Betsy and Kent's House: Before and After

When I walk by an interesting house at night, I can’t help glancing in the windows to see how it looks inside. I know some people think that’s wrong, but I’m just so curious. I often wish someone would offer me a tour. For those of you who feel the same, I bring you this virtual tour of my mom and step-dad’s new house renovation (which I photographed but did not decorate, aside from the occasional consult).

Exterior Before

For many years Mom and Kent have talked about building a house. They looked and looked for the right piece of property, but they just couldn’t find what they wanted. So instead of buying an empty piece of land, they bought a house just outside of town that abuts the rail trail and the river.

Exterior After

I must confess, when they first bought this place, I was not convinced. It’s fairly new construction, the finishes weren’t to my taste or theirs, and it didn’t have much character to speak of. But they had great vision, as well as the help of Jodyn, a truly talented builder who is also Kent’s son.

Entryway Before

Not only does Jodyn have great technical skills, but he brings his own creative ideas and sense of design. His craftsmanship is tight, which you can see here in the entryway stairs he completely transformed.

Entryway After

Living Room Before

They painted the interior walls throughout the entire house white, which used to be a no-no, but has come back in recent years.

Living Room After

Living Room After

They changed out fixtures in all the bathrooms and gave the kitchen a major overhaul.

Kitchen Before

Kitchen After

Jodyn added an addition to the back of the house that extended the kitchen significantly and added a dining space beyond it. The addition is flanked on either side by porches, which are joined by a wraparound deck. Floor to ceiling windows and skylights make the space dramatic and amazingly bright.

New Addition

Exterior View of Addition

This is their retirement home, so naturally it has not only a hot tub, but also an outdoor kitchen with both a cooktop and a grill. They repurposed cabinets from the house’s original kitchen and painted them black.

Outdoor Kitchen and Hot Tub!

No retirement home would be complete without a designated bar area, right?

More kitchen cabinets were repurposed in the laundry room, this time painted a bright, cheery green. It almost makes laundry seem fun.

Laundry Room After

Jodyn custom-built this beautiful vanity for the powder room off the main entryway out of wood sawed by our multi-talented friend Daniel Raines.

Downstairs Powder Room

Den Before

Den After

Jodyn added floor-to-ceiling built-in shelves in the den, which give it a cozy library feel.

Den After

Side Entry

This side entry leads out to the detached garage on one side and to the hot tub on the other.

Mother-in-Law Suite Before

Shortly after the former owners built the house, one of their mothers became ill, so they turned their garage into an attached mother-in-law suite with a full kitchen, bedroom, and bath.

Mother-in-Law Suite After

Mom is now using that space as a studio and workout area. She wasted no time after retiring last year and immediately started painting, which she’s been too busy to do for years. She’s been experimenting with new techniques and has already produced several really great abstracts. And here I was worried she wouldn’t know what to do with herself after so many years of working.

Mother-in-Law Suite Bedroom After

Top-of-the-Stairs Nook Before

Top-of-the-Stairs Nook After

Upstairs they replaced carpet with hardwood that matches what’s downstairs. All the walls were painted white there too, and the doors black. The black doors are another thing I wouldn’t have believed until I saw it (though it is certainly a trend). Suddenly those inexpensive hollow doors look very sophisticated.

Front Bedroom Before

Front Bedroom After

Back Bedroom Before

Back Bedroom After

Upstairs Bath Before

Upstairs Bath After

In addition to switching out all the fixtures in the upstairs bath, they added a small round skylight that makes it seem as though there’s a light on all the time.

Master Bedroom Before

Master Bedroom After

Master Bedroom to Bath Before

Master Bedroom to Bath After

Master Bath Before

Master Bath After

Master Bath After

It’s truly an amazing space that only a few people have been able to see, thanks to this stupid pandemic. I know I’m not alone when I say this thing needs to end soon. We are all SO ready to come back together and christen this house with its very first (dare I say epic?) family party.

