Farmhouse Living Unveiled: Renovation Milestones, Vintage Decor Finds, and Curated Spring Favorites
Welcome to our monthly roundup of cherished discoveries and happenings! This list features wonderful things to do, buy, read, watch, and much more, designed to inspire your home and lifestyle.
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Happy spring, everyone! What an incredibly exhilarating and busy few weeks it has been here at our farmhouse fixer. We pushed ourselves to the limit, sprinting towards our ambitious goal of moving into our dream home by April 1st. The past month has been a whirlwind of activity, encompassing endless hours of painting, meticulous caulking, creative sewing projects, precise drilling for new installations, crafting custom shelves, applying protective poly coatings to our new surfaces, and diligently finishing the floors. Every task, big and small, contributed to bringing our vision to life.
I am absolutely thrilled to share the triumphant news: we made it! We successfully moved into the farmhouse and spent our very first night here on April 1st! This monumental achievement is, without a doubt, the ultimate “good thing” to report this month. Beyond the sheer joy of settling into our new space, I have several other exciting discoveries and recommendations for you. This includes an incredible source for high-quality European linen that I’m beyond excited to share, eight insightful book reviews (perfect companions for all that painting!), and much more that I believe you’ll appreciate. Let’s dive right into the details!
Monthly Discoveries and Delights
The Big Move: Settling into Our Farmhouse Dream!
Without a doubt, moving into our renovated farmhouse is the number one highlight of this entire year. The image above shows the nearly empty rooms of the manufactured home that served as our comfortable interim residence for the past three years. This temporary home was a true blessing, providing a cozy and stable environment while we navigated the often-unpredictable journey of permits, foundation work, and various contractor delays associated with the farmhouse renovation. We are immensely grateful for the shelter and comfort it provided during this extensive waiting period.
Now, this wonderful interim home has become a welcoming haven for my brother and my sweet sister-in-law, which adds another layer of joy to our story. In fact, their incredible help and unwavering support over the last six months were absolutely instrumental in bringing the farmhouse project to completion. Without their tireless efforts, we simply wouldn’t be living here yet. This truly emphasizes another invaluable “good thing” we are profoundly thankful for: the enduring strength and generosity of family!
To celebrate this significant milestone, let’s take a little sneak peek tour of the first floor. This is just a glimpse, and I promise a comprehensive video tour and a full photographic walkthrough will be shared as soon as we’re more fully settled and everything is perfectly in place. For now, enjoy this initial look at our freshly renovated spaces!
The Living Room: Our Welcoming Sanctuary
Setting up the living room was one of our top priorities on moving day, and it immediately began to transform into the heart of our new home. One of the most impactful changes we made was to open up the view by adding a second window to the side wall. Previously, there was only one window of that size, but the addition has made a monumental difference, bathing the room in natural light and offering expansive views of our property. We are incredibly pleased with this decision, which we implemented a couple of months ago.
While the room already feels so inviting, I still have curtains to hang. These will be thoughtfully placed high and wide to frame the windows without obstructing the beautiful vista. They will serve a practical purpose, providing warmth and privacy, especially to address those “black holes” at night that often make a room feel less cozy. The living room is quickly becoming our favorite spot for relaxation and connection.
The Dining Room: Blending Functionality with Historic Charm
This dining room is a testament to thoughtful design and the strategic re-imagination of space. We created this distinct area from what was once a single, large room by adding a dividing wall. While the trend often favors knocking down walls to create open-plan spaces, in this case, the addition of a wall has made the room significantly more functional and versatile. It now provides a dedicated spot for the beautiful shelf you see to the right, along with convenient coat hooks and a charming bench for visitors, enhancing both storage and utility.
This new wall not only delineates the dining area but also creates ideal backdrops for our dining room furniture. Crucially, it doesn’t feel isolating, thanks to the generous 8-foot opening we purposefully left, ensuring a continuous flow and connection with adjacent spaces. Furthermore, this design honors the original footprint of the house; historically, a wall would have separated the family parlor from the guest parlor, although its exact central location might have differed slightly from our modern adaptation. There’s still more to complete here, including the wiring and hanging of the chandelier, replacing a broken window, and then the final touches of trim painting, curtain hanging, and precise furniture arrangement.
