90th Tulip Time - Welcome

the little cottage on the pond...: Dresser makeover....before & after!

the little cottage on the pond...: Dresser makeover....before & after!

Love what you did and esp. the glass knobs AND WOODEN KNOBS on one dresser. Charming!

Small House / Big Sky Donna
White Oak Studio Designs
Hand-Painted Vintage Furniture Transformations
BLOG: http://smallhouseunderabigsky.wordpess.com

House Crazy in Michgan

Just call me house crazy...but I love buying an old place in need of work and making it mine. I've done it twice, and both times it was what the real estate market calls an "estate" home. That's short-hand for cheap and in bad shape!

Small House Under a Big Sky is the story of my current home, a vintage 2,000 sq. ft. modest Ranch home in South Western Michigan bought when I was 50. This adventure has been full of love and lessons, many I've learned the way I usually do - the hard way.

I hope you'll check in often and be patient with me as I am learning to blog at the same time.

Welcome to Small House.

Donna

Photo: Donna & Gene with Donna's beloved dog "Spirit."

House Crazy

Just call me house crazy…but I love buying an old place and making it mine. I’ve done it twice and both times it was what the real estate market call “estate” home. That’s short-hand for cheap and in bad shape but the price was affordable, a mere $19,000.

I bought my first house in 1971. This home was a 50-year-old, 2,000 sq. ft., two-story Cape Cod in the city on a small lot. It had great bones but needed a LOT of TLC.  But I was young and full of ideas and energy.

The exterior was "shabby chic" painted traditional white and in sore of work. It had old windows, crumbling front steps, a brick fireplace and an old roof but it was located on a quiet dead-end street with a wooded backyard, in a nice starter neighborhood with a good elementary school. The good defintely outweighed the bad.

It also came with a large formal living room with an attractive brick fireplace (with built in open shelves on both sides) and a very large dining room. Downstairs it had a small galley kitchen that hadn’t been touched since the 1950’s with a wonderful adjoining butler’s pantry. There was also a summer sun porch in knotty pine and a small bathroom with a walk in shower off the butler’s pantry.

Upstairs it had two bedrooms and bathroom with a tub (in 1950’s pink tile!) and it best of all it had wonderful hard oak floors throughout that were in very good shape. It also had a good sized, unfinished basement with another oak floor of all things.

I lived and worked in this home for 25 years, raising my two sons there and since on one income a total remodel was out of the question, I painted, papered and decorated it a bit at a time it… on a shoestring – a real DYI.

I see now that by today’s standards it was but a simple starter home, but at age 21, I was in heaven to own my house and I worked long and hard to make it my own

Sorry no photographs are available since this was in the day long before digital cameras! But I promise that photographs are coming in the next post with my current home.