Embracing Our Historical Home

We purchased our first home in 2010. Our oldest son was only a month old when we moved. Everyone told us to move before the baby came but we naively decided to wait, and boy was it stressful. Moving with a newborn is not fun, but we were moving into a 3 bedroom home from a 1 bedroom apartment and back to my home state of CT, so I was excited! We fell in love with our house immediately after seeing it because of its charm and authenticity. It is an 1800 farmhouse that had been updated with love over the years. The home itself was in good shape and had a modern kitchen and an inground pool plus an acre of land to enjoy. The biggest project we took on when we moved in was adding central air conditioning and painting a few rooms, other than that we settled into our new family home and began enjoying life in the ‘burbs.

When they did the inspection of our home, they noted that the original foundation of the home was built on logs! This made my history teacher heart skip a beat. We love that our home has a history. In fact, two summers ago I got a knock on my door and it was a past owner who wanted to tell me the story of the house. She explained how the home was on a farm and there was an apple orchard where the pool is now. She also explained that her family had added a full kitchen and bathroom to the basement so that she could live with her parents with her baby boy, who was born in the house. Stories like this and the fact that our home has been around for decades makes us so happy.

As with most older homes, there are some quirks. Our ceilings are low, the layout is messy and choppy and the floors are all different styles. Some of the floors are original, others have been updated over time. For years, we had to put money into boring house stuff like a new boiler, water heater, siding, and windows. We contemplated moving last year. We put our house on the market and began looking for bigger homes in our area. What we found was that no other house had the character and personality that ours did. We would walk into homes with high ceilings and brand new kitchens but they just didn’t have the same feeling that our home gave us. They often felt cold and we found ourselves talking about adding the character into these homes when we already had it in our current house. Once the quarantine hit, we took our house off the market and decided to lay low for a while. What I learned being “stuck” in my house for months was how much I love it, quirks and all. Yes our home is on the smaller side, yes I wish we had a dedicated dining room and a big walk-in closet, but our house is perfect for the 4 of us, and it’s cozy and it’s special and it’s ours.

So now we get to do the fun stuff- after being here for 10 years, we are going to start making subtle changes to the house we love. We are starting with new floors and opening up a few walls to make the flow a little better. We will update our powder room and are looking into ways to make our master closet bigger (totally necessary for a fashion lover like me!) I am getting a lot of inspiration from Brooke at Nesting with Grace, as she embraces her smaller home and constantly adds little touches that make it more special. I love Kasey’s modern farmhouse style at SBKliving. More recently, Ive been insipired by the coastal feel of Gaelle at gldesignhome. I can’t wait to start these new projects and continue to make our house work for us while also keeping the originality and character we fell in love with. I will be looking for your help as we renovate so hopefully you guys have some good design ideas for us!

Give me all of your design inspiration for older homes…. What are some good resources??