It’s time to show you a full tour of Stony Ford, so for the next few weeks, we’ll share a floor a week. We’re excited to share some of these details so it’s easier to follow the renovation. I’ll go over all the details for each room. I think a video was the easiest way to show the floor plan and overall feel of the space in the ‘before’ state. This is a quick iPhone video, but hopefully you’ll be able to get a feel for the space.

First, we start outside at the entrance columns. Then the east yard, which we also call the ‘park’ since it’s our favorite place to walk the dogs. We have a total of 17 acres, but only 4 acres close to the house are really usable. The exterior of the house has 4 columns, and used to have 6 columns, where the kitchen and mud room extension are located. Can you believe there used to be five or six more rooms?! From there you see the front door, which I have the paint stripped about 50% of it! I have to finish this ASAP cause it’s starting to get cold not to mention tidy up for Thanksgiving.

The front hall way is quite wide and about 10 seconds after we walked in the house for the first time, we knew this was the one. I wanted a house with an impressive entrance, one that people could move about freely and not feel cluttered or tight. I also love the open staircase, it gives the house an expansive feel. The light fixture choice we make for this will be key in setting the tone for the house.

Once inside, the blue room is the library/dining room. This used to be yellow and we’ve just painted it blue. So much of the house was/is painted yellow, which must have been a trendy color back in the day. We are still waiting for the book shelf paint to harden all the way before we put back all our books and my nicknacks. The living room and dining room are connected by eight foot wide french doors, which in my opinion is the O.G. of open concept living. Every home renovation TV show we watch, the term ‘open concept’ is a desired trait, they should take it back to 1850s style. We can open these doors for great air flow (or people flow) and that’s one of the reasons we fell in love with this house.

The living room is unusually huge, another feature that attracted us to this house. The living room clocks in at an extra large 20 X 24 feet. It’s almost so big I don’t know what to do with it from a furniture layout perspective. I have lots of studying and learning in that area before we start making purchases. Overall, these rooms need different styles of furniture than what we had in our loft and much, much, more furniture. For the house, we’ve purchased very little new furniture for the house because we wanted to live in the space before making expensive furniture purchases. The living room, is especially true that we need to live with the space to see how we actually use it.

The kitchen and mud room are going to be one of the only areas we gut. This kitchen was the swankster kitchen circa 1960, and is actually quite tasteful for that time period. There are a lot of logistical items we have to consider when renovating this space, like leveling the floors and rethinking the steep stairs that lead to the basement.

That’s it! We have big plans to make this space as stunning as possible! If you want a little look at what I have up my sleeve, check out my Pinterest boards and Instagram feed at #stonyfordestate.

Thanks for joining us on the Stony Ford tour of the first floor.