Blueprints, HGTV, and Habitat for Humanity...

You probably haven't noticed, but I'm also trying really hard to make sure our remodel is earth-friendly. It's a nice idea but it really slows things down. It takes a lot more dang time and energy researching where to find good used, vintage, and earth-friendly materials than it does to just go buy it all at Lowe's. Okay, I admit I can't resist Lowe's paint chips and who wants to buy a used plumbing line? Not me!

Anyway, I decided to scour the Habitat for Humanity Restore in our area yesterday in search of a light for the kitchen and a bathroom vanity. I didn't get either, but it was still awesome. I left with a five-foot vintage 1950s mirror medicine cabinet for my guest bath ($10!!) and a huge vintage wall mirror ($29!!!). They have these stores all over the country, so google your local Habitat and check it out. They basically collect used and new building materials that would have otherwise ended up in the landfill.They use the money from the store to build houses for low-income families. Oh, and it's a great resource for people who already own houses and don't have a huge budget to fix them up. I count myself as one of those-- I always just about poop my drawers when I read articles about "cheap" $25,000 one-room renovations. Hell, that's more than I'm going to spend on my entire house!

In other news,a pile of papers fell out of the cabinet above the fridge this week. Turns out it was four pages of blueprints for the house, with the name of the home builder (Norman L. Koon) and the developer, (Gabay Development). Very cool. I want to find out more about my neighborhood, and now I have the first clues to start me on my way. Although I did notice that whoever paid to build this house moved the stove around in the kitchen,ditched a cheesy flower bed outside, and went with plaster walls and thick stucco instead of drywall and wood shingles.

On another note. I'm one of the three people left in the U.S. that doesn't have cable TV. Somehow, I don't want to admit that I like television enough to pay for it every month. Plus, I'm scared it'll take time away from other projects. Anyhoo, I have to balance my TV ideology with the fact that I am addicted to HGTV, so I often drive down to my mom's to spend the night vegging in front of her HGTV. Lo and behold the episode of Designer Finals was a makeover of a house in Columbus,Ohio. My brain spun. I often check the Be on HGTV button on their Web site, and never once did I see a request for houses in my town! Holy cow. I'm totally bummed out that I missed it. I have a few rooms that could use the touch of a young professional other than me. But maybe next time...
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The bathroom, part two, and the toilet name game...

Mission accomplished. At least partly. The robin's egg 1950s blu emy husband wanted in the main bath upstairs in now in place, the mauve carpet has been safely removed and freecycled, and the new hardware that will someday (when I have time to install it...) has been chosen. Woo-hoo! I'm almost home free. The color is Behr Embellished Blue from Home Depot. It really makes taking a shower a lot cheerier. And, it shows off the 1950s faux marble vanity top.

I did have bathroom fever this past weekend, so I started a makeover of the half bathroom adjoining the kitchen. Well, it wasn't that I was feeling like a go-getter, it's just that we are having Marmoelum flooring installed in the kitchen and bathroom of that room this week and the toilet and vanity needed to come out beforehand. I figured while the toilet was out, I'd replace it with a new one, because there was no way in hell I was putting that mid 1960s 5- gallon a flush water hog back in. Especially when it didn't flush right to begin with.

No one warned me that toilet shopping was such a humorous experience, though. I had to wonder who came up with the model name for toilets. At Lowes, you could buy a Cimaron. At Home Depot, the Harbor or the WellWorth. Silly names trying to add a bit of mystique and class to what has for all time basically been referred to as "the old crapper." We went with the WellWorth. And in a fit or irony, the same day we bought it, we went to a house party where the hostess had just bought a new toilet. I told her of the humourous names we encountered while toilet shopping and she said, "Yeah, it's funny. I think ours is the WellWorth?" Those marketing people earned their money that day.•

Up Next: The bathroom...

Let's just say the main bathroom upstairs leaves much to be desired. Mauve carpet, pink curtains. Okay, at least the original custom slant-front vanity with the faux pink marble top is intact. After all, I bought the house because it had all original fixtures. And the tub and tile seem to be original 1957, too.

