Courtenay of The Creek Line House shares her farmhouse in this 2013 guest tour. The photographs, renovation plans, and costs describe her home at that time.
We left our big-city lives two years before this tour, moved back to my husband’s hometown, and bought a house in the country. It was 113 years old, with years of work ahead of us. A few smaller room updates helped us enjoy it while we saved time and money for the larger renovations.
This exterior photo was taken when we bought the house. We had since added a metal roof, though little else outside had changed. The view helped make the long project list worthwhile; our house sits in the little clump of trees below.
The mudroom everyone uses
Friends and family come to the side door through the mudroom off the kitchen. This is how I decorated it for fall that year, with pumpkins, mums, old brooms, and a chair.
The next photograph shows more of the room during the previous fall. It looks inviting, but the whole room sits on a slant and needs to be removed and rebuilt. Decorating it didn’t change the structural work still ahead.
The actual front entrance is small, so we mostly use it as a hallway.
A kitchen big enough for the family table
From the mudroom, you enter a large kitchen with space for a big table. That matters because the formal dining room also needs to be gutted and redone.
We wanted a complete kitchen remodel, but my readers encouraged me to consider painting the cabinets in the meantime. I had worried about spending time on a temporary update; their suggestions made me reconsider.
A bathroom facelift for about $150
During the spring before this tour, I spent a couple of weeks refreshing the main bathroom rather than waiting for a full renovation. Here is the room before the work.
The finished room had white wall treatment, dark accents, updated-looking lighting, and a small rustic storage cabinet. The whole facelift cost about $150 at the time. Having a bathroom I liked made it easier to live with the other unfinished rooms.
A comfortable living room before the major renovation
The living room still needed substantial work, but we had made it comfortable for everyday life. A white sofa, patterned pillows, lamps, and storage pieces helped it feel settled while we planned the bigger changes.
The bedroom that made a temporary makeover worthwhile
Our main bedroom refresh came from the same impatience with waiting for a full renovation. I made it pretty enough for the meantime and ended up loving the result. Courtenay’s linked bedroom post credits Rugs USA with providing the rug used in that makeover.
This is the bedroom before.
The lighter finished room pairs the metal bed with pale walls, layered bedding, a textured rug, and a wooden bench. The change made it my favorite finished space at that stage.
At the time of the tour, our next major project was a nursery for a baby boy due a couple of months later. We had gutted the room and were replacing the ceiling, walls, built-ins, flooring, trim, and lighting. The work had taken about a year on and off, with the due date giving us a firm reason to finish.
For another guest’s approach to decorating a home in stages, visit Amy’s home tour from Atta Girl Says.
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