Our Bedroom Fireplace

...DIY but oh-so-lovely

It’s almost impossible to appreciate where you’ve arrived and the struggle it took to get there without first remembering where you started. Many of you have been with us on this farm-starting journey now for over a decade. It’s almost too painful for us to remember how much effort and energy has been miscalculated, and in a crude way, wasted.

When I showed Stuart this image of where our basement fireplace (now bedroom) began, he cringed.

“Remember when you had me rip that carpet out and paint a checkerboard on the floor?" Square by square? Remember how I had to tape it all off and paint it all? Remember that?”

*Crickets*

I choose not to. Please and thank you.

Like I tell y’all all the time, the goal has always been to do the best that we can with what we’ve got, where we are. I refuse to live in a constant state of wishing we were elsewhere - that our budget was bigger, that our timeline was faster, that the vision was there from the beginning. The reality is the budget is strict, the timeline is painfully slow, and the vision often shows up much later than I’d like it to.

When the dust finally settles and the vision comes to life, it’s worthwhile of celebration.

I know that we primarily focus on rustic farm food (and the joy in growing it) here, so allow me a little rabbit trail down the design-hole if you will…

Here’s where we began 7 years ago: