house tour Archives - Madly Happy Home

decor, diy, house tour, house tours, kiddos

Selling The Bungalow We Used to Call Home

March 25, 2017 No Comments

We lived in our old house, a Chicago bungalow, from 2006-2013. Over those 7 years we did countless projects including updating the kitchen and remodeling the bathroom. When Harper was born we changed Trixie’s nursery into a room for them to share.

Here are pictures from 2013 when we were putting our house on the market in preparation to move to our current home. Since we were getting the house ready to sell, we swapped our living room and dining room to their original and intended layout. You can see our unorthodox set up in The Bungalow We Used to Call Home.

2006 was the height of the real estate bubble, and when we were selling in 2013, it certainly hadn’t recovered anywhere close to the 2006 levels (you can read all about that in my DesignMom interview), but even in that sluggish environment, our house was under contact within a week of putting it on the market!

Last week I posted some very striking before & after photos of the old bungalow.

Also check out the posts about our new house:

Selling the Bungalow

Living Room

image living room arts & crafts bungalow

The brick fireplace-surround in the living room was painted brick red when we moved in. I painted it ivory to lighten up the space.

image living room arts & crafts bungalow

So many wonderful, original old windows, we had them all restored rather than replaced!

before & after, decor, diy, house tour, kiddos

The Bungalow We Used to Call Home – Before & After

March 18, 2017 No Comments

We were thrilled to find our first house in Berwyn, Illinois, 10 miles from downtown Chicago and on the commuter train line. After looking for an entire year (thanks to our patient realtor Chris) we found a gem – a Chicago Bungalow with all of its original woodwork and character. We were only the third owners of this 100-year-old home. It needed a lot of work: repair on the stucco exterior, electrical rewiring, insulation, window restoration, storms and screens, a new chimney, a roof, as well as cosmetic work throughout. Over the seven years we lived there, we attacked all of those updates as well as remodeling the bathroom, updating the kitchen, adding a fence and designing gardens around the entire property.

(Please excuse the not-so-good quality of the photos)

Front Porch

BEFORE

image bungalow chicago front porch

The house was painted white with wedgewood blue trim. I really wanted to embrace the natural, neutral colors that were popular in the Arts and Crafts movement. Painting windows a dark color on a light colored house always gives it a real punch. For the trim I chose an earthy khaki color. We replaced the house numbers with ceramic tiles from Rejuvenation Hardware.

The porch swing belonged to my grandparents. I remember my grandpa taking it off of its frame in the yard and putting in the garage when it rained. I would always ask him why he didn’t just leave it out in the rain and he would say that you need to take care of things if you want them to last. I staked a claim on that swing long ago.

AFTER

chicago bungalow front porch

decor, diy, house tour, kiddos

The Bungalow We Used to Call Home

March 11, 2017 No Comments

We moved into our first home in 2006. It was a wild ride. I was almost nine months pregnant and my water broke the morning after our move-in day. We had had a rough night sleeping on a slowly deflating air mattress in our mostly-empty old apartment. Trixie came 3 weeks early. I was looking forward to those weeks to do some unpacking, but instead we spent 5 days in the hospital and then brought home a gorgeous, healthy baby girl to our new house filled with boxes.
Our first night in our first ever house was our first night home with a baby! My mom and a few other family members worked hard unpacking the necessities when they weren’t with us in the hospital. Needless to say, most of those boxes stayed packed for a long time. Some of them are still packed in our current basement – no joke.

About 2.5 years later, in 2008, I introduced a new product line of cashmere baby items to my business Kistner Supply. As part of promoting the new line I worked with Gabby Blair at DesignMom.com to do a home tour for Cookie Magazine. These shots are from that 2008 tour and interview.

Our house was a typical 2.5 bedroom/1 bath 1000 square foot Chicago bungalow. Like many bungalows,

image floor plan you enter into a small foyer, then into the living room and you walk back through the dining room to get to the kitchen. The entrance to the bedrooms and bath are through the dining room.

