Old Home Love

Happy Monday, y’all! I’m so excited to introduce you to Andy and Candis Meredith today! They blog over at OldHomeLove.com and they’ve got a new show on DIY Network and HGTV. Take it away, Candis! 😀

Hello TLC Readers! We are Andy and Candis. We are loooong time fans of Layla and how absolutely adorable and kind she is (Layla, don’t you dare edit any of this part.) We very much admire the love and friendship that she and Kevin share, as I’m sure all of you do, too! It’s so fun to be here guest posting!!!

We restore historic homes for a living in Utah. We truly live our passion and love what we do. Some people think we are nuts, and they are probably right, but there is no feeling like the one we get when we save an old home. We want to share a little bit about our crazy life and our new show called (you guessed it) Old Home Love! As the name suggests, we absolutely love old houses. Surprise. 🙂 In fact, the home from Layla’s last post is making us lose. our. minds. Like, for real.

So, first of all, you should know that we have 7 kids. Seven.

We basically Brady-Bunched our cute little families: Andy had three boys and I had three boys, all the same ages. We had our sweet baby Kit (our only girl) together. We work so hard and our kids are so patient with us…they really are the best.

The show came as a real surprise to us…we were restoring homes and feeling already swamped with our lives when we got a call from a production company to do a Skype call. That call led to a sizzle reel, which, luckily, led to a short season. We filmed for 5 weeks and 2 days and the result is a completely restored Victorian “mansion” in four 30 minute episodes. I won’t go into detail, but the filming was super hard. I think that was the biggest shocker for us. We envisioned someone following us around with cameras while we “did our thing” and that was definitely not how it goes. We’ve learned a lot and HOPE to do it again! Our first two episodes aired on Wednesday of last week, and our next 2 episodes air this Wednesday (October 14th) starting at 9:00pm (CST). By the way, it actually does matter if people watch….so will you pretty please watch? 🙂

One of our favorite rooms in the show house is the living room. If I were to be more accurate to the time period, I should actually call it the first parlor. We are very fancy here. This is the only room in the house that still had original floors left intact. If you watch the show, you will find out that that made me very emotional. I was, after all, 9 months pregnant and I cannot be blamed for my breakdown. 😉 The bay windows match that of the second parlor, and the ceilings are 12 feet tall. Oh man, just writing that still makes my heart swell.

The house had original trim intact in most places along with original radiators and picture hanging rail. We were very lucky to have so much to work with. We had to take all the radiators out, pressure test them, repair what was necessary and re-install them. THEY ARE HEAVY. Andy will tell you. We always run new electrical, HVAC, plumbing etc. in all of our renovations, so this room got a lot worse before it got better. Because filming was so intense, I don’t have many photos of the during, but trust me, we had dust coming out of our noses for dayyzzz.

After a whirlwind of work and cameras and tears and stress and happiness, we put the room back together.

Tada!!!

TV is funny…I didn’t really get to paint all the walls white like I usually do. I had to make it “pop” on camera. It was still important to me that the room look understated and beautiful so I painted the walls Revere Pewter by BM and the trim Star Anise by Clark + Kensington. The fireplace was original to 1890, but the surround was not. The family who had a written history of the home said that their grandpa remembered it being stone. What was left for us what a very 1930’s cherry surround that was BEAUTIFUL, but just didn’t fit with the period of the home.

We took the top half off (and gave it to the family who put it on top of their 1930’s mantle) and placed a slab of stone on top of the mantel shelf to give it a more Victorian look. Then we painted the whole thing because TV is too fast! Normally, we would’ve stripped it down and re-stained it. You win some, you lose some. We are really happy with the final outcome, but I totally expect hate mail on Facebook for doing it that way. Aaaaaah!

We added some modern-ish furiture into the mix because we LOVE mixing old with new- it gives the house even that much more character. These plum chairs were ultimately not the ones we got to use for the show, but I loved them so much that I took pictures with anyway. 🙂

This table below was probably my most favorite piece of all:

The overall feeling in this room is just so warm and comforting. I hope that is what comes across on television.

All in all, the experience of filming a television show was both exhilarating and exhausting- a real labor of love. We truly hope that viewers can see how much we love what we do and our passion for old homes. If you watch on Wednesday, we hope you love it!! And if you’d like to follow along with our renovation adventures on Instagram you can find us at @oldhomelove too!

Love,

Andy and Candis Meredith

(Thank you for the sweet compliments and super fun post, Candis! 😀 We can’t wait to watch your show on HGTV (we don’t get the DIY Network 🙁 ) and we are so excited for you and your precious family!! We just found out the house in my last post sold- did y’all break down and buy it? 😉 XO- Layla)