If Walls Could Talk... 100th Post!!... Gift Give Away!!!

Welcome to my 100th post!

(Please don't *skim* over this one, you might miss something!) And as always, click images to see larger versions if you like.

I can't believe I've come this far. How fun it has been to meet all of you, and become part of each other's worlds. I have learned quite a bit in these last few months; about others AND myself. It has been a wonderful experience and I thank each an every one of you bloggin' buddies!

When starting out, I wanted to lead you through each room of our 100 year old home as I gave you the "tour". However, I quickly found out that blogging takes you in many different directions and I haven't stayed on course! You can see the first few posts about our home at the end of May (link in sidebar archives)~ and throughout my blog if you check the labels.

Today I'm going to take you upstairs and show you the front bedroom, or my craft room, as it was when we moved in.

Here is the door leading into the room. The only room with a transom left upstairs. Perty, huh?

It's also the only transom with working hardware. Curious cats!
Closeup of of funky wallpaper
I heard this room was used as a kitchen at one time, when the house was divided into apartments. This is the larger side~
This brown stuff on the walls here is CORK!! Ugh. I kept thinking how horrendous it would be to remove, but we ended up gutting the entire room so it didn't matter, lol!

You can see an outlet in the middle of the left wall, I guess where they plugged in a kitchen stove. We have two of them over there.

So yes, funky wallpaper, cork, and incredibly bright aqua blue paint all in one room. Bamboozling isn't it?

Now we come to a closet. A closet with a window inside and this dinky little door. I wish I had photos of the inside. It was mostly old wooden shelves. This area must have leaked big time, there were stains everywhere and different old wallpapers, which you will get to see soon...

Since the closet had a window and I could tell it was not original to the house, possibly built in the 20's or 30's, I had Kevin take it out. It was still a somewhat hard decision! But I'm so glad we did it.... here's a shot afterwards~ nice and bright!

By this point we had torn into the living room and dining room and found a few old bottles in the debris. So when he started on the closet removal, I told him I hope he finds something cool there too.

You can see the outline of the old paper on the ceiling and such here. This is my little bro, who is married with a baby now. (I can't believe it!!) I think this is a neat pic as Kevin shovels the old plaster into a bucket you can see the dust rising up. Dirty, dirty work. Not fun to breath.

Plaster is down on that half of the room, but lath strips are still up. Can you even tell what a pretty floor that could be? Um~ not now, huh.

Heads up! Plaster coming down!

The window in front of my brother is the parlor. Kevin is upstairs in the craft room, and the window to the left upstairs is our bedroom, below that is the living room, (which you can't see)

YAY! Let the lath removal begin! For those of you not familiar with old houses with plaster and lath, you can read about it here.

What a mess.

But it was worth it.

....because...

As Kevin was tearing out the lath on the closet side............he found THIS~

A drawing of a man in carpenter's chalk with the year 1907! It's quite hard to photograph, so I emphasized the pic a bit here to better show you~

Many people tell us they think it looks like Mark Twain. I guess it *could* be... but that was just the style then. I wonder if it's a self portrait. And most of all I wonder if whomever drew it actually thought that anyone would ever see it again?

You can't tell, but the picture is just above the handle of the shovel. We've since drywalled over it, but when we're ready we plan to cut the drywall out where the picture is. I have a piece of glass to place over it, inside the studs. I can then hang framed art over top and simply remove it when we want to show off our "talking walls".

I had tried looking up what I could about the house at the Court House and such, but came up empty handed. The only info I had was from the previous family, and another family who had lived here in the 70's. So, between our sidewalk out front being stamped with 1907, and then finding this dated *artwork*, I think it's safe to say that our home was built in 1907. (Ok, so it's 100 and ONE years old.... it's just easier to say 100 year old house when I talk about it, lol)

To celebrate our home's centennial in 2007, Kevin made little gift crates using the lath strips from our home, and on the ends I decoupaged this label... only I made it a tinge red and old looking~ (for the life of me I cannot find a pic of the finished product!) You can see the sidewalk picture on that, and I took out our name for safety/blogging purposes.

Here are some of the wallpaper layers found in the closet area. Such beautiful paper. Especially the wide border. Oh, how I wish I could find this today! And upon closer inspection I can see that it was pink and green, the same shades I'm using in the room today!


We are not finished with this room, (it's been about 4 years). We've just had bigger fish to fry lately. So, it pretty much looks like this now, only with MORE of my *junque* in it. Projects waiting to be brought to life, pictures waiting to be hung, windows waiting to be dressed. We need new windows tho, so I'm holding out!
The floor turned out beautifully!

You can see more of this room and it's decor to be in this post.

I hope you all have enjoyed my 100th post. If you've made it this far, then you you simply must leave a comment! I'll be pulling a winning name from the comments on October 1st. I'm not going to tell you what the gift give away is, but I will tell you that it has something to do with The Scarlett Rose Garden; a garden mix if you will. I do hope that the winner will share their gift on their blog once received!

Hugs to you all,

Nikki