Our MCM (the Prairie house as we call it), was our dream house. We even considered getting the blueprints from the original owner’s son so we could re-build it when we moved. (But with our mobile lifestyle, there wouldn’t be enough time for that!)

The Story

To recap our MCM story: we purchased it for a STEAL back in the mid-west. (The local real estate office literally didn’t know what a mid-century modern was and just called it a “unique” property. They thought the real selling point was the view of the farm across the street.)

When it was first listed for sale, we immediately ran out of the house and called and emailed the realtor while we were on our way. We knew it was already vacant, so we walked around like creepers peering through the windows.

Not only was the house amazing, it had a special story. It was custom designed by an architect in 1961–who had studied Frank Lloyd Wright style at the same school that Wright went to–for his aunt and uncle. We were only the second owners.

We intended to start restoring it right away, but 6 months after moving in, the job that moved us out there very unexpectedly ended. After 3 years of job struggles in our dream house, we were only able to get small (to us) projects done.

When the Hubs job offer came through from New England, we had ONE MONTH to pack, start and finish projects like replacing laminate flooring, a minor kitchen reno, bathroom reno, and then put it on the market and move.

The MCM Living Room

That fireplace! The brick work was so beautiful. The Hubs’ father even mentioned that the bricks were some special and expensive variety they used to use in Milwaukee.

Then of course, the amazing copper sheets…

The fireplace itself was about 5 feet wide, and there was a nook for firewood to the left.

And the wrap-around floating concrete hearth…

The Dining Room

The movers had already come and packed up most of our stuff by the time I took the listing photos of the dining room, office, and kitchen, so it was prettier with real chairs of course, but you get the idea here:

The MCM Kitchen

The house still had the original wall oven and stove top, and we still used them until our last month in the house. We wanted to replace them individually, but time and money didn’t allow.

So we turned the spot next to the fridge where the wall oven was into another cupboard and put our very nice KitchenAid range (that I miss very much) in.

We purchased the matching dishwasher and fridge when we moved to the area. (In case you’d like to know, we liked the range–though it could have been better, loved the fridge, h-a-t-e-d the dishwasher.)

They all sure looked good though.

This was a built-in desk with peg board off the kitchen that we turned into our coffee bar and recycle center. Perfect height for a shorty like me.

The Office Area

This was at the end of the dining room. (You can see it was before we put the new floors down!)

The MCM Master Bedroom and bath

You can read more about that here.

The Guest Room

Unfortunately, we did nothing to the guest room, not even paint.

And the Main Bathroom

You can read more about that here–the before was CRAZY.

Some “Before” Pictures

You can read my first post about this house here. And see all of our posts about the MCM here.

The post Our Mid Century Modern tour appeared first on Little Victorian.

Waaay back in week 3 of the fall 2018 One Room Challenge we were making over our bathroom. I had a post written about our progress, but before I could publish it, we got big news: we were moving across the country again.

There was no time to hit publish. There was no time for anything but a mad rush to finish our renovations at the highest quality could, pack the house, get the MCM on the market, and move to New England. In one month. Our usual fashion…

So here is the original post I had written back in the fall at the half-way mark of the One Room Challenge:

Once we pulled out all the rotten drywall and built a wall between the tub and the powder room, it was time to finish it. 

What we WANTED were mother-of-pearl tiles.  Because that’s what was originally there (though in plastic form), and because it’s gorgeous.  However that would have cost us well over $1,000 just for the tub.  Definitely something we would have saved for if this were our forever home. 

But it isn’t.

2019 edit: Ha! Good timing to think like that.

And while keeping the home close to original is very important to us, we can’t go overboard in over-improving.  The fact is, this is still, and always will be a two bedroom house, and number of bedrooms, baths, and location trumps any improvements you make no matter what “they” say.  We’ve lived through it twice…

So…well over $1,000 or $144 for a shiny new, fast, and easy plastic tub surround that will be covered by a curtain anyway?  

Yay for plastic tub surrounds!

We got it up and caulked in just a few hours.  I didn’t get pictures of the process because it took both of us to put the panels up.  But it’s just putting adhesive on the backs of the panels and pressing them onto the wall.  