The hubby says he wants the walls to be a nice 1950s robin's egg blue, the same color as the living room in the first apartment we lived in together. But first, I've gotta pull up the carpet and see what I'm dealing with here. Looks like 70s linoleum!

Christmas down at the ranch...

The eggnog is in the punchbowl and it's about time to bust out the cookie sheets and make sugar cookies. Yes, it's Christmas again! I put up the tree on Sunday. It's a vintage 1950s 6 and a half foot Alcoa aluminum tree with a color wheel my mom was gracious enough to buy me at a flea market. Of course, I did go overboard, buying a second tree. But hey, it's made of purple tinsel and it was 50 percent off. What girl can resist that?

Project two: Paint chips a plenty, turning the living room into a retro playland...

It took a good three trips to the hardware store to find the right paint chips for the living room. Luckily, I had decent floors to deal with after the mint green carpet came out. But, it's a long skinny room with low ceilings, so at first I wasn't quite sure what to do. I wanted some red, because I had it in my last house and it looks good with retro leopard print-- definitely a must. (I guess you could describe my decorating style as "Bettie Page burlesque bordello").

I am not a fan of pastels or of white walls, either. So, after sitting on the rug absorbing the vibe, I decided I'd do three walls in a light neutral, with one dark accent wall in a red. My goal is to get the stone fireplace and the built-in metal plant holder to stand out. They just kind of blend in against the white, when really they are the coolest parts of the room.

I ultimately went with American Tradition Cincinnati Hotel beige, from the National Trust for Historic Preservation paint series and Bordeaux by Eddie Bauer for the accent wall, both from handy dandy Lowe's. Just a warning: before you paint anything red, understand that it takes at least three coats to get a solid red color. It's not for the faint of heart.
So, after a weekend of painting, this is how it turned out.

Click here for a before and after living room photos slideshow

Between the camera and the Internet, it's hard to convey the true colors in the room, so if you are really motivated and curious, you'll probably want to inspect the chips in person next time you stumble into Lowe's.
But, mission accomplished, I think, on making the fireplace and the plant holder much more noticable.
Alas, for me it's back to the paint chips. Now I'm on a quest for the perfect 1950s blue for my bathroom!•

Miracle cleaner, I swear

My neighbors, a retired couple, just gave me a tour of their 50s ranch house. All original fixtures, even down to the pink tile, sinks and toilets in the bathroom. Their porcelain sink was immaculate, and when I mentioned I might have to have mine redone because it was stained beyond all hope, they told me Bar Keeper's Friend would fix it. I didn't believe them. It looks just like every other can of scouring powder I've tried that hasn't worked. But, for a dollar a can, I thought I'd give it another go.

I'm glad I did. This stuff is a miracle in a can! With very little scrubbing, the stains in the kitchen sink came right out. The sink looks brand new. I tried it on the black stain on the bottom of my bathrub, and that came right out too.
I just wanted to share this because I'm sure a lot of you have stained vintage fixtures like mine, and are wondering what to do. If you can find this in the store, try it. It really is amazing. My sink is bright white, and good as new now.•

Project one: Taming the mint green carpet monster...

Dream house or no, the mint green carpet had to go. I almost gagged the first time I saw it. Sure, it was nice carpet, if no stains equals nice carpet. But the color- very 1980s Midwestern mom who also likes mauve Avon lipstick and country crafts. It had to go, because it was putting a serious crimp in my decorating style.Leopard rugs do not look good on a canvas mint green. Unfortunately, removing carpet can be a huge job, and Erich wasn't totally on board. Almost all of the first floor of the house-- the hallway, two bedrooms and the living room-- were covered in it, and we didn't know what would be underneath. I pulled up a corner in one of the bedroom closets. Score! The original wood floors were under there. Of course we didn't know what condition they were in, but I insisted we go for it anyway. Like a good hubby, he gave in.

Tearing up carpet was time consuming, but easy. You only need one of those razor blade cutting knives from the hardware store, a hammer and either a screwdriver or a stiff metal putty knife. Oh, and some tape, to hold the carpet in rolls. I cut the carpet in sections in each room. I hoped to freecycle it, (I can't bear throwing perfectly good stuff in the landfill) so I tried to cut it into the largest pieces possible, so whoever still likes mint green could reuse it.