My House: Before and After

When the pandemic first hit, I felt a burst of creative energy. I painted walls, built a giant game of outdoor Jenga, and added my interpretation of barn art to my shed. I took Coban on photo walks and felt inspired.

Fast forward nearly a year, and several months have passed since I last felt like taking out my camera. But I did today because I decided to show you something I’ve been working on for 7.5 years: my house. I like nothing better than a good before and after. So here it goes.

Exterior Before, circa 2013

The house was white when I found it, like so many others in Morgantown. (I never really noticed that until a friend from Louisiana saw pictures once and asked if there’d been a sale on white paint.) Very cute, I thought, and in that bungalow style I’ve always liked.

Since then I had it painted, put on a new roof, and extended the garden all the way across the front. If you look closely, you can see that the mulch on the hill stopped awkwardly halfway across before. My neighbor gave me a few of the yellow flowers in the photo below, and they spread like crazy. Just what I need on a hillside that’s almost too steep to weed.

Exterior After

Kitchen Before

Kitchen After

The kitchen is probably the room I’ve changed the least in the whole house. I put in this new pendant light over the sink (and when I say me, I mean my kind friend Genesis) and painted the walls, but everything else is pretty much the same. I still like the maple Shaker cabinets, dated as they may be.

Dining Room Before

Kitchen to Dining Room After

The dining room brightened up quite a bit with new grey paint. The faux wallpaper was a Covid-era addition. Turns out I had a $3 sample paint in the basement that matched my recently painted green cabinet perfectly. I kept the silver pendant lights over the bar for years until I changed them out a couple years ago for slightly larger, more shapely red pendants.

Living Room Fireplace Before

Living Room Fireplace After

Living Room Fireplace After (before the logs got soaked with soot and leaking water)

The previous owners had modernized the fireplace by covering it in drywall and adding a new mantel, but it felt a little bare to me. It was just begging for some built-in shelves to flank it, as you often see in Craftsman bungalows. Luckily, my dad is an excellent woodworker, and he built them to fit.

For several years I filled the empty fireplace (no longer functional, sadly) with logs from a dead pear tree Dad cut down in my yard. But I took them all out when water and soot rained down on them several years back. The giant mirror I found in my childhood attic does a nice job of hiding the empty hole and reflects light from the window across the room.

Living Room Before

Living Room After

This living room is a good example of how a few changes can go a long way. I opened it up by making two seating areas—one facing the TV and another flanking the fireplace. I painted the walls grey and the staircase and baseboards white to match the rest of the trim. I tried to minimize the effect of the giant television (it came with the house) by hanging art all around it. I kept the existing curtain rod but moved it up and hung very long Ikea curtains that span from floor to ceiling.

Sunroom Before

Sunroom After

The sunroom stayed as it was for years until finally I painted it the same grey as the rest of the downstairs, which helped tie everything together. My stepdad and I installed laminate flooring last year after I impulsively ripped out all the carpet (that still smelled from my dog Roux, nearly 6 years after she died). Good thing too, as Coban and I are both using this room most days now for work and school. Rehanging the curtain rods and getting longer curtains made a huge difference here too.

Stairway Before

Stairway After

I decided to leave a “runner” of natural wood on the stairs because I know how scuffed painted stairs can look. Having the white along the side of the treads also helps ease the transition between the painted baseboard and railing and the unpainted stairs.

Coban’s Room Before

Coban’s Room After

One of the first things I did when I moved in was to hire contractors to install fake bead board on the ceilings upstairs, as well as new baseboards and trim around the windows. (I priced drywall too, but it was ungodly expensive.) The previous owners had done a lot of work downstairs, but the bedrooms still had drop ceilings with brown plastic pieces separating each tile, and there was no trim around the doors or windows. With new ceilings and trim, the existing paneling on the walls suddenly looked charming and cottagy.

My Bedroom Before

My Bedroom After

The biggest design issue in my room is that the window is not centered in its space. Once I hung curtains on either side, you can’t tell at all.

Bathroom Before

Bathroom After

I wanted to try a dark, dramatic bathroom look, and this one has enough natural light to pull it off. It came with gold fixtures, which is not what I’d choose, but I decided to keep them after I priced new towel racks and faucets. To make it work, I got a bunch of gold frames from junk stores and filled them with posters and art from calendars. I found a little chandelier for $10 at a flea market, which seemed fitting with the clawfoot tub and the “fancy” gold frames.

Bathroom Sink Before

Bathroom Sink After

I replaced the pedestal sink with an Ikea vanity, which offers a lot more storage and a place to set things down. I just couldn’t bring myself to buy a gold faucet and went with silver instead. I spray painted the towel racks to match and found the mirror at TJ Maxx for $25.

Back Porch Before

Back Porch After

When I moved in, the back porch (which is our main entry) was covered in astroturf. Its walls were clad in a mix of aluminum and vinyl siding that didn’t match the rest of the house. My stepdad and I ripped all that out and replaced the floor with deck boards. We put shakes on the walls and built a privacy screen at the back. Two new lights and a new mailbox, and voila. It may be a carport porch, but we use this space a LOT. It’s like having an extra outdoor room.

And there you have it. My house is pretty much done. I’d move to a new one if I could just to do it all again, but that’s not in the cards just yet. Which means I need new projects! I’ve got one big one in the works, which I’ll be sharing as soon as it’s finished. Stay tuned! (It’s pretty exciting.)

Feels Like Home

A couple weekends ago my friend Athena invited me out to pick some of the flowers she planted this year at Harmony Farm. The farm sits up on a hill so that once you're there, it feels very isolated and lovely. There are some houses nearby, but not too close. The sky that day felt big and encompassing in a way that's somewhat rare when you live in the hills. She had grown beautiful long rows of sunflowers, zinnias, cosmos, bachelor buttons and nasturtium. 

I've read a lot about self-care over the last few years, and you'd be amazed how many people recommend treating yourself with flowers. These "feel better" lists get rather cliche after a while, but then again, cliches exist for a reason. Flowers can really make a girl happy.

I've been wanting to plant cosmos in my yard for years now, and this year, I finally did. I put a bunch of seeds in front of my shed, and all summer I watched the plants grow very tall and produce nothing. Not one flower. I have a particular affinity for cosmos because growing up my sister and I planted a huge row of them every year across the front of our vegetable garden. They're so delicate and beautiful, and they bloom all summer long. It's October now, and look who finally decided to make an appearance?

This is the second year I've grown dahlias. Last year I planted bulbs, and they produced a few flowers. I dug the bulbs up in the fall and stored them in the basement all winter. (I literally just threw them in a crate. I think you're supposed to take better care and store them in sawdust. It's an evolving hobby, this gardening.) I planted the bulbs this spring, and just like the cosmos, nothing happened for months. But this fall they emerged in all their glory. And they are so amazing. The perfection of all the individual flower parts is like tiny baby toes.

There's just something so good and wholesome about growing flowers. It makes me feel like home. As another friend said to me recently about (being old and) watching birds: Free Joy!

I'll take it.

Yard to Table: The Grape Shrub Cocktail

A couple of Christmas's ago, my mom introduced the cranberry shrub as her "signature cocktail" for that year (and endured a bit of mocking for using that term at home). While I certainly enjoy the occasional cocktail, I'm really more of a beer kind of girl. Give me a hoppy IPA any day over something sweet or liquor-flavored. But Mom was right about this one. The shrub has a unique appeal. Its sweetness is tempered by the tanginess of vinegar, resulting in a remarkably delicious sweet-tart combo.

