A New and Exciting Project for 2011

How was everyone's Christmas?

We--shock of all shockers--had a White Christmas here in North Carolina!  It was the first since the 1940s!  And that made for our *fourth* snow this month, too.  I know all you New Englanders and Midwesterners are probably scoffing, but this is highly unusual for the Tar Heel State.

Now, do I have any pictures to share of this historic occasion?

Nope.

I've been camped inside by the woodstove, feeling very unmotivated to do anything. The cold and the snow and lack of sleep leading up to Christmas have all combined to make me rather lazy and lethargic these last few days. But what are the days after Christmas for, if not for lazing about?

I feel like the funk is about to end, though, because I have something that should kick up my motivation in the coming weeks and I'm excited to share it with you all! Remember these lovely red berries in my last post?

Well, they came from the yard of my sister's new house – a 1915 one-story farmhouse!

She closed on the place a few weeks ago and I’m totally jealous for her.

The house has great bones, original doors, knobs and trim, a to-die-for country kitchen, gorgeous heart pine floors in a few rooms, a dining room with original beadboard <insert angels singing at this point>, and more. Can you understand why I’m green with envy, people??

However, the inside is ugly.as.sin.
 
A previous owner made some hideous interior paint choices along the way and the heinousness of the paint is obscuring all the wonderful period details. 

For instance, everything in the master bedroom—doors, trim *and* walls—is cornflower blue. The kitchen is another study in monochromatics—but in green.
 
It’s nothing paint and ingenuity can’t fix, though, so my sister has enlisted me to assist her in an interior facelift of her house in 2011.  I get to play Junior Interior Designer!

We have grand plans that include lots of paint (walls and floors—though not on the heart pine of course!), revamping parts of the kitchen and adding board-and-batten details, among other things.  I don't think she realizes just how many ideas I have thanks to my favorite blogs (located on the sidebar) but I'm full of 'em.  
 
And because she knows how much I like to live vicariously through others, she's also allowing me to chronicle the changes here at Carolina Country Living!
 
Stay tuned for the before pictures so you can wince at see this diamond in the rough.

This is gonna be fun!