RENOVATION UPDATE ON THE HOUSE ON COTTAGE GROVE
Greetings from cold and rainy Lake Arrowhead, California where today I bring you a renovation update on The House On Cottage Grove.
The snow has stopped and has been replaced by continuous rain, a very welcome thing here in drought-stricken SoCal. Plus, I welcome the lovely flowing stream below the cottage which not only looks great, it sounds delightful too.
However, another thing that rain and snow-melt do besides put an end to drought is uncover hidden leaks in old houses like mine. And that is exactly what happened this week here at my fixer-upper when I arrived to find a waterfall in a downstairs bedroom. The room is below a rooftop deck which had sprung a leak! I knew that the deck had some dry rot and would have to be replaced, but I was just hoping it could wait until we were past the worst of this winter weather before I started ripping roofs off. Now it looks like we may need to find a window of opportunity between storms and replace the roof/deck sooner rather than later. In the meantime we’ve covered the area with tarps and ripped out the ceiling of the bedroom to avoid the growth of mold.
I love mudrooms and they happen to be essential in a mountain home. In fact, when we moved to Lake Arrowhead I designed a mudroom for our home that not only had trays for shoes, hooks for coats and baskets for gloves and scarves, it also had a small sink. My idea was that I would require my kids to remove their shoes upon entering the house and then wash their hands. Well, that lasted about 2 days, best laid plans of mice & men right? In any case, because I love mudrooms I’ve turned the once laundry room in The House On Cottage Grove into a mudroom and have relocated the washer and dryer into a utility room on the lower floor. Below is what the laundry room looked like when I purchased the cottage. I love the wraparound windows which fill the small room with light. But, have you ever seen so many chotchkies in one room ever?
This is what my now, mudroom looks like in progress. I’ve added a wraparound bench which will double as storage space with flip up seats. I’ll be sewing cushions and pillows for the benches, paneling the walls in beadboard, adding an upper shelf and coat hooks.
I’m also very excited about progress made in one of the upstairs bedrooms. This is what the bedroom looked like previously. It had a cute built-in twin bed on the left side, but curiously, there was a full size bed on the opposite wall, making the room imbalanced. And, the built-in drawers between the beds were not centered under the window which bugged me.
So, my carpenter carefully removed the built-in drawers, centered them under the window and built a matching bed on the other side. I think this will now make the cutest little girls bedroom, perfect for sleepovers like I used to have when I visited Lake Arrowhead as a young girl.
I’m thinking about using this cute bird wallpaper in the room. What do you think?
Image Source Unknown
We are in the process of replacing all of the electrical wiring in the cottage so a lot of walls had to be opened up. I decided to gut the living room walls so that in the process of doing the electrical work we could also insulate the walls. Can you imagine that they built these old cabins way-back-when without any insulation? Makes for cold winters and expensive energy bills! Well, now that’s all about to change. I plan to insulate and then do a board-and-batten style wall detail in the living room.
Here’s my inspiration photo for how I’d like the room to look once complete. I won’t be using tropical, bamboo furniture but I do plan to paint the walls green and place 2 cream colored love seats opposite each other in front of the fireplace.
Image Source Unknown
I inherited a ton of framed artwork from the previous owner of the cottage, plus I’ve purchased some new/old oil paintings in beautiful old carved wooden frames from my favorite resourse, Bella’s Antiques. After I refinish and chalk paint many of the frames, and replace some of the art inside them, I plan to create a gallery wall in the living room similar to what you see in the photo above.
So, speaking of green walls, I’ve been hemming and hawing about the interior color scheme for this old cottage. I finally decided to take my cues from the cottage itself and play off of the greens I found in the house. There’s the green trim on the exterior…
and when we were demoing the kitchen I uncovered green tile. This is the kind of thing that’s really fun about these old homes, the surprises that lie below the surface are exciting to uncover! It also gives you a window into the history and evolution of the home. Now, I get to take the old and make it new again, which just isn’t possible in new construction. The patina of the old brings such character to a home that simply can’t be imitated with new construction.
In any case, once I decided I wanted to incorporate green into my color scheme I needed to find the right green. I didn’t think I wanted to go with the almost mint green existing in the house, although I liked how a similar green looked in this inspiration photo below. It also paired nicely with black.
But I thought going with a more true green with depth and richness would be nice, similar to the green used on the shutters in the Living Room.
I had liked the green found in this inspiration photo below…
and also the bluish green used in this kitchen.
But as you can see, deciding on paint colors is a laborious process for me. First I search through paint chips and then I peruse online sites. I really love Benjamin Moore’s website, which is easy to navigate and makes looking at their available colors very easy. There I found 5 different greens I liked so I placed an order for their pint sized samples. Ordering small samples makes testing colors easy and inexpensive, because you simply can’t tell what a color will look like in your room from a chip alone. I was excited when the samples arrived and set about painting them onto a piece of scrap wood.
I took the sample board over to my dusty, dirty cabin to try them on for size. I was still indecisive.
I decided that I needed to see what was out there in the way of green tile, because tile for the bathrooms and mudroom was an essential part of my design plan. I fell in love with the tile in the inspiration photo below. I had hoped to find a 1″ hexagon tile for my floors and a subway tile for the walls of the shower, as both shapes are true to the period of the 1922 vintage cottage. But after an exhaustive search I found that tile in shades of green is VERY difficult to come by in any shape! Plus, I decided my accent color would be a warm cream/ivory color instead of white. This also proved to be a challenge in the tile department.
Image Source Pinterest
I found this lime green tile at Home Depot…
and these greens at my local tile store. But none of them were available in the hexagon shape I was searching for.
What I did find was a sage green glass subway tile.
I also discovered that Home Depot offers an ivory colored, matte finish 1″ hexagon porcelain tile, and I found a matching quarter round trim. Together I fell in love with them all and I also think I’m going to use a black grout with the ivory hexagon tile. So guys, this is the color palette I’ve decided on. I’ll be having a green paint mixed to match.
So what do you think about my choices? I’d love to hear from you!
So there you have it: RENOVATION UPDATE ON THE HOUSE ON COTTAGE GROVE
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