Well guys, when you saw the title of this blog you may have been thinking to yourself "is she still working on that house?" The answer to this question is yes, yes we are.  This little house has been quite a labor of love for me.  If you are new to The Southern Merc, and you have missed the story on our Alder Street Renovation, you can catch up by clicking any of the links below! 

Alder Street Social Club
Alder Street Renovation
The Floors
The Porches
The Living & Dining Area
The Kitchen

It has taken me a little while to get the bedrooms and the bathroom "photo ready."  I have moved the furniture several times, rearranged the pictures several times, and have finally decided this is as good as it gets for now!

We'll start with the guest room.  Unfortunately, I did a terrible job documenting our progress in this room.  What you need to know about the room before we started working is that it had a dark, orangey-brown wood floor, walls and ceiling.  Here is what it looked like when we started working on the house.  We closed up a window on the side wall and made the window on the back wall larger. 

Here is the same wall today.  The picture over the bed is hanging where the window was that we closed up.  I chose a pretty light gray by Sherwin Williams for this room called "Aloof Gray".  The trim and ceiling are "Ceiling White" by Olympic.

You guys know I love a well-made bed - in fact, I wrote a blog on that topic!  These vintage embroidered pillow cases that say "Good Morning" and "Good Night" were just what I needed to cozy up this guest bed.  

I try not to clutter my house up with too many collections, but I just can't help myself sometimes! In this room I used vintage jars to house my collections of old dominoes and vintage thread spools.  

The closet in this room was a nice size but only had one small door, making the space hard to use, so I had the opening widened.  Luckily, there was a door from the bathroom that we did not need that matched the original closet door to make a pair.  The antique glass door knobs are not original but I thought they made a nice touch!  Little details like that make nice upgrades to any home, large or small.

This little bookcase is full of family pictures.  I love displaying old pictures, it is so comforting to me to walk in and be surrounded by loved ones that went before me.  

Y'all, what can I say?  I like pictures too much!  Haha!  You can also see in the picture below on the left that there is a mirror and hooks for the convenience of our guests.

This is the little hallway area that connects both bedrooms and the bathroom. When you walk into the hall from the living/dining area, the guest room is to the left, the bathroom is straight ahead and the master is to the right. 

Now, on to the bathroom!  Just in case you forgot, it was disgusting.  You can see the panel box was in the bathroom, so we moved that out to the hallway when the wiring was replaced.  We moved the window to the right so it would not be partly in the shower.  The flooring had to be completely ripped out and replaced. Hopefully, it goes without saying that we replaced all the fixtures!  Ha! 

This is our very small bathroom now!  When you embrace living in 980 square feet, you have to make use of every inch!  When we bought the house the washer /dryer hook up was in the kitchen.  Rather than give up much needed closet space in the bedrooms, I decided to go with a stackable unit and put it in the bathroom.  It is certainly not luxurious, but it works for us!  As long as we keep up with the laundry and keep everything in its place, it doesn't feel too cramped. 

Even the smallest of spaces deserve some special details.  I couln't really find a ready-made shower curtain that I loved so I splurged on some fantastic fabrics. Dad helped me make this no-sew cornice board, and Aunt Janet was quick to lend a hand in sewing my shower curtain. 

Keeping essentials like q-tips, bobby pins, and cotton pads in pretty containers on a pretty tray helps keep your counters looking good while still having everything you need conveniently located.  

Next on our virtual tour is the master bedroom.  I call this the master because this is the room that Matt and I chose to be ours but it really is exactly the same size as the guest room, just with two closets.  This room had been used as a nursery about 30 years before we bought the house!  My dad actually put up this wallpaper for our neighbors at the time when they were preparing for their first baby!  Funny how things come full circle.  Dad did an excellent job hanging that wallpaper because it was a pain in the you-know-what to get off of those walls!

This is my beautiful, peaceful bedroom now!

The walls are painted "Misty Lake" by Valspar.  The trim is the same as the rest of the house, "Ceiling White," and the ceiling is the same as the living area, "Spare White" by Sherwin Williams.  

The chandelier is vintage and is my most favorite light fixture in the house! We have low cielings so I didn't have many opportunities in the house to use a hanging light fixture.  Since this one hangs over the foot of the bed, it keeps us from bumping our heads!

I hope you have enjoyed keeping up with my home renovation!  It has taken a little while to get things settled, but I love a work in progress!  I have been working on the yards this year so that will be the next thing on the list to share!  

