The interior hadn't been painted since 1982 because, for at least a decade, we thought we'd be moving. The house is so old and outmoded, without central air-conditioning and with only one bathroom, that developers considered the house a tear down. Once our sales contract fell through in September 2006, Mr. AOW and I decided that it was high time to stop living in a dump so bad that I don't even have many "before" photos. But I do have several "after" photos.
In December 2006, we redid the bathroom, the most hideous and the most dangerous room in the house. The floor ominously creaked every time I stepped into the bathtub, and it was only a matter of time before I ended up, tub and all, in the crawlspace!
Here's what the bathroom looks like now, complete with a window made of glass bricks and all new fixtures, including a bathtub with whirlpool jets. The walls are lavender, my favorite color:
Check out the medicine cabinet in the above photo: an authentic antique, with a black-walnut frame.
Of course, once the bathroom was so lovely, we couldn't stand looking at the dining room, despite all the beautiful antiques therein. We converted the dining room into another kind of room.
In spring 2008 I bought and moved in a Yamaha upright, thus finally having a piano room, with gray walls and white trim:
In this photo, the piano is decorated for Christmas:
The "cat table" below is made of black walnut. My father cut the tree from his father's farm and milled the wood at this own sawmill, which Dad operated on Granddad's farm. He took the wood to a cabinetmaker and had this "telephone table" custom-made for my grandmother, never mind that she hated and rarely used the phone:
This three-cornered china cabinet, complete with Grandma's Bavarian dishes, graces the northeast corner of the room:
On the east wall next to the right side of the above china cabinet is a Queen Anne's sheet-music cabinet, with bow front and beveled mirror:
Yes, the piano room is crowded. In the above photos, you can't even see the wine cabinet and the mirror from a brothel in Georgetown. But the piano sounds like a Steinway, and that's what counts!
This room got a new face just a few weeks ago. I have one "before" photo, which shows the contrast between the old color and the white primer. This is the corner by the front door and the coat closet. The door furthest to the right is the one leading to a hallway:
Below are the "after photos" of the living room. The first is the same corner as the above ugly picture:
Note the antique mahogany banister, which looks beautiful against the damask-rose accent wall going up some 50 feet:
The big mirror opposite the banister and above the fireplace captures the reflection of the accent wall:
When I'm blogging from my laptop, I sit in the corner of the love seat under the floor lamp in the background of this photo:
Every year, I string Christmas cards from the banister posts to one of the high-placed windows:
Our Christmas tree sits in the southeast corner of the living room:
Now that the living room has such beautiful walls, we'll have to get some new curtains and a new recliner!
