My House!

This house was built in 1928, and it was a Sear's Home kit. Sears use to sell house kits from a catalog - you would choose a floorplan to purchase, and Sears shipped the blueprints and all of the supplies needed to build the house - from the lumber to the nails. It was then up to you to hire someone to build the house or build it yourself.
Click on the image to the left and you can see the page from the Sears Modern Home Catalog for my house, which was the 'Solace' model. The floorplan is still the same today and the only change that has been made to the house is the wall was removed from between the livingroom and diningroom, and a utility room was added on the back of the house in the 1960s.
Several people owned the house after the original builders gave it up, and signed it back over to Sears. One of the owners were German imigrants, who tried to run a chicken farm on the property, but failed due to the the depression.
In 1935, my grandparents Samuel & Hazel Baker had been married a year, and their first baby Doris was only a few weeks old when they purchased the house. The cost of the house was $1800, which also included 3 other lots. My grandfather worked on a farm for a man named Walter Volmer. Mr. Volmer held the mortgage on the house for my grandparents. My grandfather was only making $10 a week back then, so it took awhile to pay off the house. Later, after Mr. Volmer passed away in the 1960s, my grandfather started his own chicken farm on the property. He had a huge shed full of chickens and gathered the fresh eggs every morning. He also grew vegetables. My grandparents sold eggs from the room that was added on the back of the house and Grandpop delivered his farm fresh eggs and vegetables around the neighborhood. As my grandpop got older, it was too much work for him to take care of the chickens, so they sold the chickens and started to buy eggs wholesale to resell. They tore down the old giant chicken coupe and sold the three property lots, about 25 years ago. Since then 3 houses have been built on those lots - two on one side of their house and one on the other side of the house.
Grandpop worked 6 days a week and he worked hard. But he loved farming and he loved doing his egg route and he worked until he was in his 70s. He retired from selling eggs, but never gave up farming, he still planted vegetables every year. For his 90th birthday in 2003, he received a gift that was a galvanized bucket with soil and tomato seeds, which he planted and grew out on the front porch. My grandfather passed away in August 2003. In June of 2004 I bought the house, and my Grandmom will continue to live in her little farmhouse where she raised her family and lived happily with her husband for 68 years.



Here is the house when I bought it in June 2004. I had to have a new power line run in and a new power box put in for the certificate of occupancy, along with new plugs put in next to the kitchen and bathroom sinks. I also had the meter moved from the basement to the outside of the house. The house is in very good shape and only needs some fixing-up and updating on the inside (paint, carpet etc) The heater is 40 years old, but hopefully it will hold on until I can save some money to put in a new heater and central air.






August 2004 - I have a room finished in the house! The little bedroom upstairs is now a lady's dressing room with pink walls and pale green carpet - click images for larger views

The Victorian chaise came out of an old barn, and I stole it from my parents. It had been in their garage, and I recovered it about 10 years ago, but it's been in the basement since then, I never used it. But now I don't like the fabric that I used to recover it, so I just threw an old green silk curtain panel over it. It fits perfect and has fringe around the sides. The pink spread belonged to a great aunt. The little door is to the closet which runs the width of the front of the house, into both bedrooms.

The little gold chair belongs to my grandmom, she painted it gold many years ago. The picture on the wall is a framed Kewpie comic from a 1918 newspaper. The chest and the rug came from a friend who let us take some furniture out of a house that she bought. The chest was originally black, and I painted it white and painted flowers on the front of it. The old mirror was another item that was out in my parents garage, along with the pretty handpainted lamp. The original shade was broken, so I recovered a shade with old green silk and ivory tulle that came from a 1920s dress. I bought the boudoir doll on ebay and made her dress out of a damaged 1950s dress. The shoes are Edwardian, and the other things are items that I've bought over the years. I tucked a photo of grandmom & grandpop in the frame of the mirror. The last photo shows the back corner of the room. The white shelves are behind the door when you open it. The tiny door leads to a small cubby hole storage space. Vintage clothing, hats, gloves and purses from my collection are scattered around the room.









September 2004 - Click images for closer views. The upstairs is just about done. Bedroom #2 is painted a pale green with light mauve rug. I only put a few decorations in there, since I haven't moved in yet. The wardrobe is mine, my bed and t.v will eventually go in this room too. The bed that is presently in there is a very cool old bed. My grandmother's older sister Gertrude, use to take in and care for old ladies. The bed belonged to one of her tenants, and somehow it eventually ended up at my grandparent's house. It looks like wood, but it is actually a painted metal. It's probably from the 1930s, and it's a 3/4 size bed, a little smaller than a full size. The first picture is kind of dark because so much light was coming in the window that the flash on the camera would not go off. The curtains are just temporary until I find just the right ones. The door is to the closet that runs the width of the front of the house, into both bedrooms. The room is eventually going to be kind of 1920-30s lingerie & Oriental influence (green, peach & black)



The hallway is painted a light creamy ivory, with a bit of a soft yellow undertone. The rug is a light tan shag. I have an old Oriental paper parasol hanging from the ceiling between the two bedroom doors which face each other. The hall is pretty short, so it was hard for me to get back far enough to get a good photo.I have some of my small purses collection hanging along the mirror that is at the end of the hall. I have an old oak folding chair with embroidered flapper pillow setting under one of my favorite dresses - a green and yellow 1950s party dress. There are also some hats and an old sewing bag hanging on the wall too.
The last photo is the railing at the top of the steps. There was a black iron railing from the 1970s there, but I wanted to replace it with a wooden rail. So my dad said that he had a box of old stair spindles out in the garage. The spindles came from an 1860s farmhouse where my great-great grandparents lived. My grandmother lived there too for a while with her grandma, after her mother died. Cousins later owned the house and just before it was torn down, my parents went through and got some things out of the house, which is how we got the old spindles. The end posts are courtesy of Lowes, and they still need to be stained a little darker to match the older wood. I wanted a wide shelf on the top of the rail so that I can display some things there.