If you like what you see in the house, check out the store!  It is full of beautifully currated items that speak to my southern style!

If you have been keeping up with what's happening at The Southern Mercantile, I would love to hear from you. Let me know what you think of the house and if you have a project of your own you are working on! 
​-Roxie

In my last renovation update, Beech Street Bungalow: The Floors, I was able to show you pictures of our beautiful refinished floors!  After the floors were completely dry, we did our best to cover every inch of them with thick paper!  The last thing we wanted to do was scuff them up or drip paint all over them.

The next project on our list was to begin painting! Phillip informed me that as soon as the kitchen was painted, he could begin installing our cabinets and counter tops!  That was enough motivation for me, so off to Sherwin Williams I went!  I didn't have a problem choosing the color families of my paint, but narrowing it down to a specific color took me a while!  As I joked in an Instagram post, it's easy to pick paint colors when you already have favorite polish colors. And if you know me, you know I have tons of favorite polish colors! (Check out: Why Nails Were Meant to be Painted)

So, my first bite would be to focus on the kitchen!  After analyzing, over analyzing, and analyzing some more, I finally decided on Eider White for the walls!

​I had already visited the Cabinet Warehouse in Fitzgerald to shop for cabinets and counter tops.  Phillip worked with this company for about 7 years, so he is pretty knowledgeable in this area!  He was able to save us a good bit of money by installing them himself. We chose a simple grey cabinet and white quartz counter tops, so I thought that Eider White would work well with those components as well as the other colors in my home.

After painting the kitchen and butler's pantry, Phillip began installing the cabinets!  This was so much fun (for me, not him) and made the house start to resemble a home.  I don't know about you, but the kitchen is always one of my favorite rooms in a house!  I spend so much time in that space doing what I love to do--cooking, baking, (eating), talking, laughing; all with the people I love. 

Just like most of the world today, I love Pinterest!  I love how organized and inspiring this tool is.  Not only do I have a "Home Sweet Home" board, but I also have a secret board for each room in my house!  This was the perfect way for me to organize my thoughts and ideas all in one place.  Later on, I'll share a few tips with you on how to stay organized (and on budget) during a major renovation like this!  Here are three pictures (each linked to the original source) that gave me a little inspiration for this space:

I just loved everything about the last picture you see above.  I love the soft color scheme, the two-toned cabinets, the counter tops, and of course, the lights.  I too would have a large island with a sink so this kitchen was speaking my language. 

Now that you know what direction my wheels were turning, let me remind you what we were working with.

This was the opening we made for our large pocket doors to be relocated.

And with a fresh coat of paint, they were ready to be hung!

We taped off the layout of the island and cabinets to help us determine where plumbing would need to be run and outlets should be put.

Now for the fun stuff.  Here is what our kitchen looks like today:

Phillip was able to build a vent hood cover, and I just love it! It gives this crisp and clean kitchen a farmhouse feel.
*Side note: The Keurig and electric kettle on the counter came in handy while working in 30 degree weather!  Coffee and warm water for the caulk bucket made my workers happy. :)

I searched for the perfect pendants to hang over the island, and all of the ones I absolutely loved (like the ones in the Pinterest picture) were way out of my price range.  I finally found a similar style within my budget, and I am quite pleased with how they look! I also LOVE how the bead board wall turned out once it was painted.  I guess all of the scraping was worth it!  

After we installed the vent hood cover, we liked it so much that we decided to incorporate that look into the island as well.  I knew I didn't want to have a solid grey panel on the back of the island, but I wasn't quite sure what I did want.  Phillip suggested for us to try the matching wood running horizontal along the back and we both just loved it!  This was a great decision, because it not only will be more durable over time, but it also brings the look together (and cost us a little less)!

This view allows you a sneak peek at our beautiful butler's pantry!  I just love how much storage and practical space it provides.  The Cabinet Warehouse was wonderful to work with and they were able to order the exact glass doors that I wanted for this space! I am so happy with how it is looking and I can't wait to put on the finishing touches!  

You can also see how opening up that wall in the kitchen where we placed the pocket doors brings so much light into the room!  It also makes the kitchen feel much bigger when they are open.

Well there it is.  With the exception of cabinet hardware and appliances, we are ready to roll!  Our bedroom, bathroom and laundry room are coming along nicely as well.  We are having so much fun seeing our dreams come to life and we can't wait to relax in our new home.  More updates are coming your way, so be sure to keep up with The Southern Mercantile Facebook page and sign up for our email list on the home page for a weekly website update!

