my home

Showing posts with label my home. Show all posts

9.16.2026

Much-needed simple garage makeover

This was basically the last space in this house to get renovated! I've touched every room, the yard, the exterior, even the roof... all that was left was this garage and maybe some closets, ha! It wasn't a priority, just an eyesore that made me feel a little yucky, until we decided to get married in our backyard. I knew all our family and friends would see it if they walked through, plus I wanted a nice clean space for the catering folks. So we got motivated and decided to redo it!

7.21.2026

Backyard transformation over the past few years, nice enough for our wedding!

Because this house was such a fixer-upper and needed so many big projects to essentials like bathrooms and the roof, it took me a while to get to the yard. I’m also not a gardener, or at least I haven’t been so far in my life, so aside from grass versus pavers, I wasn’t sure what to do in our backyard for a long time.

But over the past couple years, I’ve made some very impactful changes that have made this backyard a wonderful place, so much so that we just got married here!

5.31.2026

Fairytale little girl's room is finally complete!

I made a lot of changes to Lucy's bedroom last year, shortly after we replaced the crib with a bed. But it was still not quite as nice as I was hoping, and this spring I put a couple very important finishing touches and changes in there and now it's totally done and lovely.

5.04.2026

Full 'after' tour of our Tudor revival fixer-upper house and all sources

My home was recently featured in a full tour on Homeworthy, and I've spent the past year finishing the last little projects in preparation... I'm so proud and happy to call it DONE and share it all on here! (At least inside. I’ll save the exterior for another post when everything is in bloom this summer.)

If you want to see where it all started, you can check out the full before tour HERE.

I bought this house in 2018, when Otto was a newborn, and I had more vision than time, more determination than budget, and no idea how many changes would happen in my life and how many times I would redo certain rooms.

Some spaces came mostly together quickly, others evolved over and over as I figured out my style, what works for our family, and what actually feels right in a 1937 Tudor revival home.

4.20.2026

Easy DIY built-in cabinets in the basement

We recently added a wall of built-in cabinets to the basement playroom/TV room... something I was always intimidated by before, but they turned out great and it wasn't that expensive! Sharing the details.

12.15.2025

Classic Christmas decor around the house

Classic Christmas Around Our Tudor Revival Home

Welcome to our cozy holiday house tour! I've been doing traditional reds and greens the past few years but this year decided there is nothing wrong with the basic Hallmark color palette... it's not overdone, it's classic! So you'll see some needlepoint, plaid, brass, and lots of greenery—layered over my existing "new traditional" decor. Come on in and see the living room, dining room, kitchen, bedrooms, and even the new guest room all decked out.

Linking everything I can to shop below!

Entry & Living Room Welcome

The living room features the tree and mantel so is automatically Christmassy, but this year it also has a puzzle table! One of the things Micah brought with him. We've done a couple already! So cozy and relaxing.

Tudor Revival living room with classic Christmas decor

9.16.2025

The perfect high quality rug solution for a uniquely shaped room!

I have just majorly up-leveled my living room! (I hope I used that term right.) Point is, I have a unique, long, skinny living room in my historic Tudor revival house and there is just no way that a modern standard rug was ever going to be the right size. Back in the day homeowners could order from the Sears & Robuck catalog or other mail order sources to get a custom piece of carpet or linoleum cut to exactly the right size to give a nice border around the room. My parents' 1910 home still had some of these when they bought it, and my 1937 home has very clear lines where the wood floor has discolored from the sun over time around the edge of a perfectly sized floor covering.

But now nowadays, a 10'x14' or 12'x16' rug are about as big as you can get and they are just not the right dimensions… Until now! There is a new way to get incredible quality natural material, fully custom size rugs, down to the inch!

Custom Jute rug for my uniquely shaped living room

I actually started with an 8'x10' rug in this room and just kept slowly getting bigger over the years. Finally we had a 10'x14' which was close-ish to the right width, but there were these two bare floor areas on either side of the couches. I put a small vintage rug on one, but it wasn’t a great look. My kids played so frequently in the other one, near the bookshelf with toys and books and Barbies, and I really wanted something comfortable there for them. Plus, you’ve probably heard this before… a too-small rug makes a room look smaller! Repeat that after me… When your rug is too small, it makes your room look smaller!