The Main Bathroom: A Spa-Like Retreat
Our main bathroom is largely complete, and stepping into it truly feels like entering a luxurious spa. Despite its compact footprint, the tall shower enclosure offers a surprisingly opulent experience, while the generously sized mirror above the sink is both a gorgeous focal point and highly functional. My absolute favorite feature is the vintage china cabinet, lovingly painted by my sister-in-law in a perfectly matched Boxwood Green, which now serves as elegant and practical bathroom storage nestled behind the door. As I organized our bathroom supplies, I initially thought built-in cabinets might have offered more storage capacity. However, I adore the character and charm this vintage piece brings, and I’m embracing the challenge of being creative with our organizational solutions!
For those interested in the planning stages and design decisions, you can explore more of the bathroom plan here. A quick note for those who have been following our journey: the beautiful wooden doors throughout the house are not original. Sadly, most original features had been removed or covered over the years. We salvaged these exquisite doors from another 100-year-old house in town, had them professionally stripped, and painstakingly rehung them. They are truly another one of my most cherished elements in this farmhouse renovation, adding layers of history and authentic character.
The Master Bedroom: A Stunning Transformation
Our master bedroom is a perfect example of how strategic expansion can create breathtaking results. This spacious and airy retreat was meticulously crafted from the original tiny back room of the farmhouse, significantly enhanced by the 8-foot bump-out addition we integrated. We raised the ceiling, which was already quite tall at over 9 feet, and incorporated an abundance of large windows, allowing natural light to flood the space. The cumulative effect of these changes is nothing short of stunning.
While I sometimes reflect that I might not have raised the ceiling or added such tall windows if I could go back, due to the substantial expense and logistical challenges they introduced, I can still deeply appreciate the sheer beauty and grandeur of this finished room. I am particularly delighted with the faux exposed rafters that we painstakingly distressed. You can just catch a glimpse of one in the photo above. These rafters were a super affordable alternative to reclaimed beams and possess a far more authentic appearance than some of the foam-type beams I’ve encountered. We’ll be sharing a complete tutorial on how we achieved this look very soon, so stay tuned for those DIY details!
Discovering an Exceptional Source for European Linen Fabric
Take a moment to admire the magnificent 10-foot curtain panels gracing our master bedroom windows. The journey to acquiring these was quite an adventure! I ultimately decided to make them myself, primarily because the cost of purchasing pre-made blackout linen panels of this extraordinary length was prohibitively expensive, and even polyester alternatives offered only marginal savings. My quest for high-quality ivory linen fabric that was both in stock and under $20 per yard proved surprisingly challenging.
I mentioned this predicament in my weekly newsletter, and much to my delight, a thoughtful reader responded, recommending Fabrics-Store.com as an excellent source for linen. I immediately investigated, and what I found was truly remarkable: not only were they fully stocked with a wide array of linen fabrics in various weights, but their prices were also significantly better than any other source I had explored, averaging just over $10 per yard! (Huge thanks to my wonderful readers for such invaluable tips!) I promptly ordered several samples of different weights and created an account. The very next day, I received an email offering a discount on up to 15 yards of ivory linen, which translated to an incredible savings of about $3 per yard. It felt like striking gold!
Naturally, I ordered the maximum limit, and the stunning result is the glorious 10-foot-plus curtains you see in the photo above. (For those curious, I found the best price for blackout lining here.) I still need to hem them – a fantastic tip for DIY curtains is to hang them unhemmed first, allowing you to pin them to the perfect length – and make a couple of minor adjustments, but I am absolutely delighted with how they’ve turned out. The material cost for these custom panels came in at just $50 per panel, which is less than half the price of buying pre-made curtains of this length!