In my last update, I gave you a tour of the new layout of our home.  Although it was called Beech Street Bungalow: The Walls, we didn't have actual walls up yet! In this post you will get to see the transformation that the floors made as well as the sheetrock!  We have had an exciting past few weeks and I can't wait to share it all with you.

Just in case you have forgotten what the floors were like when we purchased the home, here is a little refresher.  Most rooms in this home exposed the original hard wood floors.  In a few areas, we had carpet and layers of linoleum to remove. (And when I say layers, I mean LAYERS!)  

​The hallway and the kitchen became our biggest challenge due to the type of adhesive that was used to lay the linoleum flooring years ago. Whoever put this flooring down did not intend for it to come back up. :)  

The pictures above are a small glimpse of what our hallway looked like--can you say yuck?!  I spent countless hours trying to peel, scrape and dig it up! After many google searches and multiple chats with knowledgeable floor men, I realized that absolutely no one had the magic formula to removing this mess.  Through trial and error, I found that my handy dandy multi-tool was a great help in removing the layer of linoleum from the glue.  This is not a speedy process nor is it fun--and if you're not careful, you will dig into the wood!

The laundry detergent softened the adhesive and made it easier for me to scrape it using a 5 in 1 tool.  Although this seemed to help, it did not remove the tough spots.  The detergent softened not only the adhesive, but also the wood.  This caused a problem when I began to scrape making it easier to dig into the wood floor resulting in deep gashes.  

As it turned out, the angle grinder worked!  However, it did take what seemed like forever and it was completely disgusting. 

We wore respirators to keep from breathing what the grinder was throwing up in the air.  We went  to such extreme measures to remove this adhesive because we were planning to refinish the floors ourselves.  This adhesive would ruin too much sand paper to try to sand it off with the floor sander.  

After a couple of weeks, Phillip and I finally decided to contract out the rest of the floors.  We were running out of time and energy!  We had saved enough money to hire Burris Cleaning out of Fitzgerald, GA to come in and sand, stain and polyurethane our entire house! Alfonso (pictured on the right) was such a pleasure to work with.  He and his team were so dedicated, honest, hard working and kind.  We couldn't have had a better experience and we're so thankful that they came to the rescue!

Now, the moment you've all been waiting for...
​Take a look at our beautiful new floors! (And walls!!)

Little by little, it's all coming together.  We are so proud to have the floors restored to their original beauty and we can't wait to enjoy them for years to come!  

​As we continued the tearing out process, our next focus became the walls. The walls in our home were covered in a particle board-like material. (Almost like thick card board--but much heavier!)  I have been told that this material was used before sheet rock became popular in the forties.  It came in sheets, much like sheet rock, except the seams were covered with 2 inch wooden strips.  Since we wanted to add insulation and give the home a more updated look, we decided to tear all of this out.  Boy, was this a job -- a job that lasted weeks!  This material covered every inch of the walls and ceilings in the house.

We started tearing out in the living room, which was where we discovered the beadboard walls!  We were so excited at the thought of keeping some of the originals walls in the house to add to the character.  As we revealed more and more of the beadboard walls we discovered that some were patched and some were solid.  This means that we would be able to keep some (the ones that were solid) but not all.  
​
The patched walls are the ones you see so full of color--what a terrible feeling tearing it all out!  The colors were so inspiring that we decided to keep a good bit of the beadboard for future projects.

After tearing out the first layer we were able to assess our situation and decide what was salvageable.  Unfortunately, most of the walls had been patched and there would only be a few we could keep.  The other bad news is that we would have to tear out all of the beadboard that we would not be keeping due to issues with trim fit and ease of insulation.  This was WAY more work than I had expected, but little by little we were able to see it through.  

Bedroom #1 (not pictured)
​The Pantry (not pictured)
The Kitchen

* A Helpful Tip: If you find yourself having to remove wallpaper or any other glued substance from the wall like I did, here is a great trick!  Mix equal parts of liquid fabric softener and hot water in a spray bottle.  Spray over a manageable area and let sit for 5-10 minutes (don't let it dry!).  Using a scraper or 5-in-1 tool, start loosening the edges and scrape away!  For my personal situation, this worked perfectly! (And gave our house a nice smell :) You can clearly see the path in which I scraped in the bottom right picture.  Also, I was gifted the electric kettle you see below as a wedding present--and boy did it come in handy!  I wouldn't have had any other way to access hot water in our house!