8.20.2025

Timeless style updates to my plain all-white kitchen

I redid my kitchen in 2019, which was not that long ago, but I was still figuring out my style at the time and I chose some then trendy, more modern finishes I would not choose now. (I also was still very much in a fixer upper mindset, and the house had glass block tile and peeling wallpaper and three layers of old roof tiles and… point is, I just wanted something fresh and clean and new.) So I ended up with a very white, pretty boring kitchen.

But it feels wasteful to redo a new kitchen. I’m not about to replace tile countertops or cabinets, but I realized there were several things I could do that would add more character and interest. I also had some circa 2022/2021 “organic earthy modern” touches to undo! They had coordinated with the brushed brass and industrial wood shelves, but did not go with my clean, classic, Nancy Meyers-inspired, hopefully timeless kitchen look.

I did several small, budget-friendly projects to totally refresh this kitchen!

8.06.2025

Bedroom updates, and affordable custom trimmed curtains

After many years of subpar window treatments in my bedroom… I finally cracked the code! I had been using slightly-too-short standard 84" Target curtains, pretty good blackout, but just the hidden tab top, because I knew they would be quiet for opening and closing while the kids were sleeping nearby. But I really wanted the elegant look of pinch pleat curtains on rings. Well, I figured it out!

The best window treatments for my primary bedroom

The solution: layered Roman shade and curtains. I got this beautiful woven Roman shade from Twopages, with a super thorough blackout lining, and I mounted it outside the window to block the light around the cracks and allow all the light I can through the window when the shade is open. This thing is so powerful, but all I need is the shade closed for a seriously effective blackout (and it’s silent when I open and close it).

7.30.2025

Floral wallpaper transformation (and more) in our plain upstairs bathroom

I think I’ve done it… I think I’ve wallpapered the last room in this home that needs it! I hesitated for a while because I had already renovated this bathroom… Back in 2020, with kind of a mix of that organic earthy modern thing that was trending for a while plus some traditional elements like wainscoting. It was...fine. Honestly, fine. But I also thought it was sort of begging for wallpaper about the wainscoting on the white walls.

7.22.2025

New sofas in the living room!

A couple years ago I finally figured out the right layout for my long skinny living room. Two couches facing each other: simple and classic, but very comfortable, with lots of seating options. Plus an ottoman instead of a coffee table for comfy foot resting, and of course lots of forts and jumping by the kids. But as for the sofa style, I debated for probably a year and a half before I figured out the right combination. Well, they’re finally here and I’m so excited to reveal them!

Thanks to Interior Define for partnering with me on this post.

6.25.2025

Classic bracket open shelves in my historic house kitchen

I was really proud of these DIY industrial wood/bracket shelves when we redid our kitchen in 2019. I couldn’t find thick enough wood on its own so I use stair risers and cut off the rounded edges. They worked great function-wise, and when we first installed them, they added some nice warm because the kitchen was so plain and so white. But now… I’m really going for a more traditional, classic, and cohesive look here, and they were sticking out like a sore thumb.

So... I replaced them with something better!!!

Thanks to Van Dyke's Restorers for partnering with me on this post.

6.18.2025

Re-doing the entryway wallpaper! With something way better

Well, I’m to the point of redoing DIY projects I did at this house a few years ago…! I wallpapered this entryway with peel-and-stick wallpaper in 2021, My first wallpaper project in this house. That paper was trendy and kind of modern and never exactly perfect for this house. But, it was neutral and not offensive, and I wasn’t sure what else I would choose. But an entryway is such an important moment. When you first walk into the house, I wanted it to be really special.

Thanks to Sandberg Wallpaper for partnering with me on this post.

5.22.2025

Finally, the right size rug for the dining room!

This dining room was the first room I called "finished" when we moved in almost 7 years ago, and because dining rooms have pretty basic ingredients, it hasn’t really changed all that much. I’ve definitely improved it though, several times. But the thing I was never able to get right was the rug. This room is about 12' x 12', which means a standard 8'x10' rug looks… OK? But definitely not high-end or really comfortable.

Thanks to Rugs USA for partnering with me on this post.

