House Plans and Projects: Where are We?

Ready for a massive update on our house? We moved into our home in September of 2018. Since then, I’m honestly impressed with what we’ve been able to furnish. We came from a townhouse that had a decent square footage, but it was a completely different style (SO many stairs) and we essentially started over from a furnishing standpoint with the exception of a few area rugs and the kids’ rooms. The whole home needs to be painted (I’ll probably stick with white since the last house was all grey), but we wanted to wait until we were here for a year so we can properly deal with nail pops from the house settling. The plan is to walk you through my tentative plans, and hopefully these photos serve as the “before” and I can do a proper post for each update as we finish the rooms!

Deck!:
Starting with what I’m currently most excited about: we recently finished our deck and I couldn’t be more obsessed with how it turned out. I KNEW I wanted horizontal rails (inspired by all things Charleston – we saw so much of this down there!), and we were able to find a contractor that could do it! This was only the second time this particular contractor did the horizontal rails and they said it was super labor-intensive, but man, I love it, so happy with the little risk. We were on the fence about adding a roof to our deck and we decided not to invest in that and instead made the deck a little larger. We don’t get a ton of direct sunlight in the back of our home. I recently purchased an L couch with a coffee table for the seating area, and a pretty simple dining table with benches. Plan is to go bold with the accessories (rug, side tables, umbrella, maybe chairs at the head of the table?). Hoping to share this soon!

Living Room:
I shared our plans for the living room months ago and haven’t updated a ton. I ordered a great navy blue velvet couch from Amazon, and it turned into a whole THING. Amazon recorded it as delivered, it was never delivered, and eventually I had to file a police report in order to prove to Amazon it wasn’t stolen or hidden in my house. Moral of the story: don’t buy furniture from Amazon. So, I still haven’t filled that void in the family room! I’m now entertaining something a bit more casual – a lighter blue or even the love seat version of our couch. I need to replace the throw pillows soon too – they’ve worn pretty quickly, and I feel like that’s an opportunity to introduce some color into the room and maybe coordinate with the additional love seat or couch. I’d also love to add a great console for the back of the couch so you’re not staring at the back of my couch, leaning acrylic there.

Kitchen:
I’m ready to admit that I goofed up not having a pendant light installed during construction. I can’t even really figure out why I wouldn’t have, but I definitely messed up here. We’ve found an awesome electrician we really love, so here’s hoping he can install something fun there and I can stick with the coastal modern theme we’ve started.

I also need a new rug for underneath our table. This has proven to be a tough call for two reasons: one, my kids still throw stuff on the ground when they’re eating – how much do I invest?, and two, I honestly can’t decide on a color. It needs to coordinate with the runner in our kitchen, but our current runner was a big time budget buy and I feel like I can replace it if necessary. Since there’s SO much blue in the house, I’d love to go a different direction. I initially wanted a deep green theme in the kitchen, so maybe that’s the way to go?

Stairs:
We need a runner. Another one of those construction errors. As soon as the stain was finished, I knew I went too dark for our super light floors. I honestly thought the construction crew messed up. A runner will generally mask or resolve this, and I definitely want to go funky neutral here, and I’m leaning the antelope route by Stark if all goes to plan.

Dining Room:
I need to do a deep dive into everything I’ve found for our dining room and I’m so excited to share the details. Next up is plans to wallpaper the room and our entryway. I’m leaning above the chair rail only, but who knows. Loving the Palm Wallpaper by Serena and Lily. Again, wanting this bold and loud but in a more neutral tone as to not totally overwhelm since the rest of the house is all blue. Not sure of the plan for that awesome chair just yet. It may live in our bedroom permanently!

Powder Room and Office/Playroom:
These are easy projects we can knock off in the Fall/Winter. The powder room is boring and I replaced the mirror and light ASAP, so it’s livable. Next up is replacing the sink fixtures and wallpapering! We scooped some inexpensive peel & stick wallpaper from Target – we had some good luck with that in Georgia’s room.

Turns out we don’t really need a playroom. The kids play in the basement for the most part and the playroom is just always a mess. I’d rather keep a basket of toys hidden in the family room and the majority of their toys in the basement, and turn the office/playroom into a proper office so Jeff can work from home when he’d like, and I can work from the office in solitude and not surrounded by toys : ).

We’ve got Bodie’s big boy room on the horizon, and we also should really finish up our room and paint the master bathroom. I know Jeff would have that done by now if he could and I’ve been dragging my feet. Georgia’s room is looking pretty good, need to hang some curtains, spray paint her wardrobe gold, and get rid of some typical 4-year-old girl garbage : ), then will share that!

Molly Knorr