1970 home renovation Archives | Page 5 of 17

1970 home renovation

We purchased a 1970 brick ranch house in Washington County, Maryland in September of 2022. This wasn’t the home I envisioned us purchasing, but we thought it was a little gem that needed the kind of updating we were eager to do. We have had the privilege of meeting some of the children of the original homeowners, who built this Better Homes & Garden floor plan as their dream home. Follow along as we make updates to the home, big and small, while retaining the original charm and best features of the home.

1970 home renovation

dining room makeover | painted wainscoting

I have finally finished all of the trim and painting in the dining room that needed to be done before I started on the mural. After having only primer on the walls for over a year, this feels like a huge accomplishment. I don’t know why painting the ceiling and installing trim made me procrastinate for so long, but it’s done and now I can get to the fun part. This is how the dining room wainscoting looked after it was installed and caulked. At this point, it looked pretty sharp and I was considering painting it white. I don’t know if I can explain why, but this house seems to like colored trim and doors, so I decided to follow my gut and move forward with my plan for painting it Oval Room Blue. As I expected, it took two coats and I used the Estate Eggshell finish. It’s

October 23, 2024 25 Comments

1970 home renovation

removing carpet glue from concrete | part one

I’m sure you’re excited to see that this is only part one of removing carpet glue from concrete. That means there will at least be a part two and you’ll have more ugly photos and stories of slow and tedious DIY endeavors to delight you. As I shared in the initial post about the basement, home renovation isn’t always pretty. You can read that post HERE. In brief, the concrete basement floors are covered in a coating of old carpet glue and remnants of padding still clinging to said glue. Not only is it unsightly, but it’s impossible to clean properly, which drives me nuts. I’ve been nervous about this basement floor since we moved in, though. My fear was asbestos was lurking either in the glue or the pad and disturbing it would be a health hazard. If it did contain asbestos, we would either have to have it

October 15, 2024 17 Comments

1970 home renovation

picture frame molding | dining room makeover

I feel like I keep returning to the same decorating bag of tricks with picture frame molding, but it is such an inexpensive and easy way to add architectural detail to a space that it’s hard to resist. A room can look stately, classic, and more interesting with just a couple hundred dollars invested in trim and a few hours of installation and caulking. I love it and am sure I will keep going back to it since I can’t imagine trim details like chair rail and picture frame molding will ever go out of style. If you’re interested in installing picture frame molding in your home, HERE is a tutorial showing how. Instead of trying to get all of the trim done in the dining room in one long day, I decided to work on it in bite-sized pieces. I took measurements and drew out a plan and cut

October 7, 2024 20 Comments

1970 home renovation

basement ponderings & asbestos testing

Prepare yourself for one of the ugliest posts ever to grace this blog. Sometimes when you’re renovating an older home, things are ugly. It’s almost unavoidable. When we first looked at this house and considered buying it, the basement was the obvious sore thumb. It clearly had water issues because it felt humid, smelled dank and musty, and it was evident that carpeting had been removed (presumably after getting wet.) With the carpet gone, the floor was a concrete slab with remnants of carpet glue and foam padding covering the entire surface. But, I am the eternal optimist when it comes to homes, so I could look past that. We were informed that the basement flooding was not a regular occurrence, but it happened during a particularly heavy rain when the gutters were clogged. We dealt with pretty significant water issues in our PA basement, so we were familiar with

September 30, 2024 17 Comments

1970 home renovation

two years | 1970 home renovation

Can you believe we just passed the two-year mark of living in our current house? I feel like, between years two and three is when our MN home started really feeling like ours and I think the same is true for this house. While the Minnesota house just needed some updating and a huge injection of personality, our current Maryland house needed a complete renovation. Even though we weren’t looking for a mid-century ranch, we felt like this home was a little gem and, since it’s in a desirable neighborhood, was worth the energy, time, and investment to renovate. We also liked that it hadn’t been updated and was being sold as-is so we could be the ones to renovate to our specific tastes and needs. It was going to be the biggest home makeover project we’ve ever tackled and we knew it would be hard at times, but we

September 24, 2024 20 Comments

1970 home renovation

painting the dining room ceiling

Well, I finally did it. I’ve been dragging my feet for over a year, but I painted the dining room ceiling. I have been hung up on working on this room just because I knew the ceiling had to be done first and I just really didn’t want to do it. It wasn’t the painting I was dreading, but all of the prep work of moving things out and making sure the furniture and floors were protected. I’m usually pretty casual when it comes to using dropcloths, but when painting a ceiling, I have to be more careful. Saturday morning was dreary and cold, so I almost talked myself into a low-key day, but I was ready to have this job behind me. I knew it would be a relief, so I pulled out the dropcloths, removed all of the small stuff from the room, got out the paint and

September 9, 2024 26 Comments

1970 home renovation

Landscape Mural Design & Colors

I’m getting things lined up to start “dining room mural take two.” I painted the mural in my last dining room with very little planning. I just had an idea in my head and used MMS Milk Paint and some acrylics that I had on hand. I was just going to throw the paint on the wall to see how it worked. It’s just paint after all and I could always paint over if it wasn’t working. I kept it very loose, drippy, watery, and light, so I was able to finish it in just a couple of days. For this mural, I decided to use Farrow & Ball paints so there is cohesion with the paint colors (Light Blue and Card Room Green) used in adjoining rooms. I also like the idea of having a palette of colors instead of mixing my own colors. I’m sure some amount of

August 6, 2024 15 Comments

1970 home renovation

dining room inspiration & plans

While the walls of our dining room are still only primed, I’ve been giving it a lot of thought lately and would like to start making some progress on it over the next few weeks. It would be very nice to have it done before the holidays. If it makes you feel any better about undone projects, these walls have been wearing primer for over a year and I have felt a little paralyzed about getting started on this room. I don’t usually drag my feet so long when it comes to painting a room, but I have waffled about what I want to do with this space. With our last dining room, I sort of plowed forward, starting a hand-painted mural one morning in my pajamas. It’s still one of my favorite rooms and was completed on gut instinct and whim. Instead of continuing to overthink, I just need

July 29, 2024 18 Comments

I’m Marian, a painter, writer, and lover of all things creative. From art and antiques to home projects and everyday life, I share my journey in hopes of inspiring you to embrace your own creativity and make beauty in the spaces you live.

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