We rolled the carpet first. Then we pulled the padding up. It's stapled down, but you can pull it up gently without damaging the padding. We rolled that too. Soon, we had pretty wood floors in every room. There were only a few damaged spots and a couple of scratches. Nothing too difficult to fix. But we still had one big problem: carpet tacks. I think these guys thought they were getting paid by the nail. Carpet tacks lined every wall in every room, hundreds of them. It was terrible. They are tough to remove, and they tend to poke and stab you because there are nails hanging off of them in every direction.

To remove a carpet tack, we put our putty knife under the nails holding them into the floor, hammered it under, and pried the tack off. That's probably not the right way. We left a few scratch marks on the floor as a result, but it seemed like a good idea at the time. The realtor came over while we were doing all of this, to drop off his obligatory "thanks for the commission" house-warming gift. He almost dropped it. "The floors are beautiful," he said. "I think you already raised the value of your house." Such a sweet-talker.

We vacuumed-- a lot. All of that carpet freshener stuff that people put on their carpet doesn't end up in the vacuum cleaner. A lot of it filters down to the floor underneath. I think we swept up about 20 years' worth. Icky. The good news is some folks did come pick up the carpet. People were fighting over it on the local freecycle site. Who would have guessed mint green would be such a hot commodity? We decided to give it to a family with four kids, who couldn't afford to buy carpet for their basement. They hoped to turn it into a playroom, but without carpet it was too damp, dusty and cold down there. Mint green would do just fine, they said. •

About this Blog, Us, and the Quest for the House...

The first time I saw the yellow stucco ranch house in Berwick, I was convinced it was not the house for me. Me and the hubby came to see it after some friends discovered it during an estate sale. "It's perfect for you guys," they said. Maybe it was the timing. The levees in New Orleans had just broken, we didn't know if our house down there had survived. We only knew we were not planning to go back-- we were going to live in Ohio. But it was too soon to buy a house. We were still paying a fat mortgage on a house we couldn't get to down south, and we didn't know if it was still standing, or if we could sell it.

"I love this house," Erich, my hubby, pronounced. "I want to live here. This is it."

"Babe, we've only seen one house. We should look around," I said. That was code language for "we aren't buying a house until we sell our other one.Oh, and get some jobs to pay all these mortgages."

We walked out with a cool 1950s desk with a kidney-beaned shaped top. I'm sitting at it right now.

Fast forward five months: We're in contract to sell our house in New Orleans, Nerd is tired of living with my sister and commuting two hours a day to work (our life since the storm), it's time to get our own place in Ohio. We start the search for a house.

"You should see if that old lady's house is still for sale," Erich said.
"There's no way it'd still be for sale," I said.

It was after all, a deal for its neighborhood. Berwick is a tract of well-maintainted 1950s ranch houses with big lawns, right in the middle of Columbus,Ohio. The houses here often sell for $200,000 and up. This house was selling for a lot less than that-- a lot. I called. It was on the market again. Two other contracts had fallen through. The seller wanted to be rid of it. Erich said those deals fell through because the house was meant for us. I wasn't convinved, at first.

We looked at a few other houses, and with each tour it became more clear that this was our house. It still had all of its original 1950s features- cabinets, light fixtures, everything. It had trees, a sunroom, plenty of bedrooms for out of town friends. Everything. No one had torn out the good stuff to make way for country cabinets or 1980s floors.

So we bought it. And we love it. And that's why this blog exists. I'm lovingly decorating, restoring, and refurbing this 1957 ranch house gem and I want you to join me in the journey.Follow me on my journey to elevate this house to its true potential. I'll be posting here several times a week, about the house's progress, the neighborhood, renovation dilemmas, decorating-- everything it takes to get the place into tip-top shape.

You hear an awful lot about the glamorous ranches-- the Eichlers, the Mid-Century modern all-glass California experimental homes, but not much about the tried and true traditional ranch house. I love those houses, but let's face it. Most of us can't live in one-- either because we can't afford one, or their just aren't many in our part of the country. I'm going to prove that traditional ranches can be just as cool. •