back bedroom

rolling carpet. cracking sheetrock. stencil-painted mantel. drop ceilings....
man did we need a creative vision and a lot of hope to tackle this room. the "back bedroom", as we now call it, used to be the sitting room/living room/bedroom of my great grandparents. it had been this way for generations, i assume.
my dad has shared memories of sitting in daddy john and mama lemie's room in the winter and feeling a sudden urge to shed layers due to the large gas stove in their bedroom. this room was the central "meeting place" if you will, but we are now making it our bedroom- doing all we can to capture the original style that makes us love it so.
see, we have tried our best to take this house one room at a time, in efforts to not overwhelm us anymore than is inevitable. this was not our first room on the "to-do list". however- we couldn't resist taking a little sneak peak at what was behind that sheetrock...

and this is what we found. granted, you are seeing the walls still coated with beaverboard. but WOW did this get us excited! just crossing our fingers this is what we would uncover everywhere else.. 12 inch tall, 3/4 inch thick, tongue and groove heart pine boards... no big deal... NOT!

so we continued. with the help of some incredible friends and family, we slowly (need i repeat... slowly) uncovered every surprise and treasure this room had to offer. here is a glimpse of the progress made. don't be fooled. it took a while.

 after uncovering everything, we were ready to spruce the place up. first thing's first: refinish those floors. the floors were in fabulous condition to be 160-ish years old, but this room had more uneven boards and potential problems than the rest of the house- so naturally we hired a professional (chuck connelly). chuck came in and did an incredible job sanding down and refinishing these old floors. i mean- incredible. look at them!!

so impressed with his work!! 

next thing on the to do list was to get rid of the door that connected the bedroom to the dining room. we couldn't think of much good use for that! here it is...

sooooo we took it out. and when we did we exposed the supporting beams on either side. AH love it! so naturally we left them exposed. we ran into a jackpot of a wood pile at a friends barn and miraculously the boards were from the same era as ours. dusty used these to close in the gap on the dining room side so on the bedroom side you can still see the beams on either side of it.

dusty trimmed out the room in the meantime as well. made the world of difference! we used very primitive 6 inch trim around the windows and doors and as baseboards and did a small (toe molding) trim around the ceiling. 

now all this room needed was a mantle and a little furnishing...