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Our 100 Year Old House Attic Renovation

We started the renovation on our 100 year old house 3 years ago, and the attic renovation was an amazing transformation! It was transformed from a basically unusable space to this charming vaulted ceiling, exposed brick chimney family room. Here’s what we did…

SimpleDecoratingTips.com Our 100 Year Old House Attic Renovation

When we first started the attic renovation, we had the original maid’s room up on the third level, but the rest of the space was unfinished.

SimpleDecoratingTips.com Our 100 Year Old House Attic Renovation

We began by having the insulation company spray foam insulation on all the walls and ceiling. This type of ‘closed cell’ foam insulation has a very high ‘R’ value, (in fact, I think it’s the highest r-value of all the insulation options) which we needed in order to leave the ceiling beams exposed so that we could sheetrock the vault.

SimpleDecoratingTips.com Our 100 Year Old House Attic Renovation

Some of the windows needed to be replaced… Like this one on the stairway… the top half of the window wasn’t a window at all, it was a louvered vent. Now that we were transforming this 3rd level into heated livable space, a vent would be a bit chilly here in NW Wisconsin in the winter!

SimpleDecoratingTips.com Our 100 Year Old House Attic Renovation

What was a closed off, old icky stairway when we bought the house, is now a stairway with this reproduction vintage carpeting, featuring a fun ‘whimsical library, (you can read that post here). (if you’d like to see some great choices for ‘book themed’ wallpaper, here are 3 great ‘books’ wallpaper options… (even better than the book border I used!!)  

SimpleDecoratingTips.com Our 100 Year Old House Attic Renovation

This bank of 3 windows were only 2 windows with the third having an attic fan in the window’s place. Therefore we replaced the fan with a window, and installed this beautiful stained glass panel (I found here). All the rest of the windows are the old original ones, which I love the look of… wavy glass and all… but they were only single pane, and really close to the floor. My answer was to install interior storms with tempered glass. It solved the issue of the single pane. It also resolved the worry I had of the safety issue of old glass so close to the floor with grandchildren playing, tempered glass is much stronger and safer.

SimpleDecoratingTips.com Our 100 Year Old House Attic Renovation

Looking towards the stairway you can see how the exposed brick chimney is a huge feature in this space. (details on how I re-did the retro cart are here)

SimpleDecoratingTips.com Our 100 Year Old House Attic Renovation

Another nice feature of this attic are the steeply angled walls that lend themselves nicely for cubbies for toys, storage and my husband’s car display. (For the car display, I installed Plexiglas panels across the front to keep little fingers away from the cars, and keep the display dust free.)

SimpleDecoratingTips.com Our 100 Year Old House Attic Renovation

Beyond the game table is a large TV area. (here you can read the 2 posts when I re-did the game table and game table chairs)

Oh, and the original maid’s room?

SimpleDecoratingTips.com Our 100 Year Old House Attic Renovation

Here’s a peek into the maid’s room. It had all the original trim, plaster, floor… just really dirty… I really wanted to maintain this room in it’s originality, therefore we carefully worked around it. We managed to have the exterior wall insulated and only had a few holes in the plaster to patch. For re-wiring the room, and installing the baseboard heaters, the carpenters carefully removed the trim to get a little easier access to the space inside the walls, then replaced the trim right back.

Once all that was finished I scrubbed, sealed, primed it and painted it, (the floor is the original finish, just scrubbed and clear coated a couple of coats! Isn’t it cool how the knots in the old wood turned so dark over the last 100 years?!) The trim in this original maid’s room, now my sewing/craft room, was this fun mint green… you can see on the floor at the threshold the green it originally was. That one floor board I wanted to keep for it’s original-ness, so I scrubbed and sealed it with the floor… but for the rest of the trim, after I cleaned it, I primed and re-painted it for a fresh finish.

This 3rd level attic space is a treasure for the house now.

SimpleDecoratingTips.com Our 100 Year Old House Attic Renovation

Such a fun place for kids and adults! When we sell our house, (yes, we just put it on the market!) I think I will miss this original maid’s room the most.

Be sure to check out this page to see many of these renovation projects ‘in action’: Our 100 Year Old House

Please feel free to follow and share this blog with your friends, as well as on Facebook and Pinterest, Flipboard, Bloglovin etc… the more the merrier! And don’t forget to follow SimpleDecoratingTips.com on YouTube too!  I appreciate you stopping by.

Shopping:  

  • Best source I’ve found for buying new, vintage and antique stained glass windows!   
  • Here are several fun choices of library book wallpapers!