My big project now is the steps. They had 1970s green and black carpeting on them with a wool lining under the rug and stair padding glued under that. Originally I was going to paint the steps white, but the wood underneath is still nice looking so I will be staining them instead. It's alot of work getting that old padding off. Some of it scrapes off, but most of it is packed down so hard from years of being walked on, I have to use stripper to get it off. Plus I have to pry off those old tac strips. Right now I am about halfway done. I started staining the top few steps that are stripped, to see what they would look like. The photo to the left are the top few steps which turn up to the hallway. The walls of the stairway are painted the same shade as the upper hall, and there are also some hats and pictures of fairies on the walls. Now that the carpet is off, the steps have those cool old wood squeaks when you walk up them, I love the old squeaks.

The photo above on the right shows the packed down padding and the yucky old dry rotted wool lining. These are the bottom 6 steps that still need to be done. Once everthing is stripped, sanded and stained (which is kind of rough on these steps, because with walls on both sides, there's not much ventilation) I plan on putting down these old stair treads that I bought. I have a set of 8, which isn't quite enough, but it will cover all but one of the straight steps, up to the turn at the top of the steps. They are old hooked rugs from the 1930-40s, to the right here is one of them.







February 2005 finally some updated photos on this page! I continued working on the house on the weekends, and since the last update a few months ago, I finished painting the downstairs hallway, and the bathroom and I finished my fabulous stairs which turned out so great!

To the left is a downward view of the refinished steps and the vintage hooked rug stair treads. The 2nd photo is a view up the narrow stairway with the barkcloth curtain that hangs at the bottom of my steps and my old dress form (in a green 1930s gown) which stands on the turn in the stairway.










Next is a peek into my tiny bathroom. It is tiled up most of the walls and in the whole shower with lavender ceramic tile. The tilework was done by my uncle in the 1970s. I liked the tilework, so I kept it and repaired some missing and loose tiles and re-did some of the grouting. I painted the walls a wash of two pale shades of lavender to match the tile. My Dad put in a new sink and vanity for me which looks like it has drawers, but actually has 2 doors. I removed the old floor tile with a wet towel and my iron set on steam. Then we put down new vinyl tile. I have some of my mermaid collection hanging in here. It's tiny, so there's not alot of room to display stuff.












This month project was the kitchen! I should have taken a before photo - It had dark cabinets that were boxed in on the tops and boxed in above the window too. There was dark paneling midway up the walls and the wallpaper was brown and orange (all from the 1970s) I wanted it to look like a 1920s farmhouse kitchen (which it is) and I think it turned out pretty good. To save some money, I just painted the bottom cabinets and the paneling white rather than replacing them. Then the upper walls were painted a light green. We put in a new countertop that looks like wood and put in a shiny new sink and faucets that have kind of an old look to them. I special ordered unfinished cabinets from Howard Hill to put on the walls. I wanted glass windows in them so that I could display some of my old green dishes. The original idea was to paint the cabinets white, but the wood was so nice on them that we just put clearcoat on them. I wanted the space above the cabinets to be open so that I could display more of my old kitchen collection stuff up there. My Dad put thin plywood down on the floor and put down a great floor that looks like wood, but it is actually vinyl. The vinyl planks went in very easy, very little waste, and it cost about 1/3 of what real wood would have cost. The room was trimmed out with some extra trim from our house and fancy chair rail and wooden trim that my Dad bought at the flea market years ago.


Everthing in the kitchen is on one wall - the sink, cabinets, stove and fridge. There is a little nook on the other side which is just big enough for the enamel topped table that I refinished. I made a little window treatment with yellow and green crochet edge hankies with ribbon tied through the tops onto the curtain rod. The brick backsplash was installed in the 1970s too, but I really liked that, so I kept that as well.







Here's the table that was in the basement. The enamel top had some chips in it, so I bought this special filler stuff and paint to recoat it. I tried painting the black edge a light green, but that turned out kind of rough. The chairs were from my grandparents original kitchen set when they moved into the house in 1935. There are 2 more chairs that still have to be repainted the pale yellow. I have some old green handled kitchen gadgets hanging on the wall.










This is the other window in the kitchen. Not much of a view, it actually looks out into the laundry room. That room was added onto the house as part of the egg business in the 1960s, and later the washer and dryer were moved from the basement into that room. That window already had some shelves in it, so I painted the shelves white and loaded them up with more of my kitchen stuff - some green depression glass and some of my green and yellow kitchen tin stuff.














The diningroom before the peeling of the wallpaper started!





The livingroom and diningroom were finally finished after peeling off 2 layers of old wallpaper and finally settling on the perfect colors!



































And that's all!




Dandelion Vintage Home