Before

Before

Here are earlier pictures of the inside of the house when we first bought it. And also one of the dining room after removing the carpet and replacing the ruined wood floor, but before restoring the trim. The floors in the front three rooms and the hallway of the house had been drilled full of holes by the hundreds of screws that the previous owner had added before carpeting in an attempt to stop the floors from squeaking. This is no exaggeration. We have a liter bottle full of the screws that we removed. Some of them were even bolted under the house. I will post a picture of the bottle soon. Discovering that our wood floors were ruined on the second day of ownership of the house was the most depressing thing that has happened in our journey of home ownership.

There is also a picture of the olive green bathroom unfortunately you can't see the "Victorian toilet" patterned wallpaper that was on the wall with the sink.

We have lost the digital files of two of the worst rooms in the house:

1) the "country" kitchen- think yellow and orange flowered wall paper, 70's paneling,dropped fluorescent lighting and pine curved plate rails.
2) the half paneled and wall papered front bedroom with acoustic tiled ceiling.

Rainchains

So we need to get rain gutters. Our old ones were removed when the house was painted. I wasn't too excited about them until I heard about copper rainchains. Rainchains are used in Japan instead of downspouts and they are really pretty when the water flows down them. I have just purchased 4 of them- 2 for the front of the house and 2 for the back. While not historic in the US, I figure that the Arts and Crafts movement has a lot of Japanese influence so why not... I found mine at Cherry Blossom Gardens. They are based on an old design from Japan. http://www.cherryblossomgardens.com/arain.asp