Many years ago, Dave and I opened our partially renovated home for public viewing.  Ours was among the home featured on our neighborhood’s annual Christmas Homes Tour.  We were included as a “work in progress.”

And we’re still in progress!  Although we did a major overhaul, we still have details to complete.

In any case, I thought you might like to see our home the last time it was decorated for Christmas, way back in 2003.

Welcome to the 2003 Port Norfolk Christmas Homes Tour!

Our home was featured as a work in progress.

There was still much to do…

…but we hung our stockings by the new mantle with care…

…in hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there.

Our renovations included removing doors and making the corridors seem more spacious.

We installed little windows into the dining room as a feature to that masks (as in, provides distraction from) how narrow the hall is.

We’ve hung art that I’d collected in Africa.

We’ve done more renovations to the kitchen since 2001. This shows the doors we salvaged from Suffolk. We also salvaged the mantle, the front door, plumbing fixtures, and more.

We scraped 100 years of paint from the stair and the exterior siding.

Here’s a beautiful quilt (in the master bedroom) that my grandma made. She and I designed it together.

We installed a walk-in closet. This is a BIG deal in Port Norfolk, where the houses we built before the clothes hanger was invented.

The new master bathroom is quite spacious.

We opened up the ceiling in it.

And found lots of charm.

The guest bedroom sports another quilt from my grandma. This one covered with cats.

The guest bath has one of my favorite pieces of stone — rainforest green.

The cats had a ball!

Here’s the study…

…up in the attic…

…which I find quite cosy.