before + after, our current home

My husband and I bought a 1950’s ranch–from its original owners, no less–in the spring of 2013. It’s our dream house, or at least, with some modernizing it will be. The house is located in Rochester, NY, a rare little find with an amazing amount of mid-century charm, and we are so happy to grow into it with our family.

It’ll be a long time before this house features as much of our personality as our last house did, so check back here for updates often.

The lot is wooded, full of wildlife and charm. We’ve spent a lot of time clearing brush, removing dead branches, overgrown plants, and tending to our new, large lawn. We removed enough of the overgrowth to expose a two-story barn, and make room for gardening beds and family picnics.

The barn roof needed to be replaced, which is something that my husband did himself in the summer of 2013. Indoors, the floor was repaired in 2014. In 2017, the entire exterior received an overhaul with fresh paint and a custom barn quilt:

In another part of our yard, we raised a custom treehouse for our kids to play in, and decorated it with an 8-foot custom planter box.

The inside of our home is quiet, shaded, and nature-esque in its own way. The rooms are all big, many with large picture windows, and earthy accents, like flagstone and natural wood. The sunken living room is the largest of the rooms, boasting a flagstone fireplace and hearth along one end, and a large window that overlooks our front yard.

Priming and painting the space, and removing the long curtains did a lot to brighten up the room; removing the carpeting and installing maple hardwoods throughout did even more.

I also removed the brass fireplace surround, opting for a cleaner look.

Furnishing a new house is crazy expensive, so things are moving slowly. We found a few vintage safari chairs (not shown here), an area rug, and a new couch (the Tillary sectional from West Elm).

The dining room sits adjacent to the kitchen, and opens into the living room. It sports that huge, beautiful window that overlooks our backyard, and a brilliant crystal chandelier, that isn’t to our vision, but works fine until we decide upon a new permanent fixture.

We have danish mahogany dining room table and exactly 4 hand-me-down chairs, though we have our eyes on a set that is lighter to complement the maple floors that also extend through this room. We needed shelving somewhere in our house, and our dining room seemed like a good fit. I chose the Lap Shelving System, and it’s a perfect fit.

Meet our kitchen. It has been updated in many ways–the previous owners updated the flooring and the sink–but the cabinets are still original to the 1950’s design, right down to the beaming, silver door pulls. Charming!

The window above the sink is easily my favorite feature in the room; it lets in an extraordinary amount of daylight.

While we eagerly await the day that we can completely reinvent how this kitchen flows, but until that day, I neutralized the coloring by painting the cabinets, which help to make the countertop and floor seem less dingy; we had originally planned to resurface the countertops with this modest “remodel,” but we feel confidently that the almond color will be fine for now – I don’t really like making extra work for myself, anyways.

Directly off our kitchen is a half bathroom. It has been updated more recently with a vanity, medicine cabinet, toilet, and lighting. To neutralize the space and help the small room feel bigger, I took it from raspberry to white and hung some colorful art.

We lived in our screened-in porch almost our whole first summer here. Not literally, but we ate, worked, and played in the space every single day. It’s the perfect home for the wooden farmhouse tables that we built for our wedding. With 36″ overhangs surrounding the house, we’re never bothered by incoming rain, and we intend to continue to make great use of the space.

It may not be a room in our home, but the width of the hallway that our bathroom and bedrooms stem from is one of those things that people seem to notice. When we first saw the house it seemed downright spacious – two closets, and a giant sliding door divider.

Painting the walls, installing maple hardwood floors, and adding a colorful FLOR carpet runner brings us to where the hallway is today.

Our home has only 1.5 bathrooms, and you already saw the rose-colored half-bath, but I couldn’t wait to show you this. Our main bathroom is truly classic to the era in which the home was built–maybe even a bit ahead of its time in terms of design and layout–with maroon and ivory Romany tile, a square bathtub, a separate standing shower, and lots of built-in storage.

As classic and charming as it appears (short of the shower door, we’re not that into it), a lot of work needs to be done in this space and it will likely require a full gutting in the coming years (I like to think it’s on our short list, or <2 years away). The tiles are cracking and loosening (we had to do some minor repairs already), and the plumbing, venting, and electrical systems are in need of help.

Our bedrooms are huge, and awesome thanks to the beautiful picture and corner windows that overlook our yard. Our master bedroom is larger than any I’ve ever seen, the perfect space in which to add a master bath, a walk-in closet, or both, along with a sitting room. It’s that big, and I still don’t think that photos do it any justice. The photo below demonstrates the furniture orientation of the sellers, and then our own furniture (the same furniture that completely filled our last master bedroom).

Installing the hardwood floors made a big difference in here, but we haven’t done anything yet to decorate the space.

Julia’s bedroom is the one of the only spaces that we’re making a conscious effort to make homey, but she has a lot of toys and furniture that do much of that heavy lifting. It’s just that they aren’t usually thrown into the center of her room to avoid paint splatters. When we moved in, it was a truly blank slate, but has begun to take shape slowly as she customizes it with her own belongings, clean white roller blinds, and hardwood floors.

The nursery was once light blue; before the baby arrived in November 2013, we had already painted it, installed hardwood floors, and began to fill it with the appropriate baby furniture.

We haven’t done a lot to accessorize the space yet; right now, it’s all about function, but we have plans for shelving and storage that’s adaptable for an infant to toddler age.

I can’t leave the basement out of this before + after tour, because it’s one space in the house that really made us happy. Spanning 2,000 square feet, the unfinished basement is the same footprint as the main level of our home. Its high ceilings make it the ideal place to have a finished family room someday, which would still leave us plenty of space for laundry and an intense working area for our tools and projects. You can see a video of the basement in this post.