Venango Villa, or “Lone Pine,” Before & After

So this is a photo of the front room that the real estate agent took when she was trying to sell the place.  

It’s a typical 1970s mobile home with dark wood on the “accent wall” to give the tiny house an air of respectability.  Instead of an overhead light, there are wall sconces to create the same respectable effect.  The sweet old lady who died here did not really care about putting curtains on the windows, though the dark woods all around the place seem menacing when night falls.  She mostly dealt in cheap Venetian blinds and lacy valences.  Garsh, I tore so many dusty old valences out of this place…

Me?  I like curtains, real, light-blocking curtains.  This is not the exact same angle, and the realtor had a better camera than mine, but here’s the front room after a lot of work.  I was going for the whole Pennsylvania German / Scandinavian look.

And here’s the kitchen area of the same front room before we bought it.  Why did anyone think dark stained kitchen cabinets would look good—ever?  

We still want to replace the linoleum flooring, but this is a lot better, right?  The bedrooms and bathroom are better now too, but still not finished.  My wife is up there right now with her gay best friend, trying to write a book about suicide.  If we ever put the place up on Verbo or AirBnB, I think I’ll call it “Lone Pine,” for the single enormous white pine that towers over the house.