We weren’t able to replace the vanity like I was hoping, but we did replace the counter top with a nice one from IKEA.

Sorry again for the low-quality photos…as mentioned, we were in a mad rush.

The floor is obviously new as well. And we took out the medicine cabinet and replaced it with a nice big mirror from a thrift shop.

Here’s how it was before we bought the house:

Then after our super-quick reno:

We didn’t add up the cost, but it was under $500 for the new wall, tub surround, countertop, mirror, paint, flooring, and accessories.

I’ll be sharing a photo tour of our whole house as we moved out soon.

The post Affordable bathroom reno (the after) appeared first on Little Victorian.

It’s the last post for the $100 Room Challenge!  Sadly, we didn’t quite finish the makeover yet. We searched the house for an hour and couldn’t find the hanging kit to hang the mirror. I was also hoping to put up two small shelves next to the mirror to balance out the off-center mirror and sink.

We were actually going out of town, so we only had just under 3 weeks to do it all in, BUT I’m pretty happy that all that didn’t get done was hanging the mirror and shelves.

So three weeks and $96 later, here is our powder room makeover:

Here is our cost breakdown:

• New light fixture, Menards clearance (!) $30
• Mirror, IKEA $20
• Paint, Menards $1
• Contact paper, Amazon $10
• Floor tiles, Menards $19
• Cabinet knobs, IKEA $15
• Seal for cabinets, $0 (already had)
• Shelves (still to be put up) $0 from scraps we have

Total: $96

We also had the setback when we discovered the rotted subfloor, so that took time, and cost about $10 for the new plywood, but I’m not counting that towards the decorating.

To start from the top:

• The walls were repainted
• The light fixture replaced
• The mirror replaced
• The backsplash removed and counter lip removed for a more modern look
• The counters covered in marble contact paper
• The vanity sanded and sealed
• New knobs on vanity
• Old vinyl flooring pulled up and new peel and stick vinyl tiles put down

We were happy to find the slate-look tiles because slate is something that was often in mid century moderns. Staying close to the originally intended style is very important to us.

If you’ve never used the peel-and-stick floor tiles, let me tell you…they’re super easy and super inexpensive. And we’re always way happier with them than we expect to be. As much as we don’t like synthetic materials, sometimes, it’s just the best option.

We also didn’t get the cabinet pulls we were planning on.  We wanted tab-style that is much less visible, but IKEA only had 4 in-stock and we needed 6, so we had to switch styles to get it done in time.  

Here’s the before and after:

I’m SO thankful to Erin for hosting this challenge! There’s no telling when we would’ve gotten the powder room done without it, and we definitely would have ended up spending more without the goal of staying within $100!

Here is how the other ladies finished, go check out everyone’s great work!

Here are the process posts:

• The “new” counter
• Demolition
• The before (SO ugly, guys)

Oh, and we did end up having time to put the shelves up that I was dreaming of before we had to put the house up for sale, but we DID get the mirror hung.

Pin it for later!

Hover over the image <– and click the PIN button that pops up.

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Our bedroom updates are done(ish)! The spring One Room Challenge is over and I’m SO glad we participated again. I know our bedroom would look exactly the same as it did 5 weeks ago if it weren’t for the challenge. Here’s what it looks like now:

We removed the closet doors and built our open closet in one side with a small dresser and laundry baskets in one side. In the other side, we built the bed for the dogs, and added a face-out rack for my blouses, and a shelf for a few more things. On the underside of the shelf, there are some cup hooks screwed in to hang my scarves from.

Where the dog bed (small sofa) previously was, we put a little seating area and a pretty little tree that I’m sure the Hubs will be able to keep alive. We have the arch lamp and the painting (that I think is still hanging too high) too that we scored from Goodwill.

I still need to hang the bamboo blinds above the bed. All it takes is a couple cup hooks, but it’s way too high for me to reach. I was tempted to start stacking things on the bed to stand on, but I knew I would just fall and likely injure myself. So I will wait until we can move the bed out and put a ladder back there and do it properly…probably at some point in the next 6 months(?).

