I hope y’all enjoyed the first floor tour of Stony Ford, now on to the second floor! The second floor is my favorite part of the house because it has the grandness of old houses that I love. When you walk up the staircase, there is this expansive hall way and the door way to what used to be a second floor balcony. The hallways are so wide I think of them as a large extended room. This is something I never experienced in homes growing up, the hugeness of these hallways seems very luxurious to me.

The second floor has 3 bedrooms with attached bathrooms. When I read the real estate listing, I was initially disappointed with three bedrooms but was quickly sold when I saw them! These bedrooms are HUGE. They are so large we can put a sofa and little sitting area in each bedroom. I’m really excited to get to decorate these rooms. The reason these bedrooms are so large, are because back in the day they used to be social rooms, like the sitting rooms and smoking rooms.

Our bedroom is the old smoking room where Ulysses S. Grant smoked his last cigar. I always try to imagine a bunch of guys hanging out circa 1880 smoking cigars in our bedroom, especially since I’m going to paint it… pink. Times are a changing! Fast forward to 1953 and the gentlemen who owned the house before us made the nook in the bedroom into a homage to Diana Vreeland, a throwback to her NYC apartment. I kinda love it, but it must come down! All the wall paper is peeling and the fabric is dry rot. I’ve enjoyed keeping it all this time, but it’s time for some new wall paper. Don’t worry, I’ll spend hours looking at every single wall paper sample out there.

The bathroom attached to our bedroom also attaches to the main hallway. This room is the only room we successfully painted and just need to make a few finishing touches to. One of the big projects in here is retro fitting a historic shower, since it would be the only standing shower in the house. I love a bath, and since we had no bath tub in our last apartment, the whole bathtub thing doesn’t bother me. I’m pretty much never taking a shower again. But I think William sees this differently and would like a shower. If you have a chance to soak in a cast iron tub, use it. It’s way better than a massage!

The bedrooms are named after the horses foaled at Stony Ford during the late 1800s. You can see all the names here.

The bedroom that we refer to as the Young Duchess room is really large and has windows on two sides, which makes it bright and sunny for most of the day. It has two layers of wall paper and the ceiling needs to be skim coated. Let’s not forget about the bathroom for this room. It has wall paper that has to come down, and also columns that were faux finished to look like marble. Well, everything was faux finished, the bottom of the cast iron tub, and all the pipe fittings. Oye. We think the bathrooms were installed sometime between 1900 and 1910, and they have the original sinks, toilets, bathtubs and hardware. It’s pretty amazing to see, especially since subway tile is so in style right now. I love the cracked texture, it says so much because that tile has held up for 100 years. Amazing.

Lastly we have the Grey Rose room. This room is on the smaller side, and has a pass through that we are using as an office until we can get the third floor set up. We’ve stripped two layers of wall paper, and it took 4 adults a weekend just to do that. Now we have to repair the walls and paint. We found the wallpaperer signed his name and dated it August 24, 1937 in the middle panel. I think that’s the last time this house was papered properly. The bathroom in this room is one of my favorites, with a pretty little claw footed soaking tub. This bathroom has the water turned off, and the tub is not hooked up, but I can’t wait to get it up and running. This bathroom has the most beautiful daylight, with windows taking up 50% of the wall space. I can’t wait to wallpaper in here. Can’t. Wait.

That’s it for now! Next week we’ll show you the ultra creepy third floor.

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