If you’re embarking on any project requiring linen, I wholeheartedly encourage you to explore Fabrics-Store.com. They also offer patterns, including a project to make your own linen waffle-weave towels, which I’ve been eyeing for my next endeavor. Oh, and that elegant barn door you see in the picture was the last major project Brian completed before we moved in – and it presented its own set of challenges! It cleverly houses another vintage door we salvaged, complete with a full-length mirror on one side, which is perfectly positioned on the closet interior.
A Charming Vintage Style Distressed Rug for Our Farmhouse Living Room
Our recent move necessitated a complete reshuffling of our rugs to better suit the farmhouse’s dimensions and new room layouts. The beautiful wool-jute rug that once graced our previous living room, though a bit too large for our new farmhouse space, found its perfect new home in our expanded master bedroom. Similarly, our daughter needed a rug for her upstairs room with its newly refinished fir floors, and the rug from our old bedroom fit the bill perfectly.
This left me on the hunt for a new rug for the farmhouse living room – a task that, for me, is never simple! All the rugs I instantly fall in love with seem to come with a price tag well over $1000, which is certainly not in our budget. I thought I had settled on another jute rug, this time with elegant black cotton threads, but a few weeks later, amidst the chaos of moving, I realized I had never actually clicked the ‘buy’ button! (Did I mention the last month has been a bit hectic?)
Back to square one. I found myself repeatedly returning to the Target website, drawn to the same vintage style distressed rug. While it wasn’t a natural fiber, it possessed that wonderfully aged, subtle texture and vintage charm I was seeking. Coupled with its excellent price point and glowing reviews, it felt like the right choice. Decision made! They even had it in stock locally, so Brian was able to pick it up for me. The rug photo shown above is from the website, but it tends to appear a bit tanner online than it does in real life. As you can see in the first living room photo of our farmhouse, the background color is actually a softer ivory, complementing our decor beautifully.
I genuinely like it; it works wonderfully in the space. But here’s something truly amusing about this purchase: As soon as Brian unrolled it, I had a sudden realization – it was the *exact same rug* we had just moved from our bedroom to our daughter’s room! We originally purchased it from Target almost six years ago, and they’re still selling it. No wonder I kept gravitating towards it on their website! It seems some styles are simply timeless for us. If this charming vintage style rug appeals to you, here is the link to make it yours as well.
March Reads: A Curated Selection of Books
The Strange Journey of Alice Pendelburyby Mark Levy: This proved to be a delightful audiobook companion during my many hours of painting. The narrative centers on the titular character, Alice, and her unexpected odyssey to a new location where she begins to uncover answers about a past she cannot recall. The characters, particularly in their dialogue and aspirations, read very much like individuals in their early twenties living in 1950s London. I was genuinely surprised to discover towards the end of the book that Alice was actually 39 years old, as their journey of self-discovery and finding purpose felt more aligned with a younger age bracket. However, the story offers an intriguing twist in its latter chapters, complemented by vivid and sensory descriptions of the places visited, capturing not only their appearance but also their distinctive smells and atmospheres. While it begins somewhat slowly, by about a third of the way through, you become deeply invested in unraveling the plot’s direction and Alice’s destiny.
A Gentleman In Moscowby Amor Towels: I had been eager to read this highly acclaimed novel for quite some time and finally borrowed it from the library. The central premise struck me as utterly unique: a titled Russian aristocrat is arrested shortly after the Bolshevik Revolution in the early 20th century. Instead of facing execution, like many others of his class, he is sentenced to a lifetime of confinement within a luxurious Moscow hotel, with the decree that should he ever leave, he will be shot. My daughter had warned me that it might be a bit slow, but I found the concept and its execution utterly fascinating. The story beautifully explores profound questions: How does one truly live a fulfilling life when confined to a single place? How does an individual adapt and thrive within such restrictive circumstances? What kind of attitude can sustain a person through decades of imprisonment within opulence?
Count Alexander Rostov, once a man of immense importance and wealth, is reduced to living in small attic rooms. Yet, throughout his years in the Metropol Hotel, he never becomes too proud to befriend the staff, and even assumes various roles among them. He manages to forge a rich life filled with wonderful friendships and even adopts a daughter. It serves as a poignant and inspiring portrait of gratitude for what one possesses, a relentless search for usefulness, and the remarkable capacity to live a good life against all odds.
