Five house projects we want to tackle over the next year.

Where do I even begin?!

Life has been so full this season with the move and other good things, and it’s been a challenge for me to divide my time between creative projects, sharing those projects and actually living life.

One of these days, I’ll sit down and pull together a design board from all the inspirational photos I’ve saved. I’ll create actual decorating plans for each of the rooms, and maybe I’ll even learