Thursday, June 2, 2016

Throw Back Thursday - Front of the House and Formal Living Room

You may remember the closet at the bottom of the stairs post I did. It is a closet full of photos that stayed there for literally years after we moved into my hubby's home. My mother-in-law took lots of photos, but was more a scrapbooker type of photo organizer. She has any vacation or topic neatly arranged in albums, but the regular day to day pictures were mostly in boxes. 

Anyway a while back I was looking through the pictures trying to figure out how the side area looked and why there was no drainage problem then...blah, blah, blah...

I thought y'all might like to see the differences from when Hubby's parents lived here and now us. 

Warning...It will be very different. Don't judge me, but we all have different tastes and honestly I wasn't even sure I wanted to move here even though it was big, spacious, lots of storage, and ON the WATER! The reason was that it was so different from my tastes.

However waterfront changes minds, and with time I made it more my style.

The first pictures I will share this Thursday are the front of the house and the formal living room.

This was the front back in the mid-eighties. They moved in December 1984 and that was the first Christmas after Jeff and I married. All but two Christmas Eves have been in this house. One was the last Christmas my mother-in-law was still able to be sitting up and the next was the year she passed away. Those two the family met at our home around the corner.

So without further explanation here goes the front of the house.

The next two pictures are probably taken in 1985.

This was my mother-in-law out front. 
The biggest differences are the door and the garage door. The garage door was way too busy for me. Jeff didn't like the blue door, but at one point there was some blue tile in the walk up to the door.

We painted the house and toned down the brown all around and changed the gutters to a tan color.



My father-in-law out front.
That grass was so green. There trees are all different. The ones in the front are all maples and none made it through Hurricane Opal. A new one was planted and didn't make it through Ivan. We now have a Natchez crepe myrtle and a Japanese maple in the front.


The picture below is now.

Oh one more oldie...probably early 90's... rare snow dusting at Christmas. Garage is open. Oh and you can see the blue tile leading to door. I don't remember why, but that got damaged and had to be changed.


The rather dull door now, but more me. I am not crazy about the tile now, but I have to live with it.



Now for the side yard entering our circle. I don't remember this version. Tulips are planted there. What I do remember was literally the most amazing red and white impatiens beds you have ever seen. Everyone stopped to look at them.

You should always take pictures so you can remember.


now... 


I can't get over the trees and how much larger they are now. There is one that leans way across the driveway now.




Now for the Formal Living Room...

I can actually find only one picture of it. That is another reason why you should always take pictures of you house. You will want to remember things. 

It was basically the forbidden room!

My kids, Lindsay and Paul Allen remember it as the room they always wanted to go in, but Nana was very protective of it. 
In other words, they could only walk past it. 
She was very proud of it...having grown up in the depression, this was her dream room. In April of 1986, the home was on the tour of homes in FWB.

This was the picture for the newspaper.

My sister-in-law, Donna kept the tables, but we sold the sofa and chairs. The rug I kept for years, but after two teenagers, dogs and so forth and it being white and not really matching anything, I finally let it go. It was hard because I knew it was the real stuff and quite expensive. The price tag had still been on the bottom.

Now, for what I did to this room. I knew we would never ever walk in here. With a family room with a water view and the downstairs big room, it seemed pretty pointless to add more sitting room furniture, so I actually went with Hubby's idea. My only stipulation was it had to look nice.




Pretty different huh?!

I wish I could find  a picture with the chandelier that was hanging where the light is now above the pool table. It was gold and very ornate. I have kept it though... I think Lindsay might want it one day. I think it will come back in style. 

Well, there you have it for a Throw Back Thursday. 
More of these to come without so many words, since now I have set the stage for it.

Blessed to live in a home with history,
Sandy


Sharing today with Thoughts of Home on Thursday and Stacey at Poofing the Pillows...


6 comments:

  1. I think it would be super hard to move into my mother in law's home. While i loved my mom in law, our tastes were very different as well. How long did it take you to feel like it was your home? Were your parents in law still living when you moved into the home? I find it very interesting!! I have saved many photos and have them all in books...with notations. The kids may just toss them out.lol The framer and I were talking this morning about how many framed things are sold at yard sales. I try not to think about mine being out on the lawn.:)

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    1. They had both passed away. The house remained empty for about 5 months while Jeff and his siblings tried to think about what they would do. His sister and brother hoped it would remain in the family since the house was their retirement/dream home. We finally decided to take it as our part. It was really hard at first, because we had built our home and it was SOOOO me and this was so not. However, Jeff and the kids thought the water superseded things. For the first year I scraped wallpaper continuously while the view of the water captivated me. I began to like it and slowly we have made it ours. Just wait to you see more of these posts. You will see. Some things grew on me. One of the big things is that it wasn't empty. We had an estate sale, but Jeff's sister just could not handle the loss and the deep cleaning and his brother is single and didn't care to go through things either, so I had to do all of that. I still have tons of framed pictures downstairs under the stairs of grandparents, great grandparents etc.. I will just have to let the kids throw those out. I am kind of thinking about doing a wall of them at the farmhouse this fall.
      Cleaning out behind parents is awful. I know it was hard for Mama too.
      One interesting note about my m-i-l, was that she gave me some pretty yucky gifts the first six months, but she began to take note of my style and really hit the nail on the head after that.

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    2. Oh, and I have to tell you, I would never have picked out stone or tile roof. I am still not crazy about that, but like I said, it grows on you and time passes.

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  2. Water does make things nice so I understand the lure of the setting. I am reading the Kon Mari book about tidying and it is interesting. I am going to take some of my pictures etc to our little house once it is built. But I am sure most of my pictures, cross stitch etc will be sold at an estate sale too. I am glad I will not be here to see it!!

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  3. How neat to look back and compare to now! I remember that French Provincial furniture quite well from when I was a kid. I thought it was beautiful but you are right...you could never touch it. A fun room is so much smarter.

    Happy Thoughts of Home. :)

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  4. We all make decisions based on what we need to do, right?
    It is all in the eye of the beholder.
    Because I live in deep Southt exas, I love the Spanish tile roof.
    Thank you for being at TOHOT.

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I am so glad you stopped by my little blog. Drop in again anytime.
Sincerely,
Sandy