I also enjoy this drink's practical history: in Colonial times before refrigeration, people cooked fruit down with vinegar and sugar to preserve it. You can basically make a shrub out of any kind of fruit. In addition to the initial cranberry version, which was amazing, I've had good success with rhubarb and just recently experimented with a slightly savory cucumber (you can find that recipe here). My favorite so far is the grape shrub.

This came about as a matter of necessity: there are two arbors covered in Concord grapevines in my backyard. These grapes have been plagued by what I'm fairly sure is black rot since I moved in (and probably long before that), which makes the fruit rot on the vine before it ripens, and apparently is quite common in humid climates. I pruned the vines as heavily as I could this Spring after researching and consulting a friend who used to work in a vineyard in Oregon, and I was hoping a heavy pruning would stop the rot.  It did not. The leaves are still browning, and the grapes are again shriveling on the vine. (Interestingly, I may not have pruned them enough; all the rotten stuff seems to be coming from the old growth. My friend also tells me I really need to spray them with copper, so perhaps more on that next year.) Nonetheless, in spite of the rot, I still got a decent sized crop last year and am hoping for the same again this year. Here's last Sunday's haul (plus some beautiful little yellow tomatoes): 

I've seen a lot of different recipes for shrubs online, but I haven't found one that's exactly to my liking. So, my mom and I made up our own simple formula, which relies on a 2-1 ratio of sorts. I had four cups of grapes this time, so here's what I put in a large pot to boil:

4 cups of fruit

2 cups of vinegar

2 cups of water

2 cups of sugar

(Some people suggest not using white vinegar, but it's worked fine for me.) Bring that mixture to a boil. Once it boils, turn the heat down to low and cook it for about 10 minutes. Then strain out the fruit and pour the liquid into bell jars.

Technically you can probably store these outside the fridge, but mine has plenty of room, so I keep them in there.

To drink, mix with seltzer and your alcohol of choice--I've had good luck with vodka, gin, and whiskey. And if you don't happen to have a bunch of fruit growing in your own yard, keep your eyes out for shrubs on the menu of your local bar. They're popping up everywhere and are often presented sans alcohol--I had a delicious peach version (though I added whiskey) when we went to Husk in Charleston, SC this summer. And a few months from now it will be pretty sweet to still have a taste of summer in your drink...

Makeover a Mailbox in an Afternoon

My friend Dani lives in a tiny, adorable house in my neighborhood, just on the other side of the park. I think her house has huge potential. This is her mailbox. We decided it could benefit from a little love. Remember last week when I wrote about the two feet of snow we got? Well, this weekend it warmed up enough to go outside in a t-shirt. And to do a little spray painting.

The mailbox was covered in rust, so the first step was to sand it down with some rough sandpaper. The numbers had been attached with a very sticky glue, so we used a putty knife to scrape off as much as we could. Then she applied a rusty metal primer.

Next, she applied a couple coats of glossy spray paint. We each had a couple cans of aqua leftover from other projects, so we used up the remainder of one can as the first coat and then switched to the other.

Dani ran out to Lowes and bought some replacement stick-on numbers so we could finish the project. Pretty good for an afternoon. It's going to add a nice spot of color to her front stoop.

This mailbox was in rough shape, so we did this pretty quickly without waiting a long time between coats. For a more perfect look, I think it would also be fun to start with a new smooth mailbox and add some modern letters or numbers using either stickers or stencils like this. But I love the idea of salvaging something old.

House Tour: Nick and Michele's Complete Reno

Because Nick and Michele bought this house as a foreclosure, they were able to get a special construction loan that allowed them to completely gut the insides and start fresh, albeit on a fairly tight time-table. They took down walls, hung barn-style doors to separate spaces, and inserted closets (and even a bathroom under the stairs) where none had been before. The outside got painted just recently, and the landscaping out front was completed the day before Porchfest. 

Nick made the giant prints hanging in the dining room and framed them using reclaimed floor boards taken from old houses around town. (For a while he and a friend sold mirrors framed in reclaimed wood, until the wood stash ran out.)

