About Me
Baths
Kitchens
Diningrooms
Livingrooms
Bedrooms
Familyrooms

Flooring
Counters
Walls
Upholstery
All Before & Afters
Other Projects
How to renovate on
    a budget
Paint Colors I used
Changing for the
     seasons
Halloween Decor

 

My previous Homes

This is the house I grew up in and lived in until 2004.

I loved growing up in that house.  It is a 2 family Philadelphia style home.
We lived on the second and third floors, the first floor was a 2 bedroom rental apartment.
On our main floor (second floor) we had the "back room" (which was originally the 3rd bedroom for the
first floor rental apartment, that apartment had one bedroom on the first floor and two bedrooms on the
second floor.  My father took the 3rd bedroom for our family.  We used it as a tv room which we called the
backroom.  It was this room that had a recessed bookcase door that my father built, the room was
open to the kitchen via a half wall). 
The kitchen had an old cast iron farm double sink, there were no cabinets in the kitchen, there is a large walk-in pantry which had base cabinets, counter, upper cabinets and shelving, with a window looking out to the backyard, the kitchen had original beadboard as did the back stairs/hall. The other rooms on this main floor are the dining room, parlor and sitting room . (yes we called it parlor and not a living room we also refer to our basement as the "cellar"!) 

On the 3rd floor is 3 bedrooms, a linen closet and a bathroom with a pedestal sink and cast iron claw foot tub.
If you went into my parents walk in closet there was a hidden trap door which opened to a small storage
room.  There was an identical storage room behind the linen closet, accessible by removing the shelves
or doing what my sister and I did which was push the towels aside slide in on your stomach and hide
in the hidden room when we played hide and seek with our cousins (my cousins didn't think it was
funny because they didn't know about the hidden rooms before that lol!).

My father built drawers into the walls in both my bedroom and my sisters bedroom.  We had
French doors on all the bedrooms, my father changed the single door to a double
doorway to their bedroom.  My dad also built a false wall in my parents bedroom, to create arches
 in front of the windows and he recessed lights into it so at night time the windows would "light up".
  He made wall moldings for their bedroom as well (similar to what I am doing to my current bedroom).

   The house was built in the early 1900's and has original gumwood door and window casings.
The door and window casings are wide and detailed unlike the cheap casings modern builders use
today where did their pride of craftsmanship go? 
The whole house has Antique Vertical grain Heart Pine wood floors.  Simply beautiful, to buy these
same floors costs 25.00 a sq ft today.

Here are some photos of the house
(these photos were taken after a Real-estate agent bought our house, she repainted the rooms and refinished the floors, she broke the two family up into two condos, returning our back room to the first floor apartment as their 3rd bedroom, she sold the condos and made about 100k profit by doing that).  When we owned the house most rooms had wallpaper, which I took down and painted all the rooms the same beige color after my dad passed away.

Parlor looking into the dining room

Dining room looking into the Parlor
(my father built radiator covers that matched
the woodwork, for some reason they got rid of these - which my neighbor
took out of the trash to use in her house lol~)

Sitting room

Parlor looking into sitting room

Parlor

Third floor hall looking into my parents bedroom
You can barely see the arches in front of the windows

Third floor hall my old room on the left, my sisters straight ahead

My old bedroom
(looks like they didn't put the drawers back in place right since they aren't lined up in this photo)

My parents room

Sitting room

Below are photos from the First floor Rental Apartment

Kitchen in the rental apartment

Rental apartment, from the kitchen you can see the dining room, Parlor and foyer

The people who bought the first floor "condo" from the real-estate woman
have since repainted the rooms and resold the condo a year ago.  This photo
is standing in the foyer you can see the Parlor on the right, dining room to the
left of the Parlor, the stairs to the two bedrooms upstairs to the left of the foyer

Standing in the Parlor looking into the Dining room and Kitchen