Farmhouse Hearts and Darts, Part 5

Today I'll finally bring you into the living room, the place where I anticipate spending the bulk of my non-sleeping time at the farmhouse. Here we have the Fisher wood stove; the view (which you can't really see) across the fields to the neighbour's old barn; the original beadboard paneling, covered in many layers of old paint; and an old door, also beadboard, leading to the only closet in the house, which is under the stairs.

There are nice tall windows that stretch down low all through the house. This can be a bit of pain when you want to put furniture or a sink in front of them, but I'd rather have the extra light they let in, especially in wintertime when the sun is low. All the original wooden single-hung windows are in the house. I'm also looking forward to stripping off all the layers of wallpaper which I've discovered are hiding under the white paint on the walls. They've probably done a good job of preserving the plaster.

Now let's look at a different view of the same room. Notice the dropped ceiling (with bonus peeling paint by the back door), which hides the plumbing for the bathroom that was added sometime in the last 50 years (remember the exposed pipes in the dining room?). When someone flushes upstairs, you can all too clearly hear the water whooshing past over your head and down into the basement.

The fluorescent lighting fixture is not a feature I'm eager to retain. I don't mind the grate in the ceiling, though, which lets warm air from the stove up to the second floor - a practical touch, since the stairway doesn't let any heat go up. (The stairs are behind the wall on the left-hand side of this picture, if you're curious). The vinyl tiles on the floor cover the entire main floor, and they will have to go. There's plywood under them, and we'll probably live with the original floorboards for a while until my husband convinces me they're too impractical for the long term.

The trapdoor you see on the right leads to the basement. This is a slight improvement on my parents' farm where the kitchen table had to be moved to get to the basement trapdoor, but I doubt we'll be going up and down that often.