Michele got this Buddha lamp at an antique shop in Five Points.

The windows are original, but the laminate floor (which is beautiful and does not look like laminate to me), the molding, and all the paint and fixtures are new. 

Michele used spray paint to unify this collection of jars-turned-candle-holders, using her favorite Little Bo Peep bottle as the centerpiece. 

Yara followed me the whole time I was photographing. The piece above her is of Starlight, a bar that used to be in Jacksonville's Five Points area (where we naturally spent some time sampling at least a couple craft beers at fine establishments such as this).

Carlos, looking so sweet and innocent . . . 

This kitchen is fully equipped for a chef. And let me tell you, Nick does not let it go to waste.

Michele's responsible for painting a lot of the furniture and arranging all the little vignettes. Nick made quite a bit of the artwork, including the painted skulls.

The whole family: Carlos above, Yara below, and the people in charge (ha!) are Michele and Nick.

Garden Diaries

first time growing dahlias!

final harvest

I had two main gardening goals this year: to put in a real veggie garden and to make good use of my herbs. I dug out a 4' x 8' plot of ground right in front of my driveway so there was absolutely no way I could forget about the plants once I put them in. (That visual did not prevent me from under-watering, however. Dammit.) I used the square-foot gardening method that allows you to pack a whole lot of plants into a small area, and I had some real success with tomatoes and green beans. Cilantro continues to be difficult and sickly, and my parsley seeds never even poked out of the ground. Is this me? The beets and carrots were great and tender, but I really should have staggered those in several plantings and done more. Next year I think I'll go a bit bigger and maybe come off the water now and then, but all in all, I'd say it was a success. Notwithstanding the saggy fence I constructed to keep the deer out--but hey, I built that thing all by myself!

end of season garden (slightly droopy fence removed)

As for herbs, I dried oregano, lavender, lemon balm, and mint and I used a whole lot more fresh herbs this year in cooking. And you know what has magical happy power? Zinnias. Those were by far the best thing that happened this season in the garden.

Why cacti and mountains?

I grew up in the Appalachian hills, in a “holler” really, though being the English major I am, I say hollow. Our house was surrounded by hills, with the hollow behind, and acres of woods to explore. They were old mountains, but oh so cozy. Out west, I traded cozy for imposing. In Montana, our town had the most spectacular 360 view of snow-covered mountains. The air was always crisp, and the scale of that sky and those large peaks made me feel small, but in a calming way. The kind of way that makes you realize the world is big and there’s more than you know. But even with all that beauty and possibility, it never felt like home. The vastness, the dryness, the lack of trees—I felt too exposed. I missed being surrounded by hills. Eventually I found my way home, back to the green hills that seem to hug you. But the sense of home that some people seem to have, that feeling of familiarity and solid ground and comfort, it eludes me here much of the time. I am from this place and a part of it but also apart, detached. It’s gritty; it’s run-down; it’s dirty and stuck in its ways. But then I go into the woods, and it’s grounding in a way that nothing else is.

A view of the Cheat River from Snake Hill.

This little peanut cactus came cross-country from Montana in 2007.

As for the cacti, I just love them. I love their shape and their color and their endearing trait of not requiring much attention. Maybe the cacti are a way to keep the allure of the west and its promise close? Maybe their ability to thrive here in a place where they wouldn’t naturally be is symbolic? I don’t know, but one thing is certain: they’re very hard to kill. And that provides a very practical advantage in my care.

Cacti felt friends. Because, why not?

I could not resist this turtle from my favorite junk shop. The hens and chicks like him too.

The biggest guy I have is now taller than me, thanks to six years with my mom and her heavy-handed use of miracle grow. We literally used a dolly to get it into the house. The small peanut cactus in the yellow pot came all the way from Bozeman, Montana in 2007. I think these cacti are just dying to be joined by a super soft brown leather chair, but they may have to wait a bit.

The big guy.