For some reference of where we started, here are the listing photos from when we bought the house:

And here’s what it looked like 5 weeks ago when we started:

And now:

Since we’re still on a major budget, the only things we purchased for the room were the bedding (actually a surprise gift from the Hubs!), the MDF to make the dog bed with, the tree, and a few accessories from Five Below. So our total was under $100!

Click here to browse all the other One Room Challenge participants!

We’re already planning on the fall One Room Challenge. And we’re thinking something much bigger, like the kitchen…which needs new floors, appliances, counters, and some cabinets. ?

The post Master Bedroom Makeover appeared first on Little Victorian.

The Victorian closed and officially belongs to someone else now.  We’re currently living in the big Craftsman as you’ve seen in the last few posts, but things just haven’t worked out like we thought they would, and this month, we’ll be moving…again.  We’ll be in the same general area, work is good and we like the area, it just wasn’t meant to be with us and the Craftsman.

The plans changed literally as I was unpacking one of the last boxes.  So I turned around and started packing back up.  Hence the lack of blog posts about what we’re up to.

We will be moved into the new house by the end of the month, where I will unpack, hopefully for the last time for a long time.  I can’t wait to show you guys the new house, it’s really, really special and there will be SO much to blog about.

The post Goodbye to the Victorian…and the Craftsman appeared first on Little Victorian.

The last 5 weeks of the One Room Challenge just flew by.

We took another week off the ORC bedroom makeover last week because we were at a point where we’d have to spend money to continue, and when you’re paying for two houses, money isn’t exactly in abundance.  (Anybody want to buy a cute Victorian?  Please?)  We were also kept pretty occupied half the week by the sewer pipe that backed up and flooded our basement.  Fun!

The Hubs found me a dresser on Craigslist, though!  I think it’s amazing and gorgeous, and the price was a steal.  It was also, literally 5 houses down from us.

It’s a nice, cool brown, not too yellow, and not too red, so I didn’t even want to re-stain it (in the future, I might want to make it a couple shades darker).  The hardware was a little drab though, so I rubbed them with gold Rub ‘n Buff to brighten them up.

Rub ‘n Buff gold leaf color is what gave the headboard a little makeover too.  I just needed something quick, cheap, and easy to make it a little less…IKEA.  It’s not bad!

The chunky knit throw has been waiting to be made for a long time.  The deadline for the One Room Challege helped me finally get it done…as did learning how to arm knit (I told the story on Instagram).

I can’t wait until we own the place and I can pull up the green carpet and the laminate that’s underneath it.  Obviously, the room is still lacking a lot, like curtains and lamps and a rug…they’re all still at our other house until it sells.  Are you sure you don’t want to buy a Victorian?

Back to the room…the biggest job here was the painting.  It started with filling in all the grooves in the paneling, priming, and painting the walls.  There area total of 7 doors and 5 windows in this room.  All the doors were painted with the wall color, and all that moulding was painted black.  (Actually, it’s not done yet, most of the moulding still needs to be finished, and the windows need to be painted white.)

The ceiling!  We were still working on that Tuesday night and Wednesday.  The Hubs brought pizza, wine, and painting supplies home with him so we could just keep working through the evening.

The chair was another steal…only $5 at Goodwill.  And the kitchen area still looks the same as it did two weeks ago.  We’re just going to pretend it’s not there until we can renovate.  All told, this temporary makeover only cost the price of the Craigslist dresser, 2 gallons + 1 quart of paint, $10 on random things at Goodwill, and one $5 tube of Rub ‘n Buff.

Hopefully by next Spring we’ll own the house, and maybe we can give it the real makeover for next year’s One Room Challenge!

All the other participants have their final posts linked up too, you should go here to the One Room Challenge page to check out some great before-and-afters!  I really appreciate Linda from Calling it Home for hosting this challenge, a deadline and accountability always work wonders for me actually getting stuff done!

The post Bedroom makeover with just paint and a few second-hand items appeared first on Little Victorian.

