- Smallish, tallish, Victorian.
- Built in 1890.
- Seven miles from Philadelphia.
- Previously inhabited by color-mad owners.
Read the story of how we got here.
Click on any photo to enlarge… Once enlarged, you can scroll through all of them with the arrows under the picture, or with your keyboard’s forward arrow.
Wow, that is alot of colour! Very charming house with lots of potential;) look forward to following along and seeing your projects and transformations.
A lot of color… yes. Which equals a lot of primer. We have gone through a small sea of five-gallon buckets of white primer. Trying to cover that pink is enough to drive you crazy. We haven’t even tried to cover any purple yet, but I imagine it will be just as fun…
Lovely blog! We moved into a 1940s home a month ago and are in the process of working through renos as well. Our pervious owners were also colour happy (red, yellows, orange, blue)! Eventually we will tansform it to a lovely white box. Looking forward to reading more of your posts!
Nice to meet a fellow renovator suffering the color-choices of their po… Sometimes people will tell me that these must be the original, historic colors. Which makes me laugh. No self respecting Victorian painted their interior and exterior ceilings orange…
I… kind of like it, but I don’t have to live with it! My husband calls that kind of color “B&B choices.” He feels that an old house gets painted like that in order to create “whimsey,” and that’s the province of a certain kind of B&B.
However, orange ceilings?
Yes, whimsy we had LOTS of. It suited the previous owners… their décor and style was appealing it its own way. But for us, the color onslaught was crazy. I didn’t dislike any of the colors individually, but the effect of all the rooms together was too much. The bright-salmon color traveled through the foyer, up three flights of stairs, and down a hallway… it sucked all the light out of the area. By the time we got around to painting it, I couldn’t believe how much brighter the house was.
I can understand why it would make you a bit crazy, but I really like the color in what looks like an attic room.
Hi Tonya,
I’m sure you’re talking about the small room with the pitched roof and half-moon window… I actually really love that color. Kind of a robin’s egg blue. It was very cozy and the color was great in the small, unusual space… but we ended up returning the third-floor to its original layout. And I couldn’t imagine using that much color in a very large room!
Makes sense. I found the picture where you were re-doing the walls after I posted:).
That was a hot, dusty mess… let me tell you. I was ready to be finished after about 20 minutes… which was not nearly the amount of time needed to complete it!!
lime green and blue? orange and purple? that would drive me mad…I bet you got a good deal on the house because a lot of people house shopping can’t see the bones and floorpan of a house because all they can see are things they can easily change…like colors. I lovve your house and the things you are doing with it. I am an eclectic decorator but all those colors would drive me craaaaazy.
The colors were absolutely insane. Looking at the photos, I’m still confused why anyone would do that to their house. We did get a good deal… but this was my first house purchase. I saw too much of the potential and not enough of the work!! I walked in and fell in love with the front doors. Literally, I was obsessed with the hinges, which are super ornate… maybe not the best reason to buy a house!!
Our previous house, my husband had already been living in and was finished the renovation when I met him. He is extraordinarily capable, but without me having an understanding of the hard work involved, it kind of seemed like he just fixed stuff with magic.
So when we considered this one, I just went ahead and fell in love with it and had no concept of the practicalities involved in renovating a 120 year old house. My husband did try to warn me…but I think until you actually do it, you cannot understand the scope of the project.
Love your colors!
Thanks!! We have enough to share…
What a beautifil home! We have those old hardwood floors, one of which is still under carpet…that is our next job! Thanks for visiting my blog!
The carpet is probably a blessing… it really protects the floors over the years. We needed to refinish about half of ours. We still have a few rooms to do, but it makes ALL the difference in the world.
I love your house! Okay, so you’ve got some funky colors but it reminds me a little of our first house in a way. The woman had painted every room electric blue, including ceilings…except for the purple room. It was only paint & we got a super deal because buyers had a hard time seeing past the overwhelming color.
Well… I give her credit for going for her dream. Electric blue ceilings are a statement not too many people are comfortable making! I personally don’t need that much color in my life, but I’ve been surprised by the people who came over to our house and REALLY liked what I considered blinding!! Particularly the orange under the front porch roof. I thought it was insane, but a couple of people found it really appealing. Reminding me that I am not actually the arbiter of good taste for everyone.
The office building we bought had to be refinished, and we tried to keep it as authentic as possible. I guess that means we didn’t use the oranges, purples or lime greens!
Sometimes we rip into something and find a new section of wall that is yet ANOTHER, different color we hadn’t even seen yet!
lol! I love that the colors are at least really happy! It IS a bit busy, though looking at the pictures all together did make me smile!!
Yes, busy indeed! I didn’t even need to write any text for this page—the photos totally speak for themselves…
E-
Wow! You are in for a ride with all of that color. Good for you for taking photos before. Yes, the photso absolutely speak for themselves. go, girl!
The before photos have sometimes escaped me… it was a lot to move in and be plunged into chaos immediately. There are whole rooms I don’t have a photo of, except once we’d dug in.
I guess that was also back when I couldn’t imagine I’d ever need to be reminded how bad it looked!
Color-mad indeed! Good lord! I’m excited to follow your progress.
I know, right? If I didn’t have the photos to prove it, no one would believe the extent of the craziness.
