5 Years in Our Farmhouse!
THE FARMHOUSE
It’s been 5 years since we moved to our Farmhouse. Five whole years! I can still remember the excitement (and nerves!) of quitting our jobs in Seattle, packing up the kids, and moving to the country. Boy was it a big move! There’s been a lot of ups and downs and a whole lot of renovations and today we want to take a quick moment to celebrate the last 5 years! Both for the house and the life we’ve lived in it…
psst: you can find sources for the Farmhouse here
I still have a pinch me moment when I walk up to our Farmhouse. It just hasn’t gotten old! The Farmhouse has such a beautiful exterior with a wrap-around porch, large windows, and historic details and the quiet country setting is everything I dreamed about back when we lived in urban Seattle. This was and still is my dream home! And I can’t share a picture of the exterior without mentioning that I can’t wait until those hydrangeas grow into a shrub and the exterior is returned to a white/off-white color (paint has been on our to-do list for 5 years now 🤪). Can’t you see it?! But like all improvements to this house, we’re taking a slow approach to the exterior. We used to renovate whole houses in a year or two, but with the Farmhouse we still have a tall list of projects even after 5 years.
Our Farmhouse was built in 1912 by a father and son. The son raised his family here and eventually built a house next door. When we moved in, the grandson of the original owner lived on one side and the great-great grandson lived on the other. Aren’t small towns fun?! Here’s a peek at what the Farmhouse looked like back in the early 1900’s and again on the day we moved in.
psst: more on our farmhouse from 2016… introducing the farmhouse and how we found and bought the farmhouse
Touring the Farmhouse back in 2016 when it was for sale, is such a visceral memory for me. Walking up the crumbling sidewalk in the shade of the century-old elm trees and seeing that front porch – it felt like a dream. I remember thinking “I don’t just want to live here, I want to die here.” I’d never felt anything like that for a house before or since. I’m obviously biased, but I think this place is nothing short of magical. And while we haven’t always been sure it was the right place for our family to live (we planned to sell the house last spring pre-pandemic for a whole host of reasons and there’s a little update at the bottom of this post), and I don’t have any idea if we’ll live here for 2 more years or 20, we know this old house and property is special.
psst: you can read about how renovating old houses, house hacking, and becoming landlords helped us ‘retire’ at 34 to a house in the country here.
Okay, let’s talk about the renovations we’ve done to the Farmhouse over these 5 years…
In 2019 we tackled the kitchen renovation and it’s still a daily point of joy. The kitchen was previously remodeled in the 90s and done with care and good materials, so we had a great starting point…
Our goals for the remodel were to bring in some history and make it feel more original to the house. Plus we wanted it to function better for our family so a 36” range, built-in microwave/proofing-oven, new lighting, and a few other upgrades were in order. We made use of the original cabinets, replacing the glass panes with plywood, rearranging a few boxes, and painting them all white. And we paneled the walls with tongue-and-groove for an original-sunroom-on-the-back-of-the-house vibe. The orange 90s vertical-grain fir all got painted to stand out less against all the original flat-sawn fir in the rest of the house. The best compliment you can give me about this kitchen is to ask if it’s maybe possibly original!
psst: the kitchen reveal and all the sources
There’s a fun story behind that hutch! I bought it at a local antique store and let’s just say that if it looks like it was made for the Farmhouse, it was! You can read the old-house serendipitous story here.
Here’s one of my favorite before-and-after’s of the kitchen…in the before I’m 41-weeks pregnant with Daphne (I’m sure I was just thrilled my mom took that pic) and in the after, Daphne had just turned 4, my hair is gray and the kitchen is white. We’ve grown a lot with this house! Daphne was actually born right here at the Farmhouse during a planned home birth (13 days after her due date, that stubborn girl!). She’s probably not the first baby to be born at the Farmhouse, but she’s definitely our most special tie to this home!
The entry, staircase, and living room have all made slow progress over the years, too. They have lots of original wood millwork, giant pocket doors, 9’6” ceilings, and large windows. We tore up carpets, painted everything BM Simply White or BM Revere Pewter (at 50%), replaced lighting, and decorated, but otherwise just let the original details shine. We’ll keep working on these spaces over time, but they’re comfortable and feel like home!