Ella Minnow Peaby Mark Dunn: This book was a delightful discovery, given to me by my daughter after she read it for her book club. I had never heard of it before! The ingenious premise revolves around a fictional island nation off the coast of the Carolinas, home to the individual credited with creating the pangram, “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog” – a sentence famously using every letter of the alphabet. In the town’s main square stands a statue commemorating this phrase. One day, one of the letters from the statue falls off. The islanders interpret this as a divine sign to cease using that specific letter, and the story unfolds from there. The novel itself is told entirely through a series of letters exchanged between characters. As the narrative progresses, more and more letters are “outlawed,” making the written communication increasingly challenging and cleverly reflecting the accelerating linguistic restrictions within the story. It’s a quick, refreshingly different read that, despite its whimsical premise, carries surprisingly serious undertones about language, freedom, and societal control.
Can We Trust the Gospelsby Peter J. Williams: This book came highly recommended by the author of a previous read, ‘Stay Salt,’ and I’m so glad I picked it up. It is absolutely packed with compelling arguments and historical evidence supporting the accuracy of the Gospels. Williams meticulously applies the same rigorous historical proof methods used for any other historical document to evaluate the New Testament accounts, making a strong case for their reliability. While certain sections lean towards a more scholarly, academic style that might feel a touch dry to some readers, the overall experience was incredibly eye-opening and deeply affirming for my understanding of Christian history and faith. It provides a robust intellectual foundation for those seeking to understand the historical credibility of these foundational texts.
Maisie Dobbsby Jacqueline Windspear: For years, numerous readers have recommended this captivating series to me, and I finally had the chance to listen to the first installment. I thoroughly enjoyed both the foundational premise of the book and the unfolding mystery within. What truly resonated with me was how Maisie Dobbs’s detective abilities weren’t simply presented as inherent; instead, the author skillfully reveals her journey of mentorship and training, demonstrating how she learned to observe details, understand human behavior, and piece together complex clues. This approach lent immense credibility to her character and her skills, making her a far more believable and engaging protagonist.
This initial novel effectively sets the stage for the entire series, I presume, providing a rich tapestry of Maisie’s backstory. All the historical and personal context is genuinely interesting, and the particular mystery she solves in this book, while engaging, isn’t necessarily the sole focus of the narrative. One aspect that did slightly disappoint me, however, was the delayed reunion with her sweetheart, which only occurs at the very end. The reader is led to believe he might have been killed in the war, only to discover he was injured and she hadn’t visited him in years. This felt a bit inconsistent with the strong, compassionate character the author had meticulously built throughout the preceding chapters. Despite this minor narrative choice, I am very much looking forward to delving deeper into the series and following Maisie’s further adventures.
Meet Me At The Museumby Ann Youngson: This was another wonderful reader recommendation I was fortunate enough to find at my local library. It’s a poignant and beautifully crafted story told entirely through letters. The narrative follows an English woman who initiates a correspondence with a museum in Europe, eventually forming a deep connection with one of its workers. Witnessing their unique friendship blossom and evolve through their heartfelt letters, set against the backdrop of their lives unfolding over many years, is incredibly sweet and tender. The ending, for me, carried a touch of sadness – I typically prefer stories with neat, happy conclusions, and this one didn’t quite adhere to that. However, this didn’t diminish my appreciation for the book; its gentle charm and emotional depth left a lasting impression, even with its slightly bittersweet resolution.
The Husband Huntersby Anne DeCourcy: If you’ve ever enjoyed ‘Downton Abbey,’ you’re likely familiar with the historical phenomenon of wealthy American heiresses who traveled to England in search of titled husbands, and the often land-rich, cash-poor English aristocrats who married them. This fascinating non-fiction work delves into the true stories of these real women – many of whom were mere girls – who married into the English aristocracy at the close of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries. I found it utterly captivating and rich with historical detail.
