Michael Lake House, The Kid's Bedroom - Part 4

This bedroom is what we decided to make into the "kids bedroom" I have three beautiful children and my sister has two.  They can't all fit in this room, but all of the girls can or they can all cram into it if they are in the mood (and they are all still pretty small!)  This room had wonderful "bones"  The wood beam ceiling and hard wood floors both extended into this room and two of the four walls were wood plank.  These were a nightmare to paint, but we were very happy with the finished product.  There were also holes and gaps in the floors and wall everywhere. Our contractor built new trim and filled up the missing floor planks with pieces from the floor in inconspicious spots.  We lighted up the walls to balance out the dark wood everywhere and got a great single over a full pottery barn bunkbed on craigslist (for $50!) A little paint and it was like new!

I wanted the room to feel bright and fun, but to also be tasteful.  I started by stenciled starfish all over one of the gray walls in white. The two bead board walls stayed all white.  

Here is the finished product! The kids adore it and I am pretty happy with it too!

Here is the side by side before and after. Some improvement, right??

Michael Lake House, Master Bedroom, Part 3

The master bedroom in our Lake House was a peach, let me tell ya!  First off, it had mint green/light bluish walls, ceiling, trim...EVERYTHING.  Wonderful, right?  It also had peel and stick tiles on the floor, covered by wall to wall carpet and padding that wasn't actually placed wall to wall, but laid in the center of the floor, like an area rug! And, as I mentioned before, it was missing a door (see KITCHEN CEILING, in post #1)

We decided since we are going to tear out the closet and redo the master bath in the near future, we would leave the floors for the time being and deal with it more later than sooner.  The walls had a lovely old damask wallpaper that shows through the paint.  After an extensive amount of time on pinterest, I decided to do a camel color and light blue room (to match the ceiling!! ha ha!)  with black and white accents. I did this very much on the cheap, but was pleasantly surprised with the outcome. We did buy standard 2 inch white blinds for the entire house. It really seemed like a neccessity and something I'm glad we purchased. Conrad was an old pro at installing them, especially after passing the tenth installatin or so! Here is the before, in all it's mint green/bluish glory:

 

The color turned out darker than I intended, but I like it, and it works because of all of the windows in the room. Here you can kind of see the pattern on the wallpaper, not to mention our cool "area rug" situation. 

 

Below is the room after we finished it.  I couldn't be happier!  Thanks for reading and stay tuned for the next installation of the Lake House.

Michael Lake House-The Big Room, Part 2

So our little Lake House is about 1,100 square feet with three small bedroom.  It has a lovely large room that is surrounded with large windows, exactly what you'd want living on Lake Erie.  But I'll admit it needed work!

We hired a friend who is a wonderful contractor to renovate for us.  The first order of business was to remove the carpet and strip the paint from the wood floors.  The wood floors extended to the entire great room and the two bedrooms that were off of the room on the right hand side in this picture.  The walls (and floors) were also full of holes and cracks and other wierd things, so our contractor also re surfaced all of the walls in the big room. 

This is his progress and what it looked like after he worked his magic

We also wanted to work through a couple of the room oddities, like the weird fireplace wall and the mirror that was embedded in the wall on the right. It would be a matter of replacing the whole wall to remove it, so we decided to work with it.  Our contractor found old reclaimed barn wood and built a fireplace feature over the odd chimney.  He also found old wood in the garage of the house and trimmed out the mirror.  Both of these things work really well with the style and era of the home! We also decided to white wash the fireplace to brighten up and update the room.

After he finished the floors, walls, and replacing oodles and oodles of trim, Conrad and I came in and painted.  It tooks us a LOT of time to prime and paint this large room.  I choose a light gray, as I was trying to keep the house a light color since the walls and ceiling were dark.  I also wanted the colors of the rooms to reflect sand and sea.  I refinished an old dining set and coffee table I found on craigslist, scoured thrift stores for accent pieces and rummaged through our own house to finish the room.  I was happy with the outcome!