In bedroom #1, we decided to keep something really special.  As you now know, our entire home was filled with multi-colored 100 year old beadboard.  I LOVE the unique colors in each piece and so wished I could keep a little piece of the fun.  Once all of the walls were down, I noticed how the wall above the fireplace was a perfect little sample of what filled the whole house.  After sweet talking Phillip, and a few other folks thinking I was crazy, we decided to keep this little section of patchwork as a fun reminder of what once was.

Now, fast forward weeks upon weeks to where we are today.  With a clean slate to work with, we were able to tell what would need to be changed in the floor plan.  One major change we knew we wanted to make was to remove the closet in bedroom #2 in order to open the hallway back up to its original width.  ​

We knew we wanted to add a master bath off of the master bedroom, so we took measurements, planned it out and framed it up!  (Planning a bathroom was much harder than I ever imagined!)  The bathroom pushed into what was once the back porch, but was enclosed by previous owners.

We added a master closet as well by pushing into the hallway and relocating our bedroom door.

We removed the exterior door in the kitchen in order to give us more wall space, and brought the window up to give us room for lower cabinets.

​In addition to all of this, Phillip had to go through each room and check each stud.  Since this house was built 100 years ago, it wasn't built to today's standards!  This meant Phillip had to add a great deal of studs to the existing walls in order to get ready for sheet rock.  He had to frame out every doorway, old and new!  The walls were (what I believe to be) our toughest challenge yet, but also the most rewarding. What you find in the walls bring light to the history of the home and those that lived there before you.  ("If Walls Could Talk"--a blog coming soon :)

Phillip and I were so overwhelmed by the amount of work there was to do and how long it would take.  Most nights we left feeling defeated.  More tired and dirty than we had ever been before, but just where we were meant to be.

​We broke it all down just to build it all back up again--isn't that how life feels sometimes?  We couldn't get to where we were going without ripping out every board one by one--and let's not forget the nails!  It was painful more times than not, and much harder tearing out than putting back in.  But that's the beauty of it all.  The Lord has taught us so much in the little time that we have been working on this house, and I know that He will only teach us more.  

Remember when I said that we kept a good bit of the beadboard to use in future projects?  Well here are a few!  First, we decided to build new table tops for The Cafe!  Don't you just love them? ​

We were so inspired by the tops that we then decided to create something else that we could make available to you!  If you'd like to take a special piece of our home home with you,  check out the picture boards we've made out of the beautifully colored beadboard that covered our walls!  

Each display board is unique in color and size.  The beadboard and the trim came out of our Beech Street Bungalow.  Share in celebrating the history of our home by choosing one to take home today!

I am so excited to talk to you about my kitchen because it has turned out to be my favorite spot in this little house.  It was definitely the room that needed the most work in this renovation! I think I mentioned in my previous blog that I don't have any pictures of the space from before we started working. Apparently, it was so horrifying I didn't want to remember it too clearly, haha! So let's get to it so you can find out how my kitchen went from this....

to this!!!!  A bright, happy, CLEAN, efficient kitchen work space.

Just to recap, there were only a few, old cabinets that all had to be removed. There was also a wall that separated the kitchen from the dining area. Obviously, the floors had to be completely replaced!  The original floors were long gone and the existing layers of rotten plywood were so termite eaten that they started falling out when my carpenters starting jacking up the house to replace the joists. You can read more about my adventures in flooring HERE. We took out the wall in the kitchen (it was super rotten anyway) to create a more open space.  I did close up one window in the kitchen so that I could put the stove there.  To be such a tiny house it certainly had plenty of windows so I didn't sacrifice any of my nice natural light by doing this.  

The next step was to get the floors sanded and stained, and the walls and ceiling primed and painted and ready for cabinets! I used the same paint colors in the kitchen as I did in the living / dining areas, treating this as one large room so it would flow and be cohesive.

After doing a little research and some price comparrison, I decided to go with Ikea cabinets.  I could get the look that I wanted and get the most bang for my limited bucks!  *Disclaimer* If you are not a handy person and are not up for a project, then this is probably not the route you should go.  I am very blessed to have some handy folks in my life to help with projects like these.  I will tell you that I had no experience designing kitchen spaces and I found it very easy to use the online design program that Ikea offers on their website.  It took some time to play around with things and learn the program, but I was able to come up with a design that I was happy with.  Matt and I headed up to Atlanta where we were able to have an Ikea professional review my plan to make sure there were no major issues and to purchase the cabinets.  It was a bit overwhelming, being first time cabinet buyers, so we stopped for margaritas and Mexican food at one of our favorite spots before heading home!