In our home I decided to switch the living and dining rooms so that the main living space wasn’t all the way in the front of the house. The end result was a larger space that didn’t have to work around an entry and fireplace, and that was closer to the bedrooms and an eat-in kitchen. When we put the house up for sale in 2013 I switched them back to the traditional layout.

To see what the house looked like when we put it on the market stay tuned for another post coming soon.

Also coming soon is a before & after post of our old house.

And of course you can see these three tours of our current home: Before & After, Holiday Tour and The Old House We Love to Live In.

Living Room

image living room bungalow arts & crafts

We fell in love with the original woodwork in the house and the grass-paper wallpaper.

The coffee, endtables, stool and magazine rack belonged to my parents in the 1960s and the large brown chair was something my grandparent’s purchased in the 1950s (at one point it was upholstered in brown vinyl!).

before & after, decor, diy, house tour, kiddos

The Old House We Love to Live In – Before & After

March 4, 2017 No Comments

As soon as I saw this 150-year-old house in Charleston Illinois I knew that we could make it our own. It was dirty, dark and unloved but had so much potential to be a happy and bright family home. You can read more about what brought us to Charleston in my interview with Design Mom.

Don’t forget to see the posts of our home tour and our house decked out for the holidays.

Exterior

BEFORE

image old house before

The house was white with decorative green shutters for at least 100 years. After living here for 2 years I decided that we needed to go dark. I love the monochromatic Colonial homes in New England, especially Massachusetts homes like The House of Seven Gables and The Orchard House that were built in the late 1600s.

In 1864 our house was originally built in the Carpenter Gothic style. Then in 1920 the second owners added a Georgian Colonial Revival style by changing the facade. The gingerbread trim and the porch were removed and a portico with columns was added. The bay windows in the front of the house were replaced with french doors.

I found the combination of styles confusing and think that the monochromatic, dark paint job solidified the look. We chose Sherwin Williams color Dark Knight for the exterior with Nervy Hue for a pop of color on the door.

AFTER

image, old house after

decor, diy, house tour, kiddos

The Old House We Love to Live In

February 25, 2017 No Comments

We moved into our 150-year-old home in Charleston, Illinois in the fall of 2013.

Right now we are looking forward to Spring (but also wishing for some late February snow).

Here is a shot of the exterior of our house from last Spring with the dogwood tree (aka Harper’s tree) and the groundcover on our hill in bloom. Every year we add more drought-tolerant perennials with the hope that one day the steep hill will be covered in color. I really enjoy mixing different heights, textures, and colors to create a patchwork of lovely for all to see. I grew many of the plants from seed and some came all the way from our last home. We love to garden. We moved from a typical Chicago postage-stamp lot to a huge yard that hadn’t been tended to for decades. There are always so many projects going on at once. It is a lot of work, but is so rewarding each year.

In the fall of 2015, we painted our house in Sherwin Williams Dark Knight, with a slightly darker custom-mixed trim in a glossy finish. The house had been white with (decorative) green shutters for at least 100 years so we get lots of double-takes from passersby. It took courage to go for the dark color, especially since we are a relatively new family to a very small rural community, but I am so glad we took the risk. The house looked disjointed before, starting out as a Carpenter Gothic in 1864 and then being morphed into a more Georgian Colonial Revival style in 1920. I think the dark color solidifies the look.

Since we moved here we have made many changes. Here are the most recent shots of the house interior.

Take a look at our Holiday House Tour for even more photos.

To see what the house looked like before we moved in check out the “before and after” post.

