Mabey Manor House Tour: Entry and Living Room

Welcome to Mabey Manor, our 1910 home that we bought to renovate! Throughout the tour, I’ll show you shots from the day we moved in as well as point out the things that need to be redone and the features we love. And, this is your chance to play designer! I’d love your input and ideas for any of the features I talk about in these house tour posts.

I’m including several Pinterest boards, and I think it would be awesome if you wanted to join my group board and dream with me. What would you do with the space? Pin some things for me to look at! Just leave me a comment or send me an email with your Pinterest handle, and I’ll add you (I’m @mabeyshemadeit)!

The more the merrier, because I love combining ideas and figuring out what works best for the space.

Are you ready to come in?

This is the view when you open the front door. I love that there’s an entry. The door itself has to go because it’s not efficient and doesn’t seal. Plus, the front door is kind of like a first impression, and this one doesn’t do anything good for the house–especially with the “abandoned house” stickers on it. Don’t worry, I’ve scraped them off by now, but that kind of gives you an idea of the state of the house right off the bat. 🙂

Once you step inside, you’re presented with this nice-sized closet. Perfect for hanging coats, leaving shoes, and other items before going into the house. It just needs some love. And do you like that the closet has no shelf, rod, hooks, or anything to make it useful, but it’s fully paneled. Ahh, the irony. I have big plans for this closet though, along the lines of the pins on my Entry Way Pinterest Board (@mabeyshemadeit).

Follow Mabey She Made It’s board Entry Way on Pinterest.

So here’s a view of the entryway from inside the living room and a few notes:

1. All the trim throughout the house is wood as well. It will all get a coat of white paint so it blends in/stands out in a better way. The paneling has been painted here, so it looks much better, but it will still go, as will all of the paneling in the whole hose. I really like this window though. I’m thinking that hanging a wreath here would be fun.

• The door has to go, but we already discussed that. What color would you choose though? Dark gray? Black? I’d love input.

• Oh, the floors. Apparently the last owners thought that painting the plywood patches and the rest of the hardwood was a good idea. It was a poor paint job with no protection over the paint, so after only a few weeks it all looks horrible. But we’ll be replacing it.

The entry way leads into the living room, which is HUGE! This ends leads upstairs to the bedrooms and a second bathroom. At the top and bottom of these stairs I really want to add built-in baby gates that can stay open or closed depending on the need. And the floors will all be redone–we’re thinking herringbone…

Here’s another angle of this half of the room. The windows are nice for getting natural light, although they’re on the north side of the house, so the light is always cool in this room. We’ll be adding curtains instead of the blinds once all the construction is done.

The view from the entry is this LONG, uninterrupted wall. I’ll definitely need help figuring out how to break up this space and make it look more natural. 

And this is the other end of the room. I think we’ll use it as a double functioning room; dining room on this half and living room on the half that goes upstairs. The doorway pictured here goes into the kitchen, which I’ll show you in another post.

This photo highlights two of my favorite things about the room–the built-ins and the light fixtures! There is so much room in those built-ins, and I love how they fill the wall framing it so well. A little paint and new hardware, and they’re going to be so fabulous. And the light fixtures are a Tiffany style fan (two of them) that stand out in the room and give it a little character.

Here’s one more view of this end of the room and the other window for great light.

Some of our ideas for this room include things from my Living Room board

Follow Mabey She Made It’s board Living Room on Pinterest.

The last thing I want to show you is the garage, which is surprisingly awesome. When the inspector was here before we closed, he showed us that behind the paneling in the garage (yes, it was there too), the original beams were exposed.

There’s something simply lovely and rustic about the inside of the garage looking so original. I love those windows…I’ve claimed them already, although it may be a long time before I get them. And these fabulous door plates and handles? They’re definitely coming inside (along with the vintage windows you see below) for decor pieces. They deserve to be showcased somewhere rather than hidden in the garage. 🙂

Chad has already insulated the ceiling, added a garage heater, hung lights, redone the electrical panel, and some other things so that the garage is functional as a garage and can double as a shop during the winter months especially.

So that’s all I have to show you today. Now comes the fun part–tell me what you’d do!

Seriously though, send me ideas, pins (@mabeyshemadeit), inspiration–I’d love to see and hear all of it!