I did pay to have a professional to install the cabinets and I highly recommend this! I had a close family member, who had recently been through a kitchen renovation in an older home, suggest to me that I should not try to install these myself and I am super glad that I listened! You might recognize Phillip, (now, Tara's husband) from previous Southern Merc blogs.  He did an amazing job installing the cabinets and counter tops for me.  Because he is so experienced, he was able to deal with things like walls that are not straight and floors that are still slightly uneven.  I was glad he was there with the knowledge to improvise when things weren't working out exactly like I had planned.

I am so happy with the end result.  I was able to stick to my budget and get the fabulous kitchen that I wanted.  When we moved into this house I was coming from an even smaller rental house that had a very small kitchen with minimal cabinets.  For me, this was quite the upgrade!  I also had not had a dishwasher for the previous 12 years so, to have a nice new one has been thrilling!

There wasn't room in this little corner to squeeze in a cabinet so my dad helped me build little shelves to display some of my favorite treasures.

My farmhouse sink also came from Ikea and was quite a deal!  If you have been wishing for a farmhouse sink but didn't think you could afford one, you should check these out.  There are two sizes, one like mine and one that is larger and divided.  Your existing cabinets can usually be manipulated to accommodate this type of sink with the apron front.  I opted for mostly drawers with the lower cabinets.  The large drawers on the right contain all of my dishes and serving pieces.  The cabinets in the corners have two shelves that pull out completely and then swing back towards the wall when pushed in so that no space is wasted.

A very special friend painted this cow for me and named her "Roxanna". It makes me so happy to look up and see her above the fridge.

My favorite cookbooks are proudly displayed on a shelf by the fridge and my favorite ceramic tray corals things like salt, pepper and garlic cloves that I use frequently while cooking.  I keep everything I need to enjoy my morning coffee right next to my coffee maker, including a crate full of my favorite mugs!

You may wonder why I am choosing to show you my ugly old microwave and toaster.  I just want to stress that you can set up and organize your small (or large) kitchen in such a way that your necessesities are made to look as nice and neat as possible.  You don't necessarily have to line all of your kitchen appliances up on your counter top, and if you have a small kitchen, you don't need to have them taking up that much precious counter space!  These wood and metal shelves sit by my refridgerator and hold a lot of important things that I use everyday but, I try to keep it organized and tidy!

Since our house is small, we don't really have a desk or office area where it would make sense to keep things like bills, pens and tape!  Instead, I have a little station set up by the side door to catch all of those types of things.  We also have a designated place to hang all of our keys becuase I am the world's worst to set my keys down and not remember where they are!

I wish I could have you all over for dinner so you could see things in person, but since I can't, I hope you've enjoyed all of the pictures!  

​Like a few things that you have seen?  Visit the Southern Mercantile store to check out these items that will help you get the look!  
(This blog was origianally posted in August of 2016 so these items are no longer available.  We hope you'll take a look in the store and check out our current merchandise!)

Welcome to my home! I am so excited to share with you my finished (well, mostly finished) spaces with you!  Just to recap, I'll be sharing before and after pictures with you so you can get a handle on just how extensive this renovation was.  Brace yourself, the before pictures are pretty scary! Apparently, the front rooms of the house were so bad, I didn't take any before pictures of the rooms before we started working!  Here are a few that I snapped after we had made a little progress.  

Use your imagination and visualize a wall where my dad is standing, that divided the kitchen from the living and dining area.  This wall was completely eaten by termites so, it had to go.  This made me very happy because I really wanted to open the space up so that the room would feel larger.  I did have to have a support beam added in the attic space as this was a load bearing wall.  

Here is that space now, so much brighter and happier!

All of the interior walls, ceilings and floors of this little mill house are made of pine and most of them were salvageable. While I do love the wood for texture, stability, and the ease of hanging whatever I want, wherever I want, they were just so dark!  The whole house was the same dark color, top to bottom, just crying out for a coat of paint! I had several folks stop by while we were working and say, "I can't believe you are going to paint that pretty wood". To all you wood preservationists out there, sorry.  But I think the end result is fabulous!  Lightening up the walls and the ceilings made the house feel twice its size!    