4.17.2025

Cutest patterned Roman shades, and outside mounting them

I’ve installed many Roman shades in my house, but only just now did I install any outside mount. Inside mount is typically the ideal, because then it doesn’t block any of the trim around your windows. But on some windows, there isn’t a deep enough trim, or maybe you don’t have trim and you want to make the window look taller. Or in my case, I didn’t want to block any of the light that I didn’t have to, and when you install inside mount, you automatically block the top 6+ inches of the window when the shade is folded up.

4.09.2025

Fast, super functional custom bamboo and woven Roman shades

An overall goal I have for my home these days is using timeless, high-quality pieces. Since we’ve been here 6 years now and I’ve been decorating it pretty much the whole time--sometimes that means redoing something I did when I didn’t know any better. When we first moved in, I bought quite a few cheap Amazon Roman shades because they had the top-down option and they sort of looked like linen. For Otto's room I got a different model that was more blackout. Neither of these held up very well or looked very good.

It was overwhelming to think about replacing them--there are several windows and I knew they were going to be lots of options to choose from now that there are so many affordable custom window treatment options--but I put the time in and I’m so happy with it!

Thank you to Neutral Curtains for sponsoring this post.

2.16.2025

English pine dresser refinishing project

I’ve been looking for a new, smaller dresser for Otto's room since we got the bunkbed because the layout of his room is so funky and his large painted IKEA dresser is very functional, but means you can’t access the ladder without being crushed up against it. The kids don’t seem to mind, but it’s weird. I had a small space, 36" wide, between the bunkbed and the other wall that could accommodate a dresser instead.

I wasn’t finding anything in the traditional antique/dresser styles I like because they tend to be more like 42" wide. Then I found this English pine dresser on Facebook for $40 was the perfect size, and I thought, maybe I can sand it down, sort of stain it, and make it really charming!

1.31.2025

Vintage dining table refinishing project

I’ve been looking for a dining table for about two years, since I started refreshing my dining room with some more traditional pieces and getting rid of the modern traditional/Farmhouse look I liked when I first moved in. This house was built in 1937 and is a Tudor revival, but has a few federal revival elements in it too, and that’s my favorite style of old houses.

I’d been scouring Facebook Marketplace and had given up my search, but then this vintage Ethan Allen table with three leaves and lovely curved legs popped up in my feed. It was in rough shape, but I think it was $60. And miraculously fit in my car. I picked it up after work and then my dad helped me get it out of the car and into the garage where it’s at for months, overwhelming me.

I mentioned to a friend that I had a dining table to refinish and she said she’d help me. I should’ve asked her before, I knew she was good at refinishing furniture! Anyway, I’m so happy I did and I now have a much better dining table in my dining room!

Vintage Ethan Allen Dining Table Refinishing

1.25.2025

Strawberry floral and gingham little girl room!

Four years ago we finished Lucy's nursery in the "pointy room" upstairs. This house has four bedrooms with closets plus this room and the basement, which sounds like a lot but nothing is perfectly laid out for traditional family living (e.g. all bedrooms on the same floor, or kids upstairs and primary suite downstairs)... and this room is only accessible through my bedroom! Won't always work, but for now (she's four and I'm single), it works great.

I've made a few updates over time (like these pegs for hanging clothes instead of a closet), but she slept in the crib until recently. (It was great. She never tried to climb out, either!) But this summer I found a charming vintage (c. 2002) daybed on Facebook and repainted it, and just now I finally found the perfect bedding and accessories. "Big girl" room complete!

Lucy's Big (Little) Girl Bedroom Update

The pointy ceiling and low walls add a lot of drama!

12.28.2024

2024 recap / 2025 goals

2024... my rate of progress on this house is directly related to my 1) financial comfort but also 2) my emotional state RE the rest of my life which includes health, parenting, my coparenting relationship, and dating. I was all over the place on those things in 2024 so I had some bursts of feeling good and having lots of creative energy for house projects, and some bursts of being distracted (good and bad). In general I'm feeling pretty close to "done" with this fixer upper, at least with the important stuff, but continuous improvement is my style and I'll probably always be refining. So, here are my top projects of the past year, and what's on the list for next year, assuming those two things go well. (:

Historic home project recap

My goals for 2024 were:

1. Finish the basement. Paint touch-ups, etc. I got about 25% of those done, but getting out all the right paint and finding a wall patch solution have been overwhelming so it's still not there. I did finish the laundry room.

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