I was most surprised to learn about the stark differences in societal power and autonomy between women in America and women in England during this period; American women generally held significantly more control over their families and personal lives. Furthermore, girls in America typically received a more comprehensive education than their English counterparts. The romanticized image we often associate with “English country life” is brought into sharp, often harsh, reality through the experiences of these American women. After being raised amidst the vibrancy and comforts of New York City, many found themselves navigating the drafty, cold, and often isolated country estates for six months of the year. Unsurprisingly, most of these transatlantic marriages didn’t achieve the fairy-tale happiness often depicted on shows like ‘Downton Abbey,’ revealing the complex realities behind the glittering facade.
The Lazy Genius Wayby Kendra Adachi: I’ve been a loyal listener to Kendra Adachi’s podcast and a subscriber to her newsletter for years, so I immediately put her new book on hold the moment I saw it was available. Even with a few months’ wait, it was well worth it! Kendra consistently offers such insightful and practical advice about prioritizing what truly matters to us and then finding the simplest, most efficient ways to accomplish those essential tasks. This book is absolutely brimming with valuable nuggets of wisdom, applicable to so many aspects of life. Whether you’re seeking guidance on boosting productivity, effortlessly entertaining guests, consistently preparing delicious meals every night, seamlessly fitting reading into your busy schedule, or tackling numerous other daily challenges, you’ll find empowering strategies within its pages. It’s truly a must-read for anyone looking to simplify and intentionally improve their daily routines.
What We’re Watching: Entertainment Picks
TV Series:
The Crown, Season 3 (Netflix): While I might be a bit late to this season, I’ve found myself enjoying some of these episodes far more than those in the previous two seasons. This installment seems to delve deeper into significant global events and their profound impact on the British Royal Family, moving beyond some of the more “gossipy” elements that characterized earlier seasons. My favorite episode, without a doubt, focused on the devastating Aberfan mud avalanche in a Welsh mining town, which tragically obliterated a school. It was a historical event I knew nothing about, and the episode was utterly heart-wrenching, beautifully illustrating the Crown’s role in a national tragedy.
The Right Stuff (Disney+): We decided to give this series a try after browsing through Disney+’s offerings and have been pleasantly surprised by how thoroughly we’ve been enjoying it. This show offers a more in-depth and nuanced portrayal of the early days of the U.S. space program and the Mercury Seven astronauts than the original movie did, with both adaptations drawing from the same compelling source book. It’s a captivating look at history, ambition, and the human spirit.
Nate Bargatze, Greatest Average American (Netflix): This is the latest stand-up special from Nate Bargatze, a comedian whose work we consistently enjoy. He has a unique talent for observational humor that is both genuinely funny and refreshingly clean – two qualities that are incredibly important to us when choosing entertainment. His ability to find humor in everyday situations makes his specials highly relatable and always a pleasure to watch.
Hamilton (Disney+): Our daughter initially purchased a couple of months of this streaming service primarily to watch ‘Hamilton.’ Oh my goodness, what an absolutely magnificent musical this turned out to be! It was utterly riveting to watch on screen, and I can only imagine the sheer power and impact of experiencing it live on stage. The storytelling, the music, and the performances were truly extraordinary – a genuine “wow” moment in our viewing experience.
Soul (Disney+): This Pixar film was an enjoyable watch, boasting the stunning animation and visual artistry that we’ve come to expect from all Pixar movies. However, it did present some rather unconventional and abstract ideas, particularly concerning the afterlife and the nature of purpose. I’m genuinely not sure how younger children would interpret or understand some of the more complex philosophical concepts explored in the film, making it perhaps more geared towards an adult audience than typical Pixar fare.
That concludes another exciting edition of the Good Things List!
If you’re eager to explore more of my favorite finds and experiences, you can delve into all previous Good Things Lists right here. I would genuinely love to hear your thoughts – whether you’ve tried any of these recommendations or have your own wonderful suggestions to share. Please feel free to leave a comment below and join the conversation!
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