Here is the happy and bright "after" picture of my beautiful living room!  I am happy as a lark to sit here in the mornings and watch the news or to gather and visit here when we have guests.  This small space is both comfortable and functional.  Even though the house is small, I've found plenty of room to store things away and special places to show off my treasures.  I decided to have the fireplace closed up as we would never use it and it just wasn't an option to invest in gas logs right now.  I do, however, love to decorate a mantel so I kept a faux version of the fireplace.  The mantel is not original and it is not old.  Just a treasure I brought over from my last little house.  

As you look at the pictures of my home in this blog and the ones to come you may see cords, mail, electronics, etc.  I did not try to hide every little thing for these photos because, well, we live here.  There are some unattractive and/or useful things that are out for all the world to see!  If you are reading this and are currently living in a small space and struggling to find homes for all of your "stuff", here are some creative storage ideas that can make your "stuff" a little more attractive.  On my bookshelf in the living room I used patterned cardboard storage boxes, sewing machine drawers, a vintage locker basket and an old paint crate to hide some of the items that we need but don't have room for in a closet or drawer.  If you have to store items in plain sight in your home, get creative in using different kinds of containers to house those things.    

I was blessed to receive a lot of hand-me-downs while renovating this home and since I have been on such a tight budget, I was grateful for them! These Pottery Barn drapes were passed to me, and they turned out to be just perfect in the living area!  They were a little too short to hang them as high as I wanted, so to make them the correct length, I sewed a band of patterned fabric to the bottoms. This made them the perfect length and gave them a more custom look.  I did sew these but if you don't have a sewing machine, you could easily get this look by using an iron-on "no-sew" hem tape.

Our little table doesn't seat many but it has already been a happy gathering place for many of our friends and family. 

This little table is extra special to me because my dad built it.  The table top is made from old tongue and groove boards that came out of the 100-year-old building that houses my shop!  

Here are the colors I used for the living, dining and kitchen areas.  Sea Salt has become one of my most favorite colors ever!  Way to go Sherwin Williams!  It truly goes with everything and reads as a neutral while still giving you such a nice hint of color.  The ceilings are painted Spare White, which is just the lightest shade on the Sea Salt color strip.  All of the trim in the entire house is just your basic glossy white.  

I hope you have enjoyed the tour of my living and dining spaces!  If you saw something you like, be sure to check out the items below.  We'd love to help you get the look! 
(This blog was originally posted in August 2016 so some of these items are no longer available.  We hope you will take a look around the store and see what's new!

It seems like I have been working on this little house forever!  (It probably seems like that to you too!)  It has definitely been a labor of love, and is still a bit of a work in progress, but I am finally at a place where I feel I have tended to enough of the details to let you have an in depth tour. At 980 square feet, this house packs a lot of character into a very small space!  Matt and I have been thrilled to settle in to this little mill house and make it our home.  Living in a small house or apartment doesn't mean you have to compromise your design aesthetic.  There are plenty of ways you can bring style and organization to a small space, while keeping to a strict budget and I hope I can give you a few tips along the way! 

 I am pairing a "before" picture with each room / porch, just in case you have forgotten the horror!  If you are new to The Southern Mercantile, be sure to take a peek at my previous renovation blogs, to see the whole process!  
​Alder Street Social Club
Alder Street Renovation
Alder Street Renovation-The Floors

​Now, just to recap, here's a little reminder of what the house looked like on the outside when we began our work.  

And, ta da!  Here's my beautiful front porch now!  Don't you just want to come on up and visit for a while? Matt and I have already spent many evenings here in the spring and the fall, sitting on the glider, sipping a glass of wine and, catching up on the day! I had concrete board siding and trim put on the house which helped greatly in making it more energy efficient and will hold up much better in our damp climate than the original wood siding.  I did have to install all new windows in the house and the porch received new columns.  

On to the side porch!  You may remember, the side porch did not originally exist.  There was a small stoop with steps leading up to the side door.

I decided to expand a little by adding a small side porch.  As it turns out, adding this porch was, by far, the best decision I made regarding the renovation.  I just love it!  I love coming home, parking in the driveway, and walking up the steps to be greeted by this happy little spot!  The side door enters into the kitchen so it is perfect for the usual coming and going, unloading groceries, etc.  There are steps each side of this porch, one set leading down to the front yard and the driveway and one set leading down to the back yard (and the soon to be patio).

If I am home alone on a pretty evening or a Sunday morning, this is where you will find me.  It is a little more private than the front porch and such a happy place to sit and drink my coffee!  I know you can see my stash of yard tools, under the table.  I have future plans ready for a cute little gardening / storage shed but that project is down on the priority list a ways.  For right now, the side porch also serves as my storage area for gloves, yard tools and bug spray.  This cute drop leaf table has been a great outdoor storage solution for me.  My vintage drink crate acts as a nice cubby for small items.      