Here are more before and after projects:

Before and After Living Room Renovation
Before and After Front Entry Renovation SimpleDecoratingTips.com
KITCHEN RENOVATION
FRONT PORCH ADDITION
MAKING A FARMHOUSE STYLE OPEN CONCEPT MAIN LEVEL
FARMHOUSE STYLE FIREPLACE RE-DO
REPURPOSING CABINETS FOR THE BASEMENT APARTMENT
DOOR AND WINDOWS RENOVATIONS
FROM A TUB TO A SHOWER
100 YEAR OLD HOUSE ATTIC RENOVATION
100 YEAR OLD HOUSE MASTER BATHROOM RENOVATION
RENOVATING A CONDO BATHROOM
CONDO KITCHEN RENOVATION
NAUTICAL COTTAGE BATHROOM UPGRADE
2ND STORY SUNROOM RE-DO
DIY PERGOLA
ANTIQUE BRICK COTTAGE FARMHOUSE STYLE KITCHEN RENOVATION
LIBRARY BEFORE AND AFTETR
KITCHEN TRANSFORMED
KITCHEN STAIRS RENOVATION
THE BLESSINGS OF A GREAT DISASTER
FRONT ENTRY RENOVATION
POWDER ROOM RENOVATION
BREAKFAST ROOM PART 2
REDOING AN ANTIQUE COOKSTOVE
BREAKFAST ROOM PART 1

Yay!! This post was featured at Thrifty Decor Chick!!! Thank you! 🙂

This post is linked up at the following other sites: Coastal Charm, Skip to my Lou, Between Naps on the Porch, Thrifty Decor Chick, My Uncommon Slice of Suburbia, StoneGable, A Stroll Thru Life, Home Stories A to Z, Yesterday on Tuesday, Savvy Southern Style, From Evija with Love, The DIY Dreamer, My Repurposed Life, My Thriftstore Addiction

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Welcome to Simple Decorating Tips! I’m Liz, the author, and I’m so glad you’re here!

My goal is to encourage you with DIY tips, techniques and tutorials so you feel empowered to join in the fun! Along with this DIY blog, I have a DIY shop, Redo Your Furniture!
The shop is stocked with amazing DIY products! Fusion Mineral Paints, ReDesign Transfers, Decoupage, Waxes, loads of DIY Goodies and more! Even if you're not close to where the shop is in Wisconsin, good news... I ship nationwide, (USA) daily! Check out the link here and let's get your DIY on!
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Welcome to Simple Decorating Tips! I'm Liz, the author, and I'm so glad you're here! My goal is to encourage you with DIY tips, techniques and tutorials so you feel empowered to join in the fun! Along with this DIY blog, I have a DIY shop, Redo Your Furniture!
The shop is stocked with amazing DIY products! Fusion Mineral Paints, ReDesign Transfers, Decoupage, Waxes, loads of DIY Goodies and more! Even if you're not close to where the shop is in Wisconsin, good news... I ship nationwide, (USA) daily! Check out the link here and let's get your DIY on!


Disclosure Policy: According to FTC guidelines, I want you to be aware that some of the content of this blog may be a source of income and therefore may be used to promote products, services, or other businesses. I will only choose to promote products/services/businesses that I feel will be beneficial to my readers. While I hope to generate a small profit for my time and effort to create this blog, I hold myself to the highest standard of integrity. I appreciate my readers, and make it my goal to deliver quality, honest material on this blog through each post. Thanks for reading along, Liz

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Sharing is great! Please feel free to share this blog with your friends, as well as on Facebook and Pinterest and Flipboard and Houzz and YouTube the more the merrier! I appreciate you stopping by. But please remember that all photos, images, text and content are owned by SimpleDecoratingTips.com. So anything you share, please be sure it always links back to my original post it came from. Please do not remove watermarks, crop or edit anything without written permission from me first.

Disclosure Policy: According to the FTC guidelines, I want you to be aware that this blog is a source of income and may occasionally incorporate endorsements or testimonials and shopping links. It is important to me to disclose this to you. The content of this blog is a source of income and therefore may be used to promote products, services, or other businesses. I will only choose to promote products/services/businesses that I feel will be beneficial to my readers. Products provided to me by my advertising partners for my review are given to me free of charge with no cost to myself. This does not ensure a positive review of the product in any way. While I hope to generate a small profit for my time and effort to create this blog, I hold myself to the highest standard of integrity. I appreciate my readers, and always make it my goal to deliver quality, honest material on this blog through each post. Thanks for reading along, Liz

Disclosure Policy According to Federal Trade Commission guidelines, I want you to be aware that this blog is a source of income and may occasionally incorporate endorsements or testimonials. It is important to me to disclose this to you. The content of this blog is a source of income and therefore may be used to promote products, services, or other businesses. I will only choose to promote products/services/businesses that I feel will be beneficial to my readers. Products provided to me by my advertising partners for my review are given to me free of charge with no cost to myself. This does not ensure a positive review of the product in any way. My truthful opinion will be what I state, no matter if I'm getting paid or not. Accuracy and truth are the priority for me on this blog's information, no matter if it's about a product or anything else. Not every product or service or store etc. may be mentioned in each and every post as an affiliate. While I hope to generate a small profit for my time and effort to create this blog, I hold myself to the highest standard of integrity. I appreciate my readers, and always make it my goal to deliver quality, honest material on this blog through each post.

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