Ways to turn your house into a vintage home Part 3

This is the last of the three part series. Here are Part One and Part Two, if you missed them.

DOORS

MY FAVORITE THING! I had no idea I loved doors so much until we built the house.

I admit it is a weird obsession but it started when I discovered arched doors. Houzz.com is the best and worst website when you are working on your house. Great for ideas but there are so many possibilities, it makes you a little crazy. And the budget says 'No, we do not need to import carved, arched wooden doors from another country' (Or was is Hubby that said that?). Doesn't anyone understand the need for antique arched doors with beautiful hand-carvings from India?? 

So I put the doors from India aside since no one wanted to sell them to me for pennies. Later at an antique store, we found some neat 120 year old doors that used to be the front doors of someone's house, and made them into our pantry doors by putting them on sliders:

These doors may be too shabby for some people, but I really like them. Some of my relatives are mystified why I would want grubby, ancient doors in my house. As you can see, they are really beat up. I'm going to do a post soon on how my hubby got these ready to hang. These doors cost no more than it would have to get plain doors, so I think it's a neat way to add character without adding cost on to what I would've spent anyway. The sliders do add to the cost, but I wanted to do sliders regardless if we used antique doors or not.

I found another antique door online, this one a little bit of a splurge but we decided to go for it and use it for the basement door. By the time our builder stripped off some chipping veneer and worked on it's quirks, he said he could've just built us a door just like it for the same or less money.

Oopsie.

Um, yeah, but it's vintage and besides, it came with an old door handle...so it makes it totally worth it. Hubby really loves me, or he's secretly planning my demise, because he never said a word. I really love that guy, so I'm going with he loves me too.

ANTIQUE RUGS

A few pieces of antique furniture mixed with new pieces helps gives a house a vintage character, but my favorite, along with the doors, is an antique rug. I have a thing for turkish rugs right now and Etsy has some cute ones. The larger ones are pretty expensive but you can get a 2x3 fairly inexpensively for a bath or kitchen and really add some character to your home because they are so unique. 

My grandmother gave me a few of her oriental rugs. They are red, which wouldn't normally be my first choice for color scheme, but I love that they are worn and frayed around the edges. There's something about having something passed down with a family story that makes them special.

That's the last of the vintage home series. I'm moving on to some fall decor soon. Bring on the pumpkins! Thanks for reading!

Love, 

Elizabeth

Sometimes I think Elizabeth's Hubby could use a nice vacation. At a contemporary resort. With no vintage doors.

The Foyer - A Messy Girl's Best Friend

Someone just drove up the driveway.  Unannounced.  You glance around.  There's little boy's underwear laying in the floor (don't ask me, I just live here).  Dirty dishes are overflowing in the sink.  It looks like a wild party went on last night, but the only people here were you, the hubby and the kids.  

Please, for the love that's all good and decent, please don't get out of the car.

Well, good times.  They got out of the car.  Oh, shoot, they want to come in the house. 

But, guess what? For the first time in my adult life, I have a foyer. 

Foyer is also code word for:  STOP where you are, don't come any closer to the real part of the house, just stay right here, sister.  I'm neat, I'm clean, that's all there is to see.

That's right, take it nice and slow.  No sudden movements.

With that said, welcome to the foyer!  I'll give you a tour, but it stops at the boy's underwear, deal?

Below you'll see a snippet of the dining room and rugs which were inherited from my grandmother (the famous MomB). 

Is that a Hershey kiss wrapper in the floor to the upper left? 

Oh my goodness, it is.  Geez.  So much for the clean foyer.

To see MomB's buffet makeover, click here

The buffet is on your left as you walk in the door.  The ceilings are 12 feet and we had a hard time finding a mirror to fill the space, but we lucked out when a friend/antique dealer found this one. I love old, French style mirrors.  Old French style anything!

And I love having books all over the house.  Fake books, real books, poetry I'll never read, it doesn't matter.  I'm addicted to reading (except poetry, sorry) and would love to design a library in the house one day.  Considering we don't even have landscaping yet, it may never happen, but it's fun to think about.  ☺️

As you walk in the front door, the piano is on your right.  It was a gift to me from my parents when I was around 15 years old.  The house plan called for this to be the dining room but we changed things around so we'd have a place for the piano.  Did you know there aren't any house plans with a 'piano room' listed?? It was so hard to find a plan that would work with all the open concept plans available nowadays, so the dining room is now the piano room, the living room is now the dining room and the changes trickle on into the kitchen.  In a future post I'll lay out the original plan and show the changes.  In the first house we built I was so afraid to make changes to the plan, but I think all the HGTV shows gave me the courage to knock down some walls for this house!  I'm having Fixer Upper withdrawals, wish the new season would hurry along!

Did you know I get a piece of bacon if I lay really still like this?

So there you have it. Well, have a good one! I'm off to do the dishes and pick up whatever candy wrappers have made it to the floor so I can show you the kitchen soon.  Do your kids trash your house or is it just mine?? 

Wait a minute.  I think it was me that ate Hershey kisses in the foyer. 

Oopsie.

❤️, Elizabeth