I have a few more projects waiting in the wings to finish things up on the outside. I am currently saving for a metal roof and underpinning.  This spring I started to attack the yard but I still have a good bit of work to do there!  I am also planning a little patio area that will be right off the steps that lead to the back yard and I have a feeling that will become my new favorite spot!  

Just in case you are interested, here is the color pallet for the exterior of my home.

Did this inspire you to spruce up your own porches?  Here are a few items in The Southern Mercantile store that can help you get the look!  Click a picture below to view it in the store! (This blog was originally posted in July 2016 so some of these items are no longer available.  We hope you will check out the store and see what's new!)

If you took a look at my previous (also the first!) renovation post, Beech Street Bungalow: Before, I'm sure you noticed how many fireplaces were in our new home!  I love the character and warmth that they bring to a room, so needless to say, I was excited!  Today's post gives you a little glimpse at what we've been working on and what we have in store for a very special fireplace.

The first step in our renovation process was to begin tearing out the existing walls.  We wanted to do this for a number of reasons, the two most important ones being to make it more energy efficient and give it a more updated look.  As we removed the first layer, we discovered bead board was what was hiding beneath it.  This was a happy surprise due to hopes that we would be able to use some of the original walls!

As Phillip peeled the layers back from around the fireplace in the dining room area, he discovered a different brick that formed the chimney.  If you have picked up on my style at all, you would know that I am more drawn to this rustic and industrial look rather than the classic and formal feel.  

The newly discovered brick is known as "fire brick".  The darker brick that made up the outside of the fireplace is known as decorative "wire cut" brick.  This brick cannot withstand the heat as well as the fire brick can--which explains why the fire brick makes up the chimney!  As we began to discuss the possibility of this brick being behind the wire cut brick, our wheels started turning.  We decided to take the risk and begin removing the wire cut brick from the face of the fireplace.

We spent hours (and  I mean HOURS) removing this brick, cleaning it up, and neatly stacking it only to be relocated two more times. You don't realize how many bricks it takes to build a fireplace until you tear one down! ​

We worked into the wee hours of the night in order to see what we would end up with. (And p.s. you will definitely want to wear dust masks if you ever decide to do this!  The amount of mortar and coal dust we stirred up was amazing.)

Not glamorous, I know, but totally my style! The original fireplaces were coal burning, which means that they are more shallow than a traditional wood burning fireplace.  Gas logs would work perfectly in this space, so we hope to have them installed in the future!

The very  next weekend, we diligently started on the living room side of the fireplace.  This is when it really started looking dramatic!

So after removing the wire cut brick from the living room side as well, this is what we got:

We love how it turned out!  We decided to go with a more open concept and let this fireplace take center stage.  The beautiful glass french doors that were on either side of the fireplace are being lovingly relocated to accommodate this change.  

After spending a lot of time (days upon days) tearing out and carrying load after load to the dumpster, this project was such a fun encouragement.  It was a simple and quiet reminder that the best is yet to come.  It's little finds like this along the way that make the aching bones and restless nights worth it.  

I can't wait to share another update with you soon.  I think I'll take you on a tour of the walls! I'll tell you more about the beautifully colored strips of bead board you see above and what we have planned for them.

If you have been keeping up with our posts, then you should know from my last blog, Tips for a Smooth Move, that Phillip and I bought a house!  We are so excited to begin this journey and I am excited to be able to share it with all of our readers!  This home was built in 1910 and boy, is it full of character.  It is located in the heart of down town Ocilla--so much so that I can walk to work!  We purchased this home from the sweetest couple who raised their family there and loved it dearly.  They have certainly placed this home in good hands, and we can't wait to bring it back to life!  I will be sharing our renovation progress with you along the way, so I thought I would go ahead and give you a tour of our home before we begin!

When the sellers purchased this home, they chose to enclose the front porch to provide a work space for the family salon.  Luckily, as you can see below, they left the original columns in place and just added in glass around them!  This is great news for us considering that we want to make this area a porch again.  

This home is located on a corner lot, and as you can see below, we have a wonderful size yard! It is even fenced-in, which is perfect for our Breezy girl.

The exterior door below leads to what will be our master bedroom.  Be sure to stay tuned to see what I have planed for this area! 

The view below is what you see when you enter the front door.  A beautiful foyer greets you along with a hallway that stretches throughout the house.  