But first, an update on our houses: there is no update on the Victorian.  Sadly, it still belongs to us.  And we are still loving the new house.  There is considerably more work to be done than we originally thought, but we’re happy about that; it will be fun.  So far, we’ve just done minor things like paint, but we have been making plans and pricing the bigger projects.  The next post will be introducing the new house.

Several months ago, we visited my parents again.  As our yearly tradition has become, we redecorated a room in their house.  This year it was Dad’s office.

The office was not meeting their needs at all.  Mom has been simplifying over the last couple years, but they hadn’t gotten to the office yet.  So before our visit, she and I got on Skype and made a plan for her to clean it all out before we arrived.

She did an awesome job and we arrived to an empty room that dad had just finished repainting.  The old furniture was sold on Craigslist and new furniture was picked out before we got there too.

Since it’s dad’s office, I wanted his desk in the center of the room as the focal point.  He uses a tablet instead of a PC, so we didn’t even have any cords to try to hide.  Also, since they had gotten rid of most of what was on the bookshelves, they didn’t need nearly that amount of storage space.  I had been looking (unsuccessfully) for new, smaller and better-looking bookshelves for them, but dad surprised me and built the new ones.

The photos aren’t good…sorry.

Yes, that is the same room.  As you can see, we didn’t have enough to fill the bookshelves at this point.  We also hadn’t found replacement office chairs yet.  The drafting desk is from World Market.  (Similar, but not quite as good-looking here if you don’t have a World Market).  While they had the desk in stock, I suggested asking for the floor model at a discount since the surface was scratched.  He did and they gave it to him!  The wood had more green undertones than he wanted, so he refinished it when he got it home to this richer, less trendy color.

We got a long and shallow desk for mom and put it where the old giant bookshelf used to be.  They went for the build-your-own IKEA system with a filing cabinet on one end and two legs on this end.

Dad wanted a comfy place to sit and read, so the comfy chair came in.  They are considering updating it with one that matches better in the future.

The last night we were there, we stopped at a Restoration Hardware outlet store and found the perfect new desk chairs for both of them.  (Didn’t realize my camera was out of focus, and I only got the one picture of mom’s new chair, but you get the idea.)

Here are the before and after pictures together for perspective:

I’ll be back on Thursday with some photos of our new Craftsman!

The post Really big home office makeover appeared first on Little Victorian.

Story time.  (Interspersed with the latest photos of our house.)

Back when the Hubs and I met, we lived 750 miles apart in two different states.  9 years and 48 weeks ago, we got married and lived in a third state.

Just 4 months after getting married, he was offered a job that seemed to good to be true, 950 miles away in another direction.  He was to start in 3 weeks.

So in 3 weeks, we packed up everything we owned and moved into a hotel in a place we had never even visited before.  It was awesome.  We found the cutest little duplex to rent in the quietest little town in a state that we still adore.  Even though we moved away from that state over 8 years ago, it still feels like home to us.

We loved the adventure of packing up and moving, and we did it three more times, to two more states.  Then when the Hubs’ job looked like it was going to be long-term, we decided to buy a house.  We really wanted something we could totally make over and make our own.

We fell in love with our little Victorian and even though we didn’t think it would need much making-over, we promptly began remodeling the whole thing.

We never thought it would be our forever home, and frankly, we never wanted it to be.  Nothing against the house, we just weren’t ready for our adventures to end.  A couple years ago, we started getting restless again and wanted to try a new state, make more new friends, see more new places, but the right opportunity never came up.

Until now.

The Hubs was offered a new job last week.  It is 850 miles away, back in the state he is from, and very close to where we got married.  And he’s starting in 3 weeks.  Our realtor said we should be prepared for it to take quite a while for our little home to sell since it’s a very unique house.  It isn’t even officially on the market yet, but we just had our first showing a few hours ago, and it’s actually looking quite promising.  They seemed to love the house just like we do.  We’ll see in the coming days!

Either way, on the day after our 10th anniversary, 4 weeks from now, we will be moving into our new house.  Yes, we already have the new one picked out, and we’re working out the details.  It’s not little, and it’s not a Victorian, but the blog will remain, and we’ll soon be sharing an all new makeover with you.

