It's time to share our Christmas Home Tour! These past few weeks I've been nestled up on the couch battling a nasty cold and wishing it away so I could start decorating for Christmas and spreading the holiday cheer throughout our home. Inspiration wasn't coming to me easily, but I'm finally on the mend and our house is ready for Christmas... even if I'm still doing some shopping and wrapping! Today I'm so excited to be joining Marty from A Stroll Thru Life and the amazing home tour she's created with 30 other bloggers! If you're joining me from Kristen at White Arrows Home, welcome, welcome! Her Wisconsin cabin is beyond lovely and so cozy during Christmas. I could curl up by her ...
The Willow House
Designing And Buying Our Ikea Kitchen
I'm late in sharing this post, but better late than never, right? Designing and buying our Ikea kitchen was a new experience for us. We'd never went through the process of designing, creating and purchasing Ikea cabinets, and while it was definitely an experience, we're still glad we did it. When we first bought our Willow House, basically everything needed gutted. There really wasn't anything worth saving, and the kitchen cabinets were in really, really rough shape. We knew, just like with the rest of the house, the kitchen would be getting new everything. And because we needed to remodel the house on a budget, we'd be leaning on Ikea for the cabinets because of their solid ...
Changes To Our Entry
Now that we're finished with demo and have all the big key items in place, we can finally start playing around with all the fun things in the house. One of the first rooms I wanted to tackle, was our entry. Given that it's one of the first things our guests see when they walk in the door, I wanted to make it tidy and presentable. Changes to our entry our have definitely given the house a breath of fresh air, and it's so nice having a pulled together space when we walk in the door. When we first moved in, and as we were unloading furniture, we put one of our dressers in the the entry and it stayed there until recently. I knew the dresser would never be a permanent solution, but ...
Our Fall Front Porch
What a happy day it is, when I get to share our fall front porch. I love decorating our porch. It's one of my favorite ways to give our home an instant boost in curb appeal and it always gets my creativity rolling. Since I've never decorated the front porch of our Willow House, I was even that much more excited. This is easily the smallest front porch I've ever decorated. There's not a ton of room to do extravagant things, so I leaned heavily on my simplistic side to welcome guests into our home. But as always, I included corn stalks. I always get them from our family farm, and this year my brother let me take some from one of his fields. I must say, I love the way the ...
Four Reasons We Chose Carpet For Our Bedrooms
Since I recently shared the tutorial for installing our laminate flooring throughout the house, I wanted to also share the four reasons we chose carpet for our bedrooms rather than installing the laminate floors. To be honest, we thought long and hard about installing the laminate in our bedrooms as well, but in the end, carpet won out. I know there are so many people who prefer a hard surface flooring throughout their entire home, but that's just not us. Here's why. 1. Carpet Is Soft & Warm Underfoot One of the biggest deciding factors, was the fact that carpet is soft and warm underfoot. We enjoy stepping out of bed and landing on a soft, plush surface. Sure, we could ...
Painted Front Door Interior
There are a few existing things in our house that we're temporarily keeping until the time comes to upgrade and replace them... our front door and the stair hand rail being two of them. In order to stay and blend in, they both desperately needed painted. I'll share more about the handrail later, but when we painted our exterior, I went ahead and painted the exterior side of our front door as well. Since we were still knee deep in demo'ing out the inside of the house, I didn't spend the time painting the interior side, knowing it would get scuffed up. After we moved in, the interior side of our front door looked really out of place. I put it off for a little while, making it out to be a ...
Our Fall Home Tour
I've mentioned a couple of times that I've been in major fall nesting mode. It's been a little while since I've been able to do any fall decorating, and this year I was looking forward to getting my hands busy again spreading fall throughout the house. Today, I'm excited to share our fall home tour! I've joined forces with a group of amazing bloggers, organized by Marty from A Stroll Thru Life, and we're all opening our doors to share fall decorating ideas you can use in your own home! If you're visiting from Designing Vibes, welcome! I'm so glad you're here! Erica has such amazing style and I love how she's transitioning her home into fall! It's no secret that it's sometimes ...