 These chairs were the only big items we bought new for the house.  And after searching and searching for the just the right thing, these from Walmart actually, did the trick.  I choose burlap fabrics and wood accents to use throughout the house, and feel like it really worked! 

We have done even more since these pictures were taken, like mounted a big screen TV over the fireplace, installed a nice electric fireplace, and restuffed the saggy pull out sofa, which came from our home, and endless other small details!

Couch Before and After

Bad picture of TV and fireplace..

Old table and lamp refurbished.

Here are some side by side before and after's

 Thanks for stopping by.  Stay tuned for the master bedroom makeover!

Michael Lake House, the Beginning. Part 1

Life is moving swiftly along for the Michael Family. As you can see, I don't blog much, but I did want to document our newest fun adventure.  We began looking for investment properties several years ago. We look, we wait, we go back, we look again.  Last spring we found this lovely little house in Huron, Ohio, just a block from the beach.

We had decided that we would like to try a vacation home rental, and it was a good fit for us since we had family up in the area willing to help out.  It's a couple of miles from Cedar Point Amusement Park and had beach access.  The house was old and worn out, build somewhere between 1900 and 1950, depending on what local is telling the tale, or which property record you were reading.  It's quaint on the outside, but when you looked inside, well...most of our visitors said, "Meh." But oh, how it looked to me, in my head! Fortunatley, my husband trusted me and my "visions of sugar plums."

It had lovely lovely old wood beam ceilings and under old carpet and paint were beautiful hardwood floors.  The walls were this and that, among it, old fashioned patterned wall paper and real wood beadboard.  It was love at first site, although you are going to have a hard time believing it....

 This little house has some oddities, to say the least. For one thing, the chimney had a wall build over one side of it…perhaps in an effort to even out the “look” of it?? Besides, the fireplace wasn’t functional, as it needed a new liner and was a terrible fire hazard.

 

The kitchen had a drop ceiling, that was falling down and under the drop celling was a celling put together with this and then, including some kind of shingles and a door, presumably taken off of the master bedroom at some point and installed in the ceiling.  The hatch to the attic was then sawed out of one of the door panels (of course!)

But I haven’t even told you about the most interesting piece of the house. The bomb shelter! Yep, this house comes complete with a bomb shelter.  The old home owners told us it was a storm shelter.  They also told us that they had gotten quotes of $1,000-$2,000 to remove it.  But, one gentlemen who lives down the  street, stopped by to chat with us and told us that he grew up in the house and his mother was quite afraid a coming Soviet nuclear attack and had it installed in the 1950’s.  Other rumors include that they only had money to buy braces for their daughter or a bomb shelter and choose the later.  The mum was also rumored to be a beautiful, if eccentric, ballerina. 

Needless to say, the quotes we have gotten to remove our little piece of history range from $5,000 (from the contractor working next door, willing to do it, while the garage next door is being removed) to $10,000, since it’s difficult to get heavy machinery into the small space.  I currently have it listed on craigslist..free to a good home, if you are willing to move it!

In all reality, it will probably become a lovely conversation piece or odd destination attraction, perhaps we’ll side it in cedar and put a deck/hot tub on top of it! You just never know!

 

So, back to the house.  The full bathroom that was in the house is terrible.  It’s walls, and ceiling are old fashioned mylar and in terrible shape.  The bathtub and walls are currently being held together with duct tape of some kind and the window is cracked.  It needs fixed and it’s next on the agenda for next summer, although we have run out of time and money for this year! I have beautiful ideas of what I want this room to look like.  There is a half bath off of the master which is comical.  It has pink plastic tile on the walls and cork on the ceiling. It was all held together with duct tape when we bought the house.  Our wonderful contractor, removed the duct tape and put up a temporary, but much improved fix.  It is like a mobile home half bath, with s mini sink and mini mirror, and almost mini toilet.  Our plans are to remove the wall to the closet and make it a full bath.

Currently we are well toward finished on this project and I couldn't be happier! Stay tuned for my next post!