Long overdue, but here are some new photos of the current state of a bunch of our projects.  These are much more about decorating and less about renovation, but it's still relevant, I guess!  We do still have a few renovation-type projects to do in the next few months, so we will be posting about those as we go as well.

First up, the front staircase.  The "Before" picture is when we first saw the house--note the fact that the entire staircase was painted with what turned out to be multiple layers of thick white oil paint from many many years, as well as a rotting runner that literally tore to shreds when we removed it.  We also removed, by hand, hundreds of staples and nails that were holding down the rotting runner.  Nice!  The intervening ones were taken at various points during renovations.  The final pic on the right is how it looks today.  This is one of the few projects in the house which we basically did ourselves from start to finish.  the only thing we didn't do ourselves was stain and poly of the stair treads, since our floor guys did that when they did the rest of the floors.

Next up, something that looks quite minor but in fact has been incredibly time-consuming.  We have lovely board and batten doors in much of the oldest part of the house, however with babies on the way, the positive results on lead test kits had us seriously considering throwing historical accuracy to the wind in favor of safety.  We compromised, and are stripping and repainting several of them, and replacing some of the closet doors (which are not fully original to the house anyway) with modern doors.  Yes, even old house lovers need to put the safety of their kids first!   Here's an in-progress shot of one of these lovely old doors in mid-strip.  Yet another shout-out to the wonders of Peel Away!

More obligatory dining room photos for your enjoyment.  OK, in reality, these are for OUR enjoyment because this room is the closest thing we have to "finished".  It's really only missing artwork, which is both hard to find and ridiculously expensive.  We'll get there, though!

Before we bought the house...

And once we got our clutches into it:

Our guest room is also coming along nicely...no "before" pictures handy of this one, so here's how it looks now.

And naturally, the requisite floorboard bragging rights shot--please note that Brian single-handedly refinished these gorgeous floors using a very creative voodoo method involving fireplace ash, among other things.   I think he did a fantastic job!

Now for the living room..  This room has been a long time coming, and it's still not done, obviously, but we're making good progress.  The major furniture pieces have arrived, though we are still awaiting chairs ordered from The Federalist and drapes ordered from Ethan Allen; we're also still hunting for a highboy and occasional tables.  Several pieces shown in this photo series (including the French table near the wing chair, and the much-hated painting propped on the mantelpiece) are not staying where they are, but you get the general idea.

Here's the "before" shot, when we first saw the house.  The previous owner had some beautiful pieces, by the way, none of which we were able to acquire.  instead, we acquired a whole lot of broken office furniture, random "decorative" brass plaques, cookware, a few broken appliances in the front yard (no I am not kidding) and a whole lot of mice and flooding problems! 

Aside from the very obvious paint job and redecoration of this room, we also removed and re-jiggered a lot of smaller elements, including refitting moldings and removing some weirdly placed corner beads which were not at all original to the house.  These simple changes made the ceiling height appear much higher, which is a big deal when your ceilings are only 7'6"!  We also installed a ceiling fixture, which was oddly absent.

And finally, after over five years of marriage, our Ketubah has an appropriate place of honor in our home!  Amazingly, our marriage is also still intact even after 3 years of house renovations.

Moving to a different area, we realized recently that we never posted a photo of the house after the siding and roof were completed this summer.  So, here's a before and after, even though this was taken in late summer.  Lots of subtle changes here including gutter placement, larger corner framing and window trim, etc.  The biggest change is really functional, though, in terms of insulation value and the assurance that our roof isn't going to leak!

And last but not least, just because we like to do it, here's a recent photo of our dogs enjoying the snow last week.  Ain't they cute?!!