New House Inspiration: Living Room

Next on my list of requested rooms is the living room!

This living room is a really nice size; she's a bit bigger than our current one (by about 30 square feet). And just like the master bedroom, we're not changing too much from our current set up for this room!

Here's the new room:

Back window, south and west walls

Back window, hallway to dining room/kitchen

Front window, front door

Front window, north and west walls

Here's our current living room; all the furniture will remain the same for the new house:

We love having blue living room walls, but I want to change it up a little bit for the new house by going a little darker. I really like this color! It's still light enough it won't feel like a cave, and it goes with the more subdued colors of our furniture and decor:

Okay, I'm trying something a little different for this blog post. It can get confusing when I talk about which piece of furniture is going where, so I'm hoping this helps! Let me know if it's helpful or distracting!

We love having our couch and love seat being perpendicular to each other. It really makes our living room feel cozy, so I'm really excited we'll be able to do it in the new living room as well! The couch will go flat against the west wall with the loveseat coming out in the middle of the room as a bit of a room divider. Our big arm chair will go in front of the front window (a shallow bay window! I love bay windows!!!!). Our rug and coffee table will be in the center of the furniture grouping, too.

Across from the couch is a wall where the staircases are:

 I love this idea for a TV wall! Our current one is a little similar, but I love the pictures on either side (I'd do smaller ones, though) and the basket of blankets on the floor next to it:

However, our inspector suggested we remove part of that wall to really open up the space a little more. While we love that idea (look how pretty it could be!), I really don't know where the TV would go. It might fit on that wall still, but we'd have to measure and see:

At the other end of the living room is where I hope the bookcases will fit. I really don't know if there's room for all of them on this small wall, though, so we might have to change things up a bit:

Did you notice one of the arrows points to a CLEANING CLOSET?!??? I think it's actually designed to be a coat closet, but it's so far away from the front door or the door by the garage (which is the one we'll use most), so it doesn't make sense for it to be used that way. Right now my cleaning supplies live in the bottom of my linen closet and on the top shelf of a laundry cupboard. My broom and mop just tuck in between my washer and wall in my laundry space, and the vacuum cleaner lives in my bedroom closet. It will be SO NICE to have everything all together!!! I'm hoping to have it eventually organized like this:

On the opposite wall will be our keyboard for the kiddos. 

Eventually we would LOVE to get a piano for them. Is it silly that I'm looking forward to decorating it? A plant or flowers, pictures on the wall, and candles on top sounds just about right to me!

For curtains, I'm thinking a cream or pale tan color with sheer curtains in between. We have that in our current living room, and I love how sheers let the light in but give a lot of privacy as well:

So far I've revealed the plans for the boy's room, Paige's room, master bedroom, new kitchen, current kitchen, and sunroom. Which should come next: mudroom, bathrooms, laundry room, office, kid's space or dining room? (Looking at this list makes me panic a little about all the areas I'm going to have to clean! Eek! :) )

House Hunting FAQ

We've been getting a lot of questions about all the house hunting and selling process, so I figured I'd do a FAQ post!

New House:

Where are you moving to? Will you still be attending the same church?

York! Just twenty minutes away. And yes, as long as God allows, we will still be attending the same church.

Why are you moving?

To be closer to the kid's school. We transferred the kids last year, and it was doable, but with Paige able to participate in modified sports, both boys participating in Odyssey of the Mind, and Pete hoping to coach swim again, it just made sense for us to move. Our family does not function well if we're not home a lot, and just being on the road all the time was going to cause too much stress for us.

How many beds and baths is it?

It has 3 bedrooms (with the ability to be turned into 4) and 1 1/2 baths.

Is it going to be big enough for all of your wants needs? Does the new house have everything you want?

Yes!!! We had very specific things that we needed in a house: I needed an office, the bedrooms couldn't be considered glorified closets, and we needed a space for the kids to play and hang out with friends. I also needed room for a garden and we wanted a yard for the kids to play. I'm getting my office, the bedrooms are great sizes, the kids will eventually have space in the basement to play, and I will have an office in the basement as well. The yard is amazing, and I already know where my garden is going to be. We're also getting a mudroom and a sunroom! Score!

I think the only thing that it doesn't have that we really were hoping for is a 2 car garage. It does have one garage bay, which is definitely better than what we have now!

This house looks like it's in a village? Are you guys ok with that?

