Home is a '70's ranch house in a quiet suburban neighborhood in the Carolinas. We are busy personalizing it. From time to time we'll post photos here as we make progress.
Note: You can see enlarged copies of many of the photos on these pages in popup windows by clicking on them.

The latest projects:

After six years in the house, we're finally starting to do something with the yard. What you see in the picture above is raised beds that will be going in on both sides of a front walk.

We'll fill the beds with perennials. There will be a little bridge over the ditch, and a rain garden near the sidewalk in front of the house.

Getting the sod out of the beds is fun! And next we're going to need a staggering amount of soil to fill them with.

For now, we have some mums among the ground cover and pine straw in the foundation bed, but I planted sixty spring bulbs in there last week, so it will be more interesting in the spring.

The sound system in the house is often upgraded, thanks to my audiophile husband:

Julian built the center channel to match the Infinitesimals. If you click the picture above, you'll be able to see the process.

I thought we were pretty much done in the dining room, and then we found this vintage sideboard:

We've repainted Meghan's room and replaced the battered miniblinds with wide wooden blinds from Ikea. We were going to put bamboo flooring down in Meghan's and Kennon's rooms, but we got a chance to pick up some recycled oak flooring, so we went with that instead. The floor's finish is PolyWhey, from Vermont Natural Coatings, a low-volatility, renewable, green floor finish.

Here is Meghan's room before:

Meghan's room with the new floor down:

Click here for more pictures of refinishing and installing the reclaimed oak flooring.

We just repainted Kennon's room (but forgot to take "before" pictures, darn it), and we've gotten the recycled oak flooring down in there, too. We need to get the new curtains hung, and both Meghan and Kennon's room need some artwork framed and hung.

And we were going to replace the doors from the hallway into the entrance hall and the family room with some doors from Feather River, but we found these recycled doors at the Charlotte ReStore, so Julian sanded the dark gray paint off them, stained them, and finished them:

This one is between the entrance hall and the hallway. There will be another one between the hallway and the family room, and the third will go between the dining room and the kitchen.

Hall floors and bookshelves:

The hallway now has the bamboo floor down (we got ours from this store in Charlotte), sconces installed, and the bookshelves up (although some molding remains to be added).

The sconces are from Lighting Plaza.

We got the hardwood floors down and the copper ceilings up in the living room and dining room in time for Christmas 2007.

Living room, 2009.

    People keep asking us if we knew before we started how good the ceilings would look, I guess because (to mix my metalphors) it seems pretty brazen to put shiny copper-anodized aluminum up all over your ceilings. I have to say it looks even better than we hoped (the way it opens up the rooms and the way it scatters light are not things we knew would happen), but we knew we liked it from looking at pictures of model rooms.

   The floor was a no-brainer. We love hardwood, and we don't like wall-to-wall carpeting. Again, though, the rooms look much larger and more open than we expected.

Nearly done with the floors . . .
December 2007

Earlier projects:

The workshop:

One of our first priorities was getting a workshop built for Julian. His woodworking equipment is on the ground floor, and we use the second floor for storage. (With six kids between us, we figure we never know when one of them may need a spare bed or something.)

We decided that wallboard over the brick would lighten the place up a lot. We also wanted a mantel. For one thing, we had already found an antique mantel clock we liked. It didn't run, but we figured we could fix it.

After a year of looking, we finally found an antique mantel we liked. And the clock was apparently just waiting for a mantel: once we put it in place, it started running.

Here's how it looks now:

Here's how it looked before:

The house started out with popcorn ceilings. We don't like popcorn ceilings, and we don't feel that they go with the furniture in the front rooms (an assortment of antiques). We found these copper-anodized aluminum ceilings online (have a look at them at M-Boss), and we have covered up the popcorn ceilings in the foyer, living room, and dining room with them. We've also put down ceramic tile in the entrance hall, and we have put hardwood floors down in the living room and dining room.

M-Boss also sells real copper ceiling panels, but they're more expensive, much heavier, and they tarnish over time. I can't see us polishing the ceilings, so the anodized version was the obvious choice. They also sell aluminum that looks like the old pressed-tin ceilings, but the copper is a much warmer look.

Miscellaneous:

Julian's sister, Ladybug, sent us three of the roses from their mother's garden in Manassas. They seem to be thriving, and we have planted some of Anne's other favorite flowers to keep them company. Spring 2006.

Julian took this picture of the lunar eclipse on February 20, 2008, from our front yard.

• Future projects