To the right of the foyer are these beautiful glass pocket doors.  (One of my favorite things about this home are the doors!)  They lead you into the living area.

The living area is full of light!  We love the tall ceilings, decorative beams, large windows and original light fixtures.  The couple who sold us this home decided to let us have the furniture set you will see below!  Phillip has big plans for using this set as it is VERY comfortable and in great shape!

This shot below could be my favorite view in the whole house.  I love everything about it.  Many memories will be made in this very spot. 

Now, from the view below, we are looking toward the dining room.  This fire place is sure to be a focal point!  This is another area that I am excited to show you later. :)

On both sides of the fire place were original glass french doors. They are beautiful!  I don't have a great picture of them, but you'll definitely be seeing them later. 

From the dining room you enter this small hallway you see below, which leads you to the kitchen.  There is a pantry on the right, that will be wonderful to have!

The kitchen is a small space considering the sizes of the other rooms, but it will be one of my favorite rooms in the house I'm sure.

The kitchen has a large opening into the hallway, which I love!  We won't have a ton of wall space, but I like the open feel that it gives.  The picture below is the view of the hallway from the back of the house.

The room you see below was the back porch at one time, but it was eventually closed in.  We will love using this space as a laundry room!

This room will be our master bedroom.  I LOVE all of the windows, but am a bit afraid of window treatments!  How lucky am I to be friends with Roxie?!

No room is complete without a fire place, so of course our bed room has one too!

This is the only bathroom original to the home.  I adore this old tub and am excited to give it new life!

This room will be the second bedroom.  As you can see, it holds a set of pocket doors that are gorgeous!  Phillip has a fabulous idea for these. 

This bedroom also has three gorgeous windows!

This is the third and final bedroom.  This room has two beautiful windows but are currently boarded up due to the added on salon.  This bathroom was also an addition and will be turned into a closet.

This concludes our tour of the "Beech Street Bungalow"!  I cannot tell you how much fun this process has been, in spite of all of the chaos.  I will never be able to thank Phillip enough for all of his hard work (he does this for a living and comes home to do it some more!) and his constant responses of, "sure, we can do that!"  The Lord knew exactly where our life together would take us and He prepared us for it along the way.  I never would have thought that within our first year of marriage we would be buying our first home and a "fixer upper" at that!  Renovating a home has always been a dream of mine and I know that it will be beautiful.  

I hope you are as excited as I am and will follow along with us on this journey. I will be posting our progress and maybe even a tutorial or two!

After purchasing our “little” project the first step was to deal with the termite damage!  Our little jewel is totally wood, inside and out.  Ugh.  When we bought the house I knew there was damage, but like most projects, the more you rip out, the worse it gets!  I was on a very tight budget, so I feel very blessed to have found two super talented fellows that came every weekend for a year to work on the house.  I will never forget the Saturday that they called me at work to let me know that it was “worse than they thought”.  The kitchen floor was so rotten that it just started falling out when they started jacking up the house to replace the floor joist.  There were three layers of rotten floor, many years of just covering up the problem

The next major problem was a rotten wall in the kitchen.  When we first looked at the house I wondered why one wall had the ugly 70's paneling. Surprise!  It was hiding a wall that was half eaten by termites!  This wall was one I had wished I could remove but didn’t want to go to the expense. Guess what? We took out the wall! One positive outcome to the termite damage: a beautiful open kitchen space. 

The next problem to solve was finding an inexpensive flooring option for the kitchen, dining and living area.  I really wanted the look of an old farm house wooden floor but of course could not afford tongue and groove.  I decided to use 1 x 8 boards for the flooring, even though I was strongly encouraged not to by my local hardware store and my weekend warriors.  I decided to go with my gut (I am known to be a bit stubborn) and ordered all the wood from my local hardware store.  I must say that these floors turned out to be one of my favorite parts of the house.  This is a good lesson in why it is sometimes good to go with your gut and not listen to those that say “it can’t be done”! Kyle, one of my weekend warriors, did a beautiful job installing the boards for me.  I spent about $500.00 on materials and even had enough to put in the bathroom.  I think it turned out absolutely perfect!

Since then, my guys admitted that it turned out much better than they thought it would.  The fellas from the hardware store have been over to check out my progress and also admit that the floor looks great, despite their initial concerns.  My little inexpensive flooring project has caused quite a stir!

With a little sanding (o.k. maybe a lot of sanding), some stain, and help from good friends, my inexpensive floors are quite a masterpiece!