I get a lot of questions about painting wood trim and we’ve tried not to, at least when it’s original and in good shape. It adds so much character and once it’s painted it’s really hard to restore it to wood. And honestly, I love this house’s dark woodwork! Anywho, here’s what the living room looked like when we bought the Farmhouse…
2019 also brought a new laundry room and pantry, which actually swapped spaces. Both rooms have great views and lots of natural light, and we’re thankful for them every day.
psst: the pantry reveal and the laundry room reveal
I don’t have great before photos of these spaces because we moved doorways and swapped the rooms so it’s almost impossible to get the same angles. But I found these two…
The upstairs at the Farmhouse was where we started. We pulled up carpets, refinished the hardwoods, and the repainted the walls. This house has really great bedrooms with lots of room, plenty of natural light, and large closets (such a rarity in old homes!). Large bedrooms isn’t something we ever looked for in a home, but the added space has been really great, especially as the kids have gotten bigger and we’ve spent so much time at home!
Here’s a peek at what the bedrooms looked like when we moved in...
We’re still working on our primary bathroom remodel, but we did do a quick refresh on the main bathroom downstairs a couple years back. Here’s a quick before and after…
Outside, the garden has been a real source of joy for us! The tall deer fence and mature grapes, raspberries, cherry tree, and pear tree were all here, but everything else we did. It was a relatively inexpensive project and short-lived and gets way more use than I even thought possible. We had Better Homes and Garden here this summer shooting this space and it was definitely a pinch me moment!
Here’s what this space looked like when we moved in and during the project!
Garrett also built us a chicken coop last year when we got chicks! Finding fresh eggs every morning is still such a joy. We’ve struggled with predators (owls, bob cats, coyotes, hawks) and the new coop has helped a lot.
It’s been a pretty amazing 5 years! And we’re excited for what’s to come! We’ve felt so lucky to raise our kids in this old home on 3 quiet acres in the country, especially while they’re young and spending so much time at home with us!
But as special as these years have been, they haven’t always been easy. We’re deep in first-world, middle-class weeds here, but Garrett and I have spent a lot of time casting about. When we left Seattle, I had a great paying job with retirement and health insurance, and while it may have been slowly sucking my soul out, the security was there. And Garrett had just earned his PhD in BioChemistry with a career in biotech in his sights. We were a bit burnt out and dreaming of some peace and quiet. Making the change was easy when we found the Farmhouse, but it’s what came after that was harder.
We talked more about this last year in this post, but finding direction hasn’t always come easy for us and over the past 5 years and we’ve tried a few things. At first we had 3 Airbnbs going in Seattle and did most of the turns ourselves. We quickly realized the extra income wasn’t worth the time commitment and stress for us (they’re all long-term rentals now). Then we bought the Porch House and renovated it for an HGTV pilot, thinking we’d flip a house or so a year (or more if our show was picked up). But we learned pretty quickly that flipping houses wasn’t for us, on camera or off. We’ve dipped our toes into doing design/construction work for others but realized that’s not where our hearts lie either. We thought about selling the Farmhouse and moving into town and downsizing, but the pandemic made a mockery of those plans. Basically we seem to have been better at figuring out what won’t work for us than what will!
But lately it feels like we’ve finally found our groove. Like we’ve stumbled onto a path that is fun and comfortable and where we want to be. And that path has home as the Farmhouse - living in it and renovating it, blogging about it and enjoying this little slice of heaven (at least in the summer months when the raspberries come in 😉). For now we’re really content to keep fixing up this grand old home slowly and continue working on the Poplar Cottage, spend a whole lot of time with our kids, and document it all right here. The Grit and Polish has grown enough to make up the income we lost from the Airbnbs and lack of house flips and we’re beyond thankful for that!
So we’re posting this 5 year celebration with gratitude in our hearts. Things always look more logical and linear from the outside or in hindsight, but when you’re in it there’s ups and downs, times you feel like your path is straight and laid out ahead, and times you’re pretty sure you should veer right, sell everything, and move to Hawaii. We love this Farmhouse so much, but the life we’ve lived in it over the past 5 years has meandered more than we could have ever expected. But that, of course, is part of the fun.
Thanks for 5 exciting years, Farmhouse! And thanks to all of you for joining us on this journey!
xoxo
-Cathy and Garrett