we only just got to the "after" part!  Here's a decent "before" picture.

 We moved into this barn about 4 years ago, and we refinished the floor, painted the walls Iron Mountain (Benjamin Moore), framed and hung some art we really love, repainted a great bed frame from Ikea. . . and then we ran out of money and motivation.  We got really stuck finding a 9x12 rug we liked and could also afford.  So we borrowed an old oriental rug from my parents attic that was the right size, if not the right style and colors, had a baby, and now it is 4 years later.

A confluence of two things got me motivated again.

 

One: Recently my good friend Cara bought a house in Brooklyn and asked me and a couple of other friends to put together a couple of decorating inspiration boards on Pinterest, and that really got me going again.  Looking at all of the beautiful homes and great creative decor styles made me really start to look at our space again, and get the jump start I needed to tackle the final details.  I decided that what our super modern, minimalist bedroom really needed to make it more cozy was a little bit of boho pattern and texture.

Two: Our bedroom is really drafty, and the one heat vent in the ceiling blows right on TH's side of the bed and drives him crazy.  So you know what is cheaper, and awesomer, than moving a heating vent?  Bed curtains.  I have always harbored a secret desire for a super princess-y bed, and this idea really jived with that.  How often can you find a really practical reason to give yourself a super romantic princess bed?  Just the once, in my life so far.  So here it is! Our finished bedroom:

Ok, so of course it's not totally finished.  I still need to get that little loveseat recovered in a fun boho fabric, which is still TBD.

 I tied the curtains on with pieces of white grosgrain ribbon, which was very inexpensive, and won't fray.

We found this great 9x12 rug for very little money at West Elm, along with the curtains, actually.  They are having a great sale. Thanks West Elm!

I also have plans to make some throw pillows of various sizes from block printed Indian fabrics in rich and slightly clashy colors and patterns.  But when? Hopefully soon.

The cozy cave the the bed curtains make has proven to be a much approved of place to read books by the three year old set.  And TH wakes up in the morning with no more muttering about why the heat system insists on blowing cold air on him all night.  And I have my princess bed, and can pretend I am a character in a Jane Austen novel, which for some reason makes me feel right at home ;)

Win, win, win.  Three thumbs up from the family.

Our Bedroom: Before and After

I have been wanting to do a before and after post of our bedroom forever.  There are a few reasons I haven't.  For one, I'm still not sure it is totally finished.  I don't think we have the right rug, and I'm still looking for a small chair to go in the corner, you know, things like that.  The other reason is that it is never clean enough to take pictures.  But yesterday I managed to clean enough of it properly (my side of the room, he he he) to take a few photos.  Believe me, there's a reason you are not getting a 360 degree view!

Before (with Olivia's melon in the middle of everything, as usual)

After

Here are some of the pertinent details.  The paint color is Iron Mountain by Benjamin Moore, a very bold choice by TH.  The prints above the bed were done by my mom when we went to a summer session at Penland together about ten years ago.  The tree triptych photographs are by our friend Katherine Slingluff, and were TH's wedding present to me.  The set of photographs in white frames on the other wall were taken by me on our honeymoon in Maine, and I had the frames custom made from architectural salvage by Architiques as a birthday present for TH. The book shelves are full of old paperbacks, organized by color of course ;), and the bed is from Ikea.  Luckily for us there was a nice floor under all that yucky carpet.  It's not in the best shape, but it is way better than before!

That's it for now!  If we ever get the rest of it finished we'll post it here!


P.S. Bonus points for anyone who can locate the one item that stayed in the room!