How We Installed Our Laminate Floors
Picking out flooring for the new house was one of the very first things Todd and I started doing once we bought the house. Even though there was so much demo and other things we had to start in on, I wanted to make sure we had plenty of time to source flooring we liked. Today, I'm sharing all about our process in picking the flooring we chose, and how we installed our laminate floors! Affiliate links are provided below. Full disclosure here. Like most people, our goal was to find flooring that would be durable, but also reasonable in price so that we'd have money for all the other things this house needed in order for us to move in. We searched high and low to find the best ...
Building Our Front Pergola
Adding character to our tri-level home was one of the first projects I wanted to tackle. In order to make the outside match our inside, I knew we'd need to get creative and break the mold with transforming our traditional 1970's home. The idea of building our front pergola over the tri-level portion of the house didn't really come to me until a few months of owning the house. After months of driving up to the house and feeling bored with the exterior, I knew we'd need to add an extra layer of character that would transform the house from the labeled 1970's tri-level into something we'd love today. One day, as we were backing out of the driveway, I told Todd to stop the truck. After ...
TGI-Friday: Patio Demo, Landscaping & House Video’s
It's time for another TGI-Friday! We've had so much going on these past few weeks, it's been hard to keep up with everything! A proper update is definitely due! If you follow me on Instagram, and if you watched my Stories, you saw that last week we worked on demo'ing our back patio for the new patio installation. We were scheduled to have the work done this week, we just weren't sure when they'd be here, but they started all the prep work today! Needless to say, it's an exciting day around here! They should be finished next week... we're both so excited to have a new patio! In all honesty, demo'ing the patio went much easier than we were expecting. It was still a full day, ...
We’ve Owned Our Home For One Year!
It's crazy to think we've owned our home for one year! Last year at this time we were signing the papers and getting keys. Right after that, literally that same day, I came up to the house and started picking out exterior paint colors. We've always had big plans for this house. From the first time walking through it, as dirty, dated and disgusting as it was, there was always potential. There was always a solid foundation we knew we could make even better. Because today marks such a big day, let's take a peek down memory lane and see just how far we've come in the first year of owning our home. Right after we bought the house, I walked through with my camera and took a video. I ...
Replacing Our Back Patio
I mentioned a few weeks ago when I shared all about our new windows that we were getting ready to replace our back patio. Like pretty much everything else with the house, the patio is in really rough shape. We have so many plans for the backyard, but before we can start on any of them, or the mountain of landscaping we have to do, the patio needs to be the first thing we change before moving forward. Even though we've repainted the house, installed a new roof, soffit, gutters and windows, we still have so much to do... as you can see! Replacing our back patio is the first step to really being able to start working on the back of the house. Here's what our existing patio ...
Adding A Front Window Box
My love for this house update ranks high up on the list. Adding a front window box to our big living room window completely transformed the house. I couldn't stop dreaming about adding a window box... I say that with all seriousness. Before we finally pulled the trigger and bought it, Todd heard all about every possible combination of items that could find a home in this window box. I went on about it for days. Since getting the window box installed, that list has only grown as my love has gotten deeper. Now, there's no way we could have just one window box... no way! We'll be adding several more to the house. Affiliate links are provided below. Full ...
Our New Windows
When we bought our fixer upper house, we knew one of the first things we'd be replacing was the windows. They were old and in really rough shape... much like the condition of the rest of the house. Several of the metal window frames were bent, the screens were tore up or missing, and there was moisture in between the glass. They were also beyond filthy and had been severely neglected when it came to any form of cleaning. I told myself when we bought the house I wasn't going to spend a bunch of time cleaning them, but a few weeks after we moved in, I couldn't take the grime any longer. It wasn't until I was cleaning one of the four window panes in an upstairs bedroom that I finally ...
