My Vintage Pad: Home Tour Julie From Michigan

Alas it is my birthday today so I'm taking the day off. Don't worry though, I'm here with one of my favorite feature here, a Vintage Pad Home tour. This time with Julie T. of Michigan and her fabulous ranch.

Have a beautiful day lovelies! xox Gabreial

 

View from the backyard 

Can you tell us a little bit about yourself?

By profession, I'm a physical therapist, but am currently a domestic manager of a house, a husband, a cat,  and 2 kids - ages 5 and 1.  I used to run my own small, tiny, micro-indie record label.  Also, I'm a detail obsessed Virgo.  

Living Room

Where do you live? City or just the state is ok.

A small college town in the middle of Michigan.

Dining Room in the summer.  We get all our flowers from the backyard

What is your favorite part of each room (each one that you share with us)

In our family room, the built-in wall of storage is amazing.  We keep EVERYTHING behind all those doors.  The kid's toys, stereo equipment, the TV, our videos, photo albums, records and Cd's,  board games, books and more!  There are even cutouts at the top of the wall for the stereo speakers.

In the living room, the big floor radio is one of our favorite things.  We found it for $15 at a junk store in rural, RURAL Georgia.  We planned to just use it as a bar and then give it away when it was time to move, but we wound up getting it working again, so we listen to it all the time.  It sounds great. 

Family Room - looks out to the backyard

My favorite part of all the rooms is the abundance of natural light.  This house is full of big windows and lots of light.  It's made a big difference in my mood in the Winter time, since we have such long winters up here in Michigan

some original tile by the back door in the Family Room.  A great place to throw snowy boots, shoes, snow pants - then just mop up the puddles later.

Where do you find inspiration for decorating your home?

I love looking at interiors and furniture in old movies -  the 30s through the 60s.  I'm also a big magazine junkie - both current ones as well as fun vintage ones like Better Homes and Gardens from the early 60s.

With the internet, there is just so much good stuff out there these days.  All the design blogs, it's just crazy.  Good crazy.

I'm also inspired a lot by our house - it's a ranch with tons of character and strange little nooks.  The original  house was built in 1950 and 2 large rooms were added on in 1960.  So the old part is very traditional, with a brick fireplace and pretty mouldings and things, and the 2 newer rooms are more mid-c modern. It's fun to try and find things that fit the feel of this house.  We've only been here 2 years (and also added a new baby during that time) so still have much work to do!

The storage wall in action 

How do vintage things play a role in your room/home?

 

When I married my husband, we were living in Georgia (we're both from Ohio) and we fell in love with all the vintage amazingness in the south.  Everything is old and lovely. We went to so many estate sales, junk stores, barn sales and the like.  (I still remember one estate auction with box lot after box lot of vintage pyrex going for 5 to 10 dollars a box...)  After Georgia, we lived in small town Virginia for 5 years and continued our hobby of going to antique shops, estate auctions, etc.  We have found so many great things,  and have so many of those things in our home now.  Every time I look around, I see something that is some part of our history together.  I love how vintage things have their own story too.  And I love buying something vintage or antique and giving it a second go-around. 

Master bedroom

Any advice on creating your look?

Pare your belongings constantly. I try to only display things I really love.  It helps that we have tons and tons of storage in this house. 

And I'm one of those weirdos who doesn't display family photos.  I order many prints of photos, and put them faithfully into albums, and we do get our albums out and look at them (frequently!) I just don't do the photos on walls thing.

Toy shelves in the toddler's room

Visit Julie at her Flickr!  

Find lots of photos of my daily goings-ons and I often take photos of neat things I've thrifted.  I also have a set on my flickr page of our vintage fisher-price toys.  We love vintage F-P at our house!

Thanks Julie for making taking the time to show us your lovely home!