Wow! This looks a lot like the house we’ve just bought. The previous owner wasn’t quite so colour mad… BUT… He did love ugly coloured suede paint! The walls are either blue, burgundy or mustard yellow and even some of the ceilings have been sueded. We too will be swimming in primer and sanding it back or in some cases, replacing the plasterboard. Looking forward to following your reno journey. Thanks for popping by too.
Amazing, isn’t it? How with some paint and a texturizing tool, someone can make an unbelievable amount of work for the next owner.
We had popcorn ceiling paint at another property… scraping it off was possibly the most tedious experience I’ve ever had. Fortunately (I guess it was fortunate??) there was wallpaper underneath, so it wasn’t adhered directly to the plaster. What a mess…
Good luck with your projects. I can vouch for the fact that they will be miserable while in progress and that you will forget all about the misery after they’re done!!
We’ve got 3 kids under 5 so the option to do it ourselves in this instance really isn’t there and we want to move in asap and rent out our current house so I get to pass over the dubious pleasure of de-texturising our walls to a professional. Once the floors are done (tiling and carpetting), walls are painted and a new kitchen is in (sadly the existing one is in burgundy and black and is trashed to within an inch of its life) then we will move it. Greening up and personalising the rest of the house will come in time, when we have time around veggie gardening, raising chickens and playing with the 3 kids.
Please take my word for it, that paying someone to do it for you? Is the best decision you can make… It’s pretty much my greatest fantasy at this point.
LMAO! I’ve done painting in my time, including suede although with judicious use of both colour and limited location, but having painted first whilst pregnant, with 1 containable child and later with 1 containable and 1 non-containable, the thought of 3 uncontainable children and a whole house needing painting gives me horrors. Best of luck with your reno’s and very much looking forward to following your journey.
Before you dive into that purple, a suggestion? Ask your Hardware store about how to K I L Z, KILZ a wall. This stuff cover virtually everything, usually only takes one coat then you can primer then paint. We used it on our lime green and sky blue walls, worked beautifully!
YES! We essentially now own stock in Kills…
Although we found that both the purple and the hot pink required a couple of coats. Something about dark red pigment is extremely persistent!
Our century-old house was never a looker, probably more a working-class family home, farmhouse style construction, but gotta’ love those old house bones. It had been remuddled over the years when we bought it, and the entryway was one of my favorites — black and white stick on vinyl tile in checkerboard in the entryway, black metal/fake ironwork stair railing, textured walls with silver sprinkles scattered about for a late night disco effect. Renovating or even just “unmuddling” an old house is an adventure! I look forward to following yours. ~ Kat
I personally love a disco, so I hope you kept the silver spangles…
Old homes are wonderful… it’s the intervening owners and their wild ideas about what’s appealing!!
used to work at a paint store. God bless your soul for doing all this. Totally worth the work, it looks FAB!!!!
Thank you so much!!
Seriously, our house could have been an advertisement for a paint store!
wow! my 4 year old son would love this house. He wants to have a “Rainbow Colored” house.
I laughed out loud. Apparently my previous owners had the same design aesthetic as your four-year-old!
Just stumbled onto your blog. Moving to the Philly burbs in a few months. What’s with the crazy paint?? I see it in so many homes on the market! What a great project!
That surprises me, about other houses… I’ve been attributing the colors to our previous owner’s wacky sense of style… not, a trend that anyone else would find appealing.
Welcome back to Philly!
I kid you not, there was this house with the living room painted BLACK. JET BLACK!!! With a huge red lamp. It really didn’t work…at all…
Well, you know… they say black goes with everything. We looked at a house where they painted all the ceilings a deep, crimson red…
That colour really is something but I love the house. I’ve been meaning to go through more of your posts to get a better feel for it!
I know, right? Every time I look at this page, I’m amazed anew—at the sheer rainbow effect.
Haha, yes. Actually, an old lecturer of mine has recently done something similar to his hallway in his house. All I could say when he showed me the pictures was “oh wow!”. But whatever floats these people’s boats!
Love your comment about color-mad previous owners! ALL the rooms in our house were yellow… the SAME yellow. I’m now on a mission to make every room a DIFFERENT COLOR and there are no yellow walls left!
HA! We’ve painted every room yellow! A pale yellow. A nondescript yellow. Probably exactly what you wanted to get rid of… LOL
haha… you sure you didn’t own my house before us!? I have nothing against yellow… I’m just more of a neutral wall kinda gal…
I was actually thinking grey/white/yellow for our bathroom remodel and thought… do I really want to bring the yellow back!?
Grey and white is a beautiful combination. Half of my Pinterest boards feature that combination… whenever I see it, I wonder why I haven’t used it before.
Saw you on the Homies (congratulations!) and your title really caught my eye. We are also renovating an 1890s Victorian, just south of you too.
Your house has so much character! Unfortunately for us, the previous owners “remodeled” and threw all of the character into the trash. Literally. It went in the garbage. So we make regular trips to the architectural salvage store to try to buy all the details back.
Can’t wait to grab a glass of wine and browse for a while to see what your place looks like today, so happy to have found your blog!
Christina recently posted…The wall is back up and we built some furniture!
Hey! You’re like my blog soul mate!! Can’t wait to go through your site!
Our house has a lot of the original detail, but some of the rooms succumbed to the 70’s… rooms that we did before I started blogging and I need to go back and do posts on them… on the third floor they “updated” a section of handrail/spindles… Arg… you understand.
Philadelphia has fantastic salvage places… when we go there, and I’m like—WHAT can I do with a 30’ marble column?? Maybe a gargoyle? I need a bigger house…