An AMAZING Victorian House on Halloween

HAPPY HALLOWEEN! You guys are the best readers ever! Thank you so much for your suggestions for my sheet music project, I knew y'all would have the answers. I'll show you my remake soon. As for the most votes for Ellie's costume, tallied by comments, email and Facebook, she is wearing the winning choice at the end of the post.  

No tricks here, I think you are going to love this treat! An exterior tour of a gorgeous Victorian dressed for Halloween!

This house! Every time I have an opportunity to drive by it, I do. It's a restored Victorian owned by the most amazing people who decorate it beautifully. Their Halloween decor is one of my favorites...

In addition to being such wonderfully kind people, the McBurneys are incredibly talented decorators. The home is owned by our town's mayor, Williard McBurney, and his wife, Darlene McBurney. Steven McBurney, their son, is an interior decorator who also lives locally and owns and operates McBurney Designs, a fine interior and antiques store. 

My Bear, 10, with some scary friends

He has helped me several times with my home, remember my large foyer mirror and curtains? (Here if you missed it).  He's currently remodeling his store, which is housed in a beautiful historic building that was formerly a church (with soaring ceilings and stained glass windows! Love!) and will reopen soon. I've already been stalking it, trying to get in early. :)

Steven restored the Victorian home several years ago. Darlene loved the house as a child and used to walk past it often, saying that just maybe someday she would live there. 

It was meant to be, because she and her family have lived there many years now. She and Steven always decorate the house beautifully and give the town a treat with each season.

That trimwork!

I hope this to be the first in a series of local house tours. This may entail me knocking on some stranger's doors, but a tour is worth possible humiliation ,right? 

Great detail...and look at that window...swoon

For now, enjoy this beautiful Victorian. Thank you to the McBurneys for sharing your home with us! Happy Halloween!

Love,

Elizabeth

Elizabeth thinks this is hilarious. I think it's the creepiest moment of my life. And I'm dressed as a pig.

Ways to turn your house into a vintage home Part 3

This is the last of the three part series. Here are Part One and Part Two, if you missed them.

DOORS

MY FAVORITE THING! I had no idea I loved doors so much until we built the house.

I admit it is a weird obsession but it started when I discovered arched doors. Houzz.com is the best and worst website when you are working on your house. Great for ideas but there are so many possibilities, it makes you a little crazy. And the budget says 'No, we do not need to import carved, arched wooden doors from another country' (Or was is Hubby that said that?). Doesn't anyone understand the need for antique arched doors with beautiful hand-carvings from India?? 

So I put the doors from India aside since no one wanted to sell them to me for pennies. Later at an antique store, we found some neat 120 year old doors that used to be the front doors of someone's house, and made them into our pantry doors by putting them on sliders:

These doors may be too shabby for some people, but I really like them. Some of my relatives are mystified why I would want grubby, ancient doors in my house. As you can see, they are really beat up. I'm going to do a post soon on how my hubby got these ready to hang. These doors cost no more than it would have to get plain doors, so I think it's a neat way to add character without adding cost on to what I would've spent anyway. The sliders do add to the cost, but I wanted to do sliders regardless if we used antique doors or not.

I found another antique door online, this one a little bit of a splurge but we decided to go for it and use it for the basement door. By the time our builder stripped off some chipping veneer and worked on it's quirks, he said he could've just built us a door just like it for the same or less money.

Oopsie.

Um, yeah, but it's vintage and besides, it came with an old door handle...so it makes it totally worth it. Hubby really loves me, or he's secretly planning my demise, because he never said a word. I really love that guy, so I'm going with he loves me too.

ANTIQUE RUGS

A few pieces of antique furniture mixed with new pieces helps gives a house a vintage character, but my favorite, along with the doors, is an antique rug. I have a thing for turkish rugs right now and Etsy has some cute ones. The larger ones are pretty expensive but you can get a 2x3 fairly inexpensively for a bath or kitchen and really add some character to your home because they are so unique. 

My grandmother gave me a few of her oriental rugs. They are red, which wouldn't normally be my first choice for color scheme, but I love that they are worn and frayed around the edges. There's something about having something passed down with a family story that makes them special.

That's the last of the vintage home series. I'm moving on to some fall decor soon. Bring on the pumpkins! Thanks for reading!

Love, 

Elizabeth

Sometimes I think Elizabeth's Hubby could use a nice vacation. At a contemporary resort. With no vintage doors.

The Old Homeplace (House Exterior)

So I'm singing, 'Welcome to My House' by Flo-Rida really badly right now, but I can't help it (at least my other half can sing).  When the hubs and I planned to build this house, I wanted it to be what my dad always described as the old homestead.  Not physically like Dad's old home but the kind of place family gathers for generations.  I pictured family mulling around everywhere, eating meals of fried chicken and homegrown green beans, homemade pies and cakes.  Hmmmmmm, gotta love the South, there goes that diet.........and plenty of room for kids to roam and play outside, maybe even a pool someday?  An old homeplace, you know? 

We agreed upon a French style home, although a departure from the house in the movie, 'Something's Gotta Give' that I had first envisioned (Ohmygoodness if you've never seen it, google it, it's the best!), it turned out to be the perfect choice for us.  It's fun to have pops of elegance here and there but still be casual enough for old vintage worn rugs and chippy paint.  In almost all design decisions I make, I try to have an inspiration photo.  Along with the help of a wonderful designer/friend, we choose the color of the exterior of the home based on the home pictured below. 

Source unknown, please advise if you can give credit for the photo

Our climate here in Kentucky could not accommodate the treatment on the brick which I assume is a mortar wash.  Oh, how I would have loved to do that! (But that's another post).  I love the old world look of this house.  We have yet to add our shutters but this is probably the look and color we will go for, along with similar landscaping.

 We took a houseplan that was as close to what we wanted as we could find, and by the end of it had reworked at least half of the house. It was great after years of searching to have the exact house we were looking for:

1. One story, although we ended up with storage and a bonus room upstairs.  I hurt my back a few years ago and stairs are not my friend.
2. Tall ceilings - The ceilings are 10' - 12'.
3. Room for the baby grand piano that I was given as a teenager.  I never thought I'd design a whole house around a piano, but it's a space sucker for sure.
4. Three bedrooms with their own baths.
5. Large dining room (for all that food, right???)  Ok, I'd admit I have a problem, but let's move on.
6. Character, as much as we could afford.  Turns out character is expensive.  Boooo.

Front steps after the rain.

Our driveway is gravel.  We plan to pave it but I really enjoy the sound of driving home on gravel right now for some reason.  (I'm sure it has nothing to do with not having to pay for the driveway). Plus I can tell myself that's a French style driveway, right??

Ellie and the bad hair day.

I LOVE looking at houses and getting ideas, which is one reason I started the blog.  I have lived in apartments, a duplex and several houses and I can honestly say there were aspects of each one of them that I loved, no matter how small or large, simple or fancy.  Any house can become a home with your own touch on it.  And it doesn't have to be perfect, mine certainly isn't!  What's your style?  Are you into the vintage look?  French? Or a huge wrap around porch like the house in 'Something's Gotta Give?' I'd love to see your house sometime!