How We Installed Our Floating Vanity
When we were looking at vanity options for the hall bathroom, I kept going back to the idea of having a floating vanity. I liked the subtle, modern vibe it would add to the bathroom with some of the more traditional items we'd be incorporating as well. I also wanted a vanity that had a thicker top, so when I found this one, I was basically sold. It was the right size, the right color, the right style, and the right price. Today, I wanted to share how we installed our floating vanity. While it should have probably been easier than it was, we finally got it installed and anchored to the wall. It's not going anywhere, that's for sure. Right out of the box, the vanity had ...
One Big Hall Bathroom Update
It's been a few minutes since I've shared anything about the hall bathroom, so today I thought it was time for one, big update. Like every other room in the house, it's functional and almost finished, but not quite done. That's something I hope to change in the next few months. Demo'ing out the space was the last post I shared, and so much has changed! This room certainly hasn't been without some drama though, and it left us wanting to pull our hair out. First, let's take a trip down memory lane. Here's what the room looked like when we bought the house... We removed everything from the bathroom, and then switched up the floor plan. That was huge on our part, and it made the ...
Painting The Laundry Room And Installing Cabinets
The last time I shared a laundry room update, we had just installed the new black slate tile, and the room was officially ready for paint and cabinets! You may remember from when I introduced the house, but the original laundry room was actually just a little section in the garage. There wasn't a room, or barely even a designated space. With the tiny fourth bedroom downstairs that was hardly big enough for a twin sized bed, and a serious lack of storage in this house, we decided to move the laundry downstairs and put the fourth bedroom to good use. I shared our original design plan here, but as things normally do when you're knee deep in fixing up a fixer upper, the plan will often ...
How We Painted Our Exterior
Admittedly, I'm late in sharing all the details on how we painted our exterior. When we bought the house almost a year ago, there were several areas with peeling paint, and for the purpose of our loan, we had to repaint those areas in order to close on the house. We both thought it would be pointless to just slap some paint up without just painting the entire exterior... especially since it was so ugly to start. Let's flash back to last summer. This is how the house looked the day we closed... Let's just say, we couldn't wait to give the house a complete paint job. A new roof, soffit and facia were all things we knew we'd be replacing quickly as well, but ...
The Kitchen Design Plan
The kitchen design plan has been one of the harder rooms to really nail down. Overall, I've known what I wanted to do, but there were still a few key elements that I just couldn't decide on. Elements, that I felt really needed to be picked before moving forward with the final plan for our kitchen. Since we have so much work to do with the entire house, we've really tried to do a healthy dose of "high and low" finishes all blended together. We've splurged a little in some areas, while staying budget focused with other things. It's been exciting to see it all come together in such a beautiful way. The kitchen is going to be a very happy balance of budget friendly items, with a few ...
Replacing The Kitchen Sub Flooring
If you ask either one of us what our least favorite project has been to date, we'd both probably answer with replacing the kitchen sub flooring. Don't get me wrong, we were thrilled to get the nasty, rotted sub flooring up and out, but the process of actually doing it left a lot to be desired... Remember when I shared all about demo'ing the kitchen? And when we found mold around the sink? The previous people obviously didn't care about the leak, because not only did they let it start growing mold, but it also rotted the main layer of sub flooring. (Palm to the forehead...) When we broke up the kitchen tile, and pulled up the thin layer of wood underneath, we could ...
How We Quickly Painted The Interior of Our Home
Last week I shared all about our process of choosing the right paint color to paint throughout our home. We really wanted to pick a main color that would look great in the natural light, but also enhance all the custom touches we'll be adding over time. After a week or so of looking at the paint samples in different lighting, we landed on Gray Mist by Benjamin Moore. It's a lovely creamy color that has a light green undertone. It looks amazing with white, black and wood tones... all of my favorite things. We couldn't wait to see the instant transformation this would bring, so I'm sharing how we quickly painted the interior of our home. Nearly every single surface of this house has a ...