It's definitely going to be a change. While it's technically not a village, it is village-like. But the street is so quiet, I think we'll find it quieter than our country road we're on now. God was also showing us through the house searching process that He wants us close to the school, meaning that we have to be close to neighbors. We did hit the jackpot though, and will be next door to some pretty amazing people!

When are you moving?

No confirmed date yet. Possibly September?

How close will you be to school?

Well, we're at about 18 minutes away now. One of the last times I was at the house, I timed how long it took to get to school. With waiting for 7 vehicles to pass by over the course of my drive, it took 3 minutes.

We're going to be so spoiled.

How are you feeling about all of this?

Oh man. I don't know. I'm all jumbled up, and can go from laughing and being happy about all of this to crying within seconds. I'm really excited about my new home and getting to make memories there and make it a beautiful place for us...but I'm really sad about leaving my current home, all the memories here and our neighbors. It's our first house, it's the only home Ryan has ever known. We've put down roots here, and we're all really sad to be leaving it. But there is so much calling to us in the new neighborhood, we have so many friends in that area and we're getting established there, that I'm hoping and praying the transition will be an easy one.

I thought you wanted more land?

Our original wish list had a lot of things: 2 full baths, 4 bedrooms, a few acres, no neighbors, etc. But we realized we didn't need all of those things to be happy:

- We could be fine in a 1 1/2 bathroom house.
- The boys are ok sharing a room as long as the room is big enough.
- We have .8 acres right now, and even that can feel like too much to take care of (note to self: less flower beds at the new house!).
- It felt like God was calling us to be close to school, which means having neighbors.

So I guess my answer is yes, when we started looking we wanted more land, but as time went on we realized we didn't need it and would be happier with less.

A fixer upper? Really?

She's probably more of an "updater" than a "fixer upper" as it's mostly cosmetic work that she needs. We really liked the idea of building, but that was going to be at the top (if not above) our budget to get all the space we really wanted, and the timeline just wasn't going to work with our wants and needs. This way we get to move in before the snow flies (no more driving back and forth every day over the snow covered hills!!!!), and still get the benefits of making the house how we want in the areas that are most important to us (aka the kitchen!). So while it may not be ideal, we really and truly are getting the best of both worlds!

It sounds like you guys have a lot of plans for this house! What project are you tackling first?

Ummm.....we're not sure yet. We need to sit down and really figure out what is most important to us as well as what our budget allows right now. To see what all we have planned for the house, you can check out the blog posts here.

How quickly are you going to try and get all the projects done?

It depends on how big the projects really are and what our budget allows; we will be contacting contractors for estimates after we move in and get settled. We feel very strongly about paying in cash for all of our updates, so that really plays a big part in our timeline. We would love to have everything done in three year's time, but realistically will be more like five to ten (or so we hope; some projects didn't get done in the almost nine years we were here until it was moving time....). It will probably feel a lot faster than that in a lot of the house as paint will make such a massive difference.


Current house:

Do you know the buyers?

Nope. We know their names and that they just got married a couple months ago. That's about it!

How many showings did you have? How much are they buying it for? How many offers did you get?

We are unable to give out a lot of this information due to confidentiality concerns and because it still is fairly early in the process. Anything can go wrong at any time, and we'd hate for it to happen because we said too much. We appreciate everyone's excitement for us, and we will share as much as we are able to! Thank you for understanding!!!


Did I miss any questions? Let me know in the comments below!

New House Inspiration: Current Kitchen

When we were trying to figure out the logistics for moving the kitchen around in the new house, we had no idea whatsoever what we would do with the old kitchen space. We couldn't expand the dining room into the new space as the table would go through the walking path to get to from the kitchen to the rest of the house, and that would make the room feel awkward. We didn't necessarily need a bigger dining room, either; our table, even when full expanded, can fit in the dining room just fine. The room also isn't big enough for a play space, and I already had an office space downstairs.

So what were we going to do with this room?

While we had been going over house plans when we were considering building, a lot of the houses had breakfast nooks. Every single time we said that it was unnecessary to have that space (we eat at our dining room table for every meal), it was a waste of a room for us, and we would transform it into another room (usually my office) if we built.

But for this house, it wasn't a super bad idea.

While this isn't necessarily a traditional "breakfast nook", we really liked the idea of putting in another table here. With a bench under the window with a smaller table and a few chairs, it is perfect for extra seating for parties and gatherings, a homework and school project space, crafting, playing games or doing puzzles, playing on the computer (we have laptops)....the possibilities are endless!