It will be hard, and I will cry, but we can’t wait for the next adventure.  Thank you for being here with us and our Little Victorian, hope you’ll be coming along with us to the big craftsman as well!

The post DIY Victorian Renovation appeared first on Little Victorian.

So generally in our house, it goes like this: I come up with a crazy renovation idea.  The Hubs sighs and/or thinks it’s awesome.  Then he, being an engineer, gets straight to the logic and maths and facts and all the other things that take up too much time and could be skipped that will make the ideas actually functional.

So, we sit down and brainstorm and sketch together, and then we get to work.  He leads in building the structures and foundations (like framing, drywalling, demo, electrical, plumbing, etc.) and I assist.  Then when he’s at work the next day (or over following months), I plan and carry out the finishes like trim, moulding, painting, etc.

This latest project was no different.

Behold, our DIY sliding-door butler’s pantry:

Yes, you’re right, it’s not a butler’s pantry at all, it just sound fancy, so that’s what I call it.  It’s just a closet/pantry/built-in china cabinet in the dining room.

So, if you remember, from once upon a time when I blogged: our dining room is huge in scale compared to the rest of the house.  In the 1890s when the house was built, it was the combo kitchen and dining room.

We didn’t need that much room and it was pretty out-of-balance for this small house.

One thing I love about the new pantry is that we made it level with the weird fridge box that’s in the middle of the kitchen.  So now the fridge box doesn’t look as strange!

If you remember, there was just a wall there before where we put our china cabinet and buffet:

So for the technicalities:

• We framed it out, just like you would do any wall. 
• The Hubs procured kits for installing sliding closet doors, along with 8 foot pieces of high-quality plywood to trim down to size for each door. 
• We hung a shelving system similar to this (affiliate link) and employed our old trick of using stair treads as shelves because they’re more substantial, and just prettier.

He cut the doors to fit, and then I trimmed them with cedar planks we had leftover from another project. I used wood glue and a brad nailer. Then caulked all the seams and primed and painted. 

The side panel was drywalled and mudded. Then everything was painted the same blue as the walls. 

And inside:

I’ve been taking updated photos of the house as we’re finishing up ALL of our unfinished projects.  (Literally, our list of work left for the house is officially down to 33 small items.)  So expect more updates in the coming weeks.

Save to home board on Pinterest!

Just hover over the image and click “Pin”

The post Building a built-in sliding-door pantry appeared first on Little Victorian.

The base cabinets in our kitchen looked horrible.  It wasn’t the cabinets themselves, it was the finish.  As with much of the house, their paint job was pretty terrible.  It was streaky and bumpy, which made lots of grooves for oils and dirt to collect, and they were badly stained all around the handles.  Which meant it always looked dirty, no matter how much I scrubbed.

I wanted something darker anyway.  The color they were painted was very similar to the wall color and it made the room look pretty flat and dull.

So I painted them Martha Stewart’s Zinc (which you can’t get color cards for anymore) but it’s a nice rich slate gray, in a semi-gloss finish.

Once again, I texted Dad, and asked the best way to paint over a badly painted cabinets in a semi-gloss finish.  I was quite surprised when he said to wet sand them.  But the results were amazing.  It smoothed all the bumps right out and left a nice, flat finish.

Of course, I removed all the hardware and took all the doors and drawers outside.  To sand, I took a sanding sponge, dunked it in water, squeezed out the excess, and lightly sanded everything.  The sanding block had to be rinsed out several times during the process.  (Very important note if you are going to try this: make sure that you put a drop cloth down, because the wet sanding re-activates the paint, and it will drip.)

There was a film left on the doors after sanding, but since mine were completely sealed with at least 4 coats of paint, I just rinsed them off with the hose and dried them with old towels.  The cabinets themselves took a little more work since I couldn’t just hose them down.  I didn’t get the sanding block quite as wet and then once they were sanded, I wiped them down twice with damp cloths.

To repaint, I brushed in all of the corners and then rolled on the rest with a 4-inch foam paint roller (similar to this).  Love the easy changes that make such a big difference!  There were a couple more changes I made, but forgot to photograph them.  I’ll tell you about then next week!

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