A Peek Inside: indie home tours with Heidi Kenney of My Paper Crane

Let us take a tour together of Heidi Kenney  of  My Paper Crane’s  home for  A Peek Inside: indie home tours. Heidi’s plushes are just so delightful and her home won’t disappoint either—it’s colorful, fun & just the right amount of quirky for my taste.

1. How would you describe your designing style?

Hodge-podge…my husband and are I big collectors. Whenever we see something we like, we add it to the house without worrying about it fitting any sort of design style.

2. Tell us about your home. Is it an apartment or house. Is it newer or a refurbished older home? Did you completely redo it or just add some new paint?

It is a single family home, and is over 100 years old. It was completely redone before we bought it. At one time it was even split into two apartments. It was redone the year before we bought it and changed back to a single family house. The two brothers who sold it have fixed up quite a number of the houses in our area for resale and they really did an excellent job. It was like buying a new house inside an old house. All the appliances, fixtures, etc were new, but our beautiful old hardwood is all original and has even been repaired in ares with more original wood which was removed when they made the laundry room (tile floor). We have mostly just added paint to the walls and that is about it.

3. Pick a few of your treasures and share what’s the special about them to you.

We have a set of red school lockers that we bought at a local flea marker type shop. They are super heavy, but actual school lockers and we have them set up in our mud room so they really come in handy.

I also really love our Pez collection which is in our dining room. We get comments on it all the time, the case is one our friend made for his own Pez collection and when he out grew it, he sold it to us. We actually need a second case now.

4. What was your favorite project in decorating and designing your house? What would you do differently?

My favorite would probably our bedroom, because when we originally had the largest room in the house and decided to switch after a year so that our teenage son could have the big room. Well when we moved into the smaller room it was really crazy, nothing fit right, the walls were not painted. It had a tiny closet that you couldn’t even fit a hanger in…but we were determined to make it work. We bought a new bed with drawers underneath, got rid of our tall shelves, took the closet door off and wall papered it. My husband then made shelves for the closet so we could use it for books we were currently reading, and we painted the room. Now its really one of our favorite rooms in the whole house.
I think if I could change one thing it would have been to paint all the rooms before we moved in. We moved in December and were really eager to get somewhat settled before Christmas. It is also the first house we ever owned. So we did paint almost the entire downstairs before moving in, but the second floor has been really slow going (we’ve lived here two years now) and so far just the three bedrooms have been painted. It just makes it such a pain when you’ve got things in place, or hanging on the walls.

5. What’s your favorite room and why?

My most favorite room of the house is the studio on the 3rd floor. My husband has an area for his desk and supplies and then I have a huge space for everything I make. It’s really nice that its on the 3rd floor, so I never have to worry over it being clean even if people are coming over. Plus it’s just wonderful to have a whole space where things can stay out as you are making them.

6. Any current or upcoming home projects?

Now that both our kids are in school full time this year we really want to paint and tile the upstairs bathroom. We want to make a few small minor changes to it as far as places for towels etc goes.