Day 1 of My Home Tour: The Parlor

Hi, Kelly’s Korner’s visitors!  Welcome to Our Old Southern House, a blog where I talk about my family, our old house we lovingly restored, the family farm, and sewing.  Feel free to check out my blog {today’s entry was on my fall vegetable garden and pictures from yesterday on the farm} or the ‘after’ section which features all our renovations on our 135-year old home!

Edited in September to show my!new!rug!:

And you know I always keep it real–that’s why C.’s dirt bike boots are laying in the floor because that’s where they sit 99.9% of the time.  Men!

Our parlor has been used as a formal sitting room, a living room, a doctor’s waiting room, and an examination/surgery room over its lifespan.  Today it’s one of the rooms we use the least except at Christmas when we put our Christmas tree in front of the picture window.

Yesterday I showed you this picture.

Here are the details I mentioned.

A Bakelite clock.  Old books.  My baby shower invitation {I actually got to attend my own baby shower–how cool is that?!}

A picture of my great-grandmother, Lennie Thaxton Allen.  An antique abacus.  Lace from C.’s family.  My McCoy wishing well.  An 1850s railroad map of Georgia and Alabama {Atlanta wasn’t even a city yet}.

My grandfather’s WWII Garrison Cap and his spectacles.

C.’s “man chair” with my Georgia pillow.  The framed certificate is Alpharetta High School’s FFA charter from 1932.

Panoramic photographs of Savannah (1950s) and Flamenco Beach, Culebra {Puerto Rico barrier island} in the 1910s.  We’ve been to Culebra twice and it’s amazing to me how similar the island looks now to the above picture.  It hasn’t changed at all.

A Victorian organ I gave C. for Christmas in 2007.  I bought it at a local yard sale.  The stool came off ebay.  The framed map is an 1830s map of Georgia.

My grandparents on their wedding day, Christmas Eve 1949.  A family heirloom mustache cup.

A spool of thread (it belonged to my Aunt Martha)  in a dome that needs some serious cleaning (ha!).

I didn’t get a picture of the drapes in this room.  They’re made of burlap, puddle on the floor, and have French Pleats at the top.  I love when you mix rustic with a more sophisticated room like a parlor–and burlap is just perfect.

A Victrola that my parents had in their home forever.  It still works when you turn the crank {though it sounds so creepy}.

So I keep it closed and have pictures of–who else–Mary Margaret!

We found this drafting table in the rain at a flea market.  My dad refinished it for us.  I’ve been on the hunt for a matching stool for almost three years now.  Gah!

On the mantle we have this beautiful clock my mother got off ebay for me one Christmas.  Unfortunately, it only has the correct time twice a day–3AM and 3PM–and my goal is to have it fixed one day soon.

This right here is what sold me on Brogdon House within the first ten seconds.  I love the stained glass transom.

Two other original fixtures I love of the parlor–the radiator and the summer screen (there’s a matching fireplace, including summer screen, in the dining room).

And what would a tour be without the before and during pictures??

This is how the parlor looked when we bought the house.  The picture doesn’t show it, but the ceilings had been dropped to 8 feet.

The first night we owned the house C. took a hammer to those ceilings.  I will never forget coming home {I was getting my historic preservation masters at night at the time} to find him covered in “black stuff” as he called it.  Turns out it was rat poop–I’ll never forget his shocked face when I told him what was all over him–HA!

When we took down the ceiling we discovered the original color and picture & crown molding.  We decided we had to match the color.

We also discovered some horrible plaster.

My dad hand sanded, primed, and painted ALL of the 12′ ceilings in the house.  I tried one day to help him and I barely could do a 4′ x 4′ area and I was worn out.  He was such a trooper during our whirlwind restoration.

The first stage of refinishing the hardwood floors.

It was a lot of work to get the room back to its “original” state, but so much fun.  It was one of the less fussier rooms–just a bit of electrical, no plumbing, and already had a heating vent (but no AC).  And I loved this room because it is the first one Miss Eleanor showed us when we came to look at the house.  As they say, ‘It had me at hello’.

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