Front Door

picture of front door

This color is Sherwin Williams “Nervy Hue,” isn’t that a perfect name! The doorbell is original and in perfect condition, the door plate and knob were eBay finds (We ordered many and tried them and resold the rejects, it was hard to find the right fit. Who knew antique door hardware was so complicated?!) and the mail slot is a reproduction from Signature Hardware.

before & after, decor, house tour, kiddos, recycle, storage

Chest for the Mudroom – Before & After

February 24, 2017 No Comments

In our old house we made a great little mudroom. Last week I showed you the before and after of the bookcase I used for shoe storage. Well, across from the shoe shelf there was room for another storage piece. This time I went rummaging in my basement and found this old chest.

image chest unpainted

It was from my grandparents’ bedroom. When my mom and I were cleaning their house out I was working in their bedroom and right inside the door there was a pile of laundry. There was always a pile of laundry there. I never really thought about it because I knew it was clean, folded laundry. I guess I assumed that the pile was sitting on a table, but it wasn’t. It was set on top of a chest and the chest was covered with a small blanket. Total mystery piece. My mom had never noticed it before either so we have no idea where it came from. I am not a fan of its style, which I call “pirate-ship chic,” but I guess it’s really “Early American,” I decided I would put it into my storage space with all of the rest of the furniture and “treasures” I found. Finally it came in handy.

Sanding, primer, red glossy paint did the trick, just like with the bookcase. I had some Marimekko fabric leftover from working on a girls’ 1980s bedroom for the John Cusack movie “High Fidelity” (I save everything cute!). I added some poly fiber fill from old pillows and stretched the fabric over the top and the back piece. Now it’s a colorful and comfy place to sit, perfect for a mudroom.

image painted chest

Hold on to those old, good quality pieces and repurpose them!

Elizabeth

before & after, decor, house tour, kiddos, recycle, storage, toys

Bookcase for the Mudroom – Before & After

February 16, 2017 No Comments

Our former house had a small breezeway/entrance that was created when the back porch was removed to allow for a rear deck. I knew right away that it was the perfect size for a mini-mudroom. The previous owner had covered the walls with sheets of “wood” bead board. Some paint cheered it right up!

I was excited to use some cool vintage hooks I had, but needed some shoe storage. A quick trip to my mom’s basement brought me to a very dirty old book shelf that had been used to store paint. It wasn’t pretty – yet!

image unpainted bookshelf

All it needed was a sanding, a coat of primer and a few coats of glossy red. I really love what a little paint will do to brighten up your world.

image red painted bookcase mudroom

decor, holidays, house tour, kiddos

The Old House We Love to Live In – Ready for the Holidays

February 13, 2017 No Comments

Our home tour from Design Mom that was published 5 weeks ago, shows our house ready for the holidays. Here I have included even more shots of our “holiday house” for you to enjoy.

image picture family in an MG car image family in front of christmas tree

Our holiday card photoshoot produced some good shots at Lake Charleston.

Exterior

image 150 year old dark blue house

Here is our 150-year-old house in the only snowstorm we had this season. I love using classic holiday decorations on the exterior of our 1864 house. Wreaths on every window, and a garland swag at the entrance are simple and pretty, especially in the snow.

decor, diy, holidays, house tour, kiddos, news

Our Madly Happy Home

February 11, 2017 No Comments

image family at lake goldendoodle image red head girl and goldendoodle

A blog! Can you believe it, just what the world needs, another blog.

What can I say, I am inspired.

Last fall, while I was promoting my business, Kistner Supply, and the latest edition of our keepsake baby book, Mother Stork’s Baby Book, I turned to three all-star bloggers who were great supporters of mine from the early days of my buisness: Nicole Feliciano of MomTrends, Liz Gumbinner of CoolMomPicks and Gabrielle Blair of DesignMom.

These ladies amaze me! While I was was struggling to raise two kids and run a small business, these women were rocking their mom-lives and have created reputations as the go-to experts on everything moms want and need for modern families. I “met” each of them over a decade ago when I was first introducing the world to Mother Stork’s Baby Book. I found their support vital to the health of my business and the creation of my new products.

Fast forward through the past ten years: now that my littlest one has started Kindergarten, I needed to put myself back “out there” to promote my business and support my family. I turned to Nicole, Liz and Gabby for help and again they came through for me with unmatched support and enthusiasm.