The Room with the Porthole

Now that we've turned this into a guest room instead of a storage space, this is one of my favorite rooms in the house.  Ship rope runs along the edges of the wood paneled walls. The porthole that former owners installed in here adds to the tone of the room. You'll feel like you're inside an old sailing ship when you sleep in here.

In the porthole room, the knotty pine wood paneling runs horizontal like ship lap rather than the vertical pattern seen in the rest of our house.  Also, the ceilings are a bit lower in this room. I'm not sure why a lower ceiling was necessary but there must be a hidden structural reason for it. We believe that our early 1940s house was added onto in the late 1950s.  This is the first room upstairs that begins the addition.  Perhaps in joining the old with the new they had to adjust structurally in some way. When going into this room, you also have to take a step down.

The room is a bit odd not only for the porthole, ship rope and lap siding, but also because it's very long and somewhat narrow.  The room is long enough that we were able to squeeze in two queen beds, a 42 inch television, love seat and two small tables.

We were also able to accommodate a family treasure: a cabinet that my father assembled, shown above.  The lower part of the cabinet was built in the 1930s for use in the post office; my uncle inherited it and gave it to my dad.  My dad then added the beautiful pine top. The vintage cabinet now holds family photo albums.

One bed has a regular mattress and the other is an airbed with a gel pad top, giving this room adequate sleeping space for family and friends.  Sadly, the room has been empty while we get through the Covid-19 pandemic.  We are looking forward to family and friends visiting us next year when all this craziness is over. 

The room also has a sunny dormer with a line of shelves that are perfect for holding little treasures.

This House with Knotty Pine

See many more photos of our house with its wood walls in our e-book, This House with Knotty Pine. Click to download your copy from the Amazon bookshelf (for reading on iOS, Android, Mac, and PC using the free Kindle app). 

In the book, which you can download and view now, you'll discover how we stumbled upon our unique home. The house was once part of a dairy farm, but it had fallen into disrepair over the years.  Despite the sad state of the house, the solid planks of knotty pine throughout were still in great shape. Included are photos of the renovation plus many more photos of each of the eight rooms decorated. Click to see the book on Amazon.

We invite you to download your copy of the book, which follows our journey as we share what we learned while renovating and decorating a house with its vintage knotty pine walls. See photos of our rooms from start to finish and throughout the seasons.