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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.)