Right now all of our board games and puzzles are stored in the basement playroom, but they are all played upstairs. They don't always make it back down to their proper location, so I need a way to store them that makes it really easy to put them away. Because I don't want the bench to go across the entire back wall (it would just look and feel awkward with a small table), I really like the idea of putting a bookcase or cupboard in each corner on either side of the window:

However, I would want doors on it to avoid visual clutter:

The left wall (behind the current kitchen's oven) would be the pass through....

...and the right wall (behind the current fridge) would probably just be an artwork wall.

The flooring will be getting an update, but we'll probably keep it a linoleum type floor for easy clean up from paint/water/glue spills. I like the idea of having it the same flooring as the kitchen for continuity, but am open to other ideas.

For the table and chairs, I really like the idea of having a smaller version of our current dining room table (it comes in various sizes, all expandable) and a similar, less formal version of our current chairs. While the nook is not exactly the same room as the dining room, they are open to each other. Keeping everything the same color and at least similar design will hopefully keep it less busy and visually cluttered!

What would you use this room for?

New House Inspiration: Sunroom

Can I just begin by saying how excited I was about having a sunroom?

One corner of the sunroom

I loooove the sunshine. During the cloudy and cold winter months, I definitely get depressed and don't feel well without the sun around. Having a room where I could enjoy the sun for most of the year without getting rained on just seemed like a perfect situation to me.

However, Pete wasn't as excited about a sunroom as I was, and he was thinking about turning it back into a covered deck. The room isn't insulated, so we wouldn't really be able to use it any longer than a deck would be, so it's just a wasted space in the winter. To turn it back into a deck, we'd pull out all the sliding glass doors that make up the windows in the sunroom, add some supports to hold up the roof, and put in a wood deck floor above the current concrete floor. I definitely saw the potential in this as we'd have an outdoor eating space and a place for grilling (as we didn't know where the grills would go), and thought this would be just as great of a space as a sunroom would be.

I looked up some inspiration, and thought some of these ideas would be amazing!

I really liked the curtains around the deck sides for privacy as well as the lights strung along the ceiling for mood lighting:

I liked the lighting for this one as well, as well as the privacy screen created by the trees. The dining area as well as a seating and relaxing area is really really nice, too!

While I was a little sad about possibly giving up my sunroom, it made sense to turn it into a deck. The grill would be right outside the future kitchen, it's less work than updating the sunroom would be, and we really like having an outdoor hang out space.

Buuuuut, my husband is full of surprises. He mentioned that keeping the sunroom might not be such a horrible idea, that with a little work, we could definitely transform it into a four season room (it's currently a three season space), and even have part of it be a greenhouse area for growing some things during the winter.

Genius.

So, you know what came next, I turned to Pinterest and looked up more inspiration!!!!

While this look is a little too messy for my taste, I really love the idea of a hammock chair by the plants. We are obsessed with our hammock, and getting to sit in a hammock during the winter while being surrounded by plants? Bye bye depression!!!!

I thought this was really cute for a corner of the sunroom! I can see herbs being grown like this:

This was my favorite idea: shelves installed in front of some of the windows! The big wall of the sunroom faces south, and I can see even one set of the sliding doors having plant shelves in front of them. Spinach, green onions, and lettuce would be happy here!

For the rest of the room, I'd love to take some of the deck ideas and bring them inside, like having the lights still hung on the ceiling and some indoor/outdoor furniture for eating and relaxing:

I also loved the idea of curtains being hung! It would be great for privacy, more insulation, and just giving it a more finished and homey feel.

The main problem with keeping the space as a sunroom is that we still don't have a space for grilling. We have two grills (propane and charcoal) as well as a smoker.

We looooove grilling.

Yes, they can live in the garage and be pulled out into the driveway to be used, but we like grilling year round. Having to pull them out into the garage without a roof to protect from the elements is not an ideal situation, so I wanted to find something that would work without turning into a super big project.

While this isn't completely perfect, I really liked adding a deck space attached to the sunroom space. I love the pergola idea (and the lights! oh the lights!!!! must get lights!), but that doesn't really help with the grilling while being protected issue. Adding a little roof (or a clear roof like in the top deck idea picture) could easily remedy that, though!

The next reveal is the current kitchen space, which will come out on Tuesday. What would you like to see after that? We have two bathrooms, dining room, living room, kid's play space, office, laundry room and (I forgot this before, oops!) the entrance/mudroom left! 

New House Inspiration: Kitchen

Now that all of the bedrooms are planned and revealed, the kitchen was the next room requested.

Let me just warn you: this post is going to be interesting. And probably confusing, too. But please bear with me!

The kitchen was THE #1 REASON why we didn't want to go look at this house. Yes, we don't particularly like the outside, but that's easily fixable. But when you look at the pictures online, see a tiny kitchen, and have a family of 5 that loves to help cook? Yeah, it's not going to work out.

But we looked and loved the house so very very much we wanted to work something out.

While Pete was thinking about visiting the house a second time, I was spending so much time (while I wasn't finishing prepping this house to sell) researching how to make tiny kitchens workable. I stumbled across one pin (because Pinterest is always my go to for anything!) showing one woman who converted her garage into a kitchen, and I thought that was just plain silly. I commented about it to Pete, and as soon as the words left my mouth, we had a light bulb moment.

One of the garage bays was already converted into living space.

Living space we weren't sure what we were going to do with.

And it's right next to the current kitchen.

We started brainstorming ideas on how to move the kitchen from it's current space to the next room over. How would we run the water pipes and gas line? Is it even possible? What would we do with the old kitchen space? HOW MUCH WILL THIS COST?!??!!!?

We were able to check it out more on our second showing. The family room space (hopeful future home of kitchen) is elevated to match the rest of the house's flooring, and the entryway mudroom is not. Behind the mudroom paneling is an access point to get under the flooring in the family room and run the lines! YAY!

During our inspection we asked our inspector what he thought about it, and he thought it was a great idea as well. The structure will work nicely for a kitchen, and he even helped us figure out a couple things while he was there!

The wall that is between the current kitchen and family room is going to get opened up a little bit like this. We're so used to more of an open floor plan, and that will help keep it open. The counter at the window will also help for parties (able to get food from either side) or holiday, when not all the food will be able to fit on the table:

We want to do the same counters as we just put in our current kitchen. We love them, and we have a ton of pieces left. We'd be able to save money by probably just buying one more piece of laminate and building the counters ourselves rather than buy premade counters. We've always wanted dark counters and gray floors (to help hide dirt), but us agreeing on cabinet color has always been a bit of a struggle. We actually both really like these cupboards, and it's almost exactly what we're looking for in terms of counters and flooring colors:

I really really really wanted a buttercream yellow kitchen and dining room for our current house. However, our rock wall around our coal stove clashed with the cream color, so I had to choose something else. I think this color would be perfect, keep the room nice and light, and really give you a hug as you walked it (it's the first room you'd walk into from the mudroom):

Having a big family who love to eat and cook means a lot of food and dishes/pots/pans/small appliances that need to be stored. Having a house closer to school and being by friends means more mouths to feed, too. I really want a pantry, and I found a corner one like this that would work out amazing in the space:

I like the lower shelves of this pantry being deeper for more storage and for the appliances to have almost a counter to sit on:

 Now, I really really really want an island in my kitchen. I'm so used to having a peninsula (and we loooove it!), but the kitchen really isn't going to be big enough to have one. There's a certain amount of space you need for walking space in a kitchen, and having an island is just not feasible in the new space. Buuuut, IKEA to the rescue! I love this little cart! The side with the shelves would go towards the oven for things like cast iron pots or even our regular pans, and then the two stools on the other side are great for the kids to sit at while helping prep dinner. It's the perfect size for what we have space for AND it's movable, so if for some reason we need more floor space, we can move it. I'd probably recover the top to match the counters, though, just for continuity:

When you enter the kitchen, the fridge will be immediately to the left of the door. I like the idea of building a wall there to keep it in it's place and having a family command center there:

A lot of this room may change depending on the budget. We will hire someone to run lines for the water and gas, but we can probably do everything else ourselves, allowing us to keep the costs low. This is definitely one of the bigger projects (if not THE biggest) that we have planned for the house. The one great thing about doing this is that we can keep the other kitchen up and running for most of the project.

Four rooms down, so many to go! What would you like to see next? We have two bathrooms, dining room, living room, kid's play space, my office, laundry room, current kitchen space, and sun room left! Let me know in the comments below!

New House Inspiration: Master Bedroom

Our next new house room inspiration is our master bedroom!

This room might not be as exciting as the other bedroom reveals. We're basically just taking our current bedroom and mostly reproducing it with a few slight changes.

Our bedroom has two windows, one faces south and the other west. It's smaller than our current bedroom at 11' x 12' (instead of 12' x 13'), which isn't horrible but will take some getting used to. It's very similar to Paige's new room in size and pretty much the mirror image of it. I think the biggest change that we're going to have to get used to is no attached master bathroom :(

We absolutely love the wall color we have now. I was a little nervous about going dark again as my research with small bedrooms usually has lighter colored walls. I didn't want the room to look super tiny because it's so small, so I kept looking and looking...

...until I found this image! I love how cozy it is, even with the really dark walls. The white accents really help keep it bright, so I'm hoping our lighter bedspread will help with that.

Our bed is going to go in front of a window (our only option), and I wasn't sure about that until I found this image. I'll hang the curtains above and wider than the window to make it more grand feeling. Not sure if we'll keep the curtain color as dark brown or do something lighter, though. Thoughts?

I really liked the mirrors behind the lamps to help distribute the light. We don't have a ceiling light in our room (we'll add a fan/light at some point), so the more light we can get the better!

The carpet is also getting ripped up in our room, but I'm loving the idea of having an area rug! I think most of my master bedroom Pinterest board had area rugs. I'd like something with some length to it. I've been crushing on a sheepskin one at IKEA, but I don't know if it'd be big enough.

I may have to get a new dresser because mine is short and wide, and I'm not sure how well it will fit in the room. I told Pete that getting matching medium height ones would be nice like this with at least one table lamp and maybe a computer monitor/small tv for when we watch movies or tv in bed. I liked this set up a lot!

Our closet is still going to be a nice size, but it's definitely smaller than our current one. I'm totally going to have shelves be put up in one end (if not both!) again. They're so helpful and make better use of the dead space in the closet! Plus my shoes need a home ;)

It's kind of nice knowing that our bedroom is going to be the same. We absolutely love our current room, so why change what isn't broken? We just have to decide on curtains and an area rug!

What color curtains or rug would you do for a dark teal room?

New House Inspiration: Paige's Room

Last time I revealed the plans we had for the boy's room, and it was requested that we reveal Paige's room next.

This reveal is a little different that the last one, though. Paige hasn't quite decided which wall option she wants to go with. She really likes both of them, but can't have them both. So, you all will get to vote and whichever one gets the most votes will be the one she goes with! (This was her idea, not mine!!!!)

Here's an idea of what her new room looks like now. It's about 11' x 12', so bigger than her current room at 9' x 10'. Her windows face north and west, and her closet is on the south wall right by her door. This room was originally going to be our room, but her loft bed only has certain places it can go, and either it would block a window in the other room or she wouldn't be able to get into the loft bed's closet. The only spot it could go and be fully functional without blocking a window was this room on the wall by the door.

The future home of the loft bed!

View from door; closet is just out of frame on the left

Paigey's room right now has a bright pale blue wall with accents of purple and pink. She loves it, but wants something more grown up (make it stooooop!). She has this comforter, and wants her room to be a rustic woodland theme based off of it. This is just a quarter of the comforter, but it's enough to give you an idea of our inspiration:

Brown will definitely be a small accent, and she really likes the blue. She's leaning towards teal a little more than the blue. Here are a couple of color swatches she's in love with:

If we can find a paint color between the second from the left on the tree colors and the second from the right on the nest colors, I think I'll have a happy girl!

Paige LOVES pillows. The more, the better. Not all of these are currently available, but we'd love to find ones (or fabric to recover her current ones) like these:

We're also going to be pulling up the carpet in her room, and she loves area rugs. Something like either of these would be awesome!

Paige is still deciding if her American Girl dolls are coming back into her room. They've been packed up for about a month now, and she said she hasn't really missed them. If she chooses to not have them in her room anymore, she has room for a hammock chair like we want to do for the boys, or a papasan chair. She loves these ones:

Another fun detail she's chosen are these hooks! I'm in love with them, too!

Curtains and blinds like these are our top option at the moment...but lace curtains would also be wonderful!:

And now is where we need your help!

Paige has two accent wall treatments she absolutely loves. The first is a pallet wall. It really suits the room's theme and will make it nice and cozy feeling for her room. The downsides are costs and it'll keep it dark, but it's absolutely beautiful:

The second option is a simple white tree or birch tree mural. It ties in her furniture (all white) more than the pallet wall does and is cheaper, but doesn't give it the cozy feeling she's looking for.

So what do you think: pallets or trees? Help us choose by letting us know in the comments below!