The new stairway...

We hung a very old map of Kentucky and a map of Shakertown on the walls, as well as putting in some furniture, such as the settle [seat] on the left bottom and a 3-seater Hitchcock chair on the landing, (which is obscured by the old Santa hanging on the railing).

I also hung a folk-art chandelier, made from old bits of tin, coiled up in swirlies. This matches other similar pieces in the house; e.g., the wall hanging in the kitchen over the wall pantry.

This is the old stairway...

What the master bedroom looks like now...

This is what the master bedroom looks like now. Note that we are still deciding on which paintings to hang in this room. Also, we have removed the vinyl horizontal blinds and replaced them with interior wooden shutter blinds, per the period.

What the master bedroom used to look like...

This is what the master bedroom looked like, when we bought the place:

What the front parlor looks like now...

Now, the front parlor has a brighter look, and is loaded with period antiques. There are some nice oil paintings of animals, like horses and sheep, and some needlework samplers.

What the front parlor used to look like...

When we bought the farm, the front parlor was all white; a blank canvas. The front parlor looked like this:

The new kitchen

This is what the kitchen looks like now. We removed many of the old plain, maple cupboards and replaced then with:

• A Victorian store counter, with a white marble top
• A Civil War-era store cupboard
• A Victorian short cabinet, with a 2-inch thick marble top
• A Victorian glass-front food pantry, from an old girls' school in Louisville

We also have removed the border, which visually hightened the room, as well as brightened it, and added an old butcher block (which looks like a table in the photo above). It is being used as a small 'lunch' table, in the kitchen.

What the kitchen used to look like...

This is a picture of the kitchen when we bought the farm. Something of a rooster motif, with a rooster border, and a whole lot of cabinets, everywhere.

First harvest...

This is our first harvest of the farm - 10 or so organic pumpkins and about 50 egg gourds (not pictured). The egg gourds are a big decorator item, and we have already sold many of them. We were not ready for a garden, starting so late in the year, but we wanted some pumpkins.

Our Milk Barn...

This is a picture of our milk barn. It is quite a large barn as well. See the top of the barn? There is a basketball goal up there, where people played round-ball, amongst many bales of hay. Nice green clover hay, too. We grow hay here, about nine acres.

This picture was also taken in the very early Spring, before the grass grew back.

Our Tobacco Barn...

This is a picture of our tobacco barn. We needed a lot of storage, and this barn is huge. It has a dirt floor, but it is firmly packed. I won't be raising tobacco. One of my neighbors wanted to lease some space to dry tobacco, but I refused his offer. It is difficult to understand how tall this barn is from this picture, but it is quite tall, and quite wide. This picture was taken in the early Spring, and the grass was not in yet. I have also since replaced the missing planks from the side. The stripping room in the foreground of the picture is as big as a small efficiency apartment.

Bedlam's End Beginnings...

We bought this Civil War-era farm at auction in April 2007. We have been looking for a place like this for ten or more years. It has a couple of barns, a nice pond and a farmhouse. The previous owner raised horses and cows there, but I won't be doing that, because I am a vegetarian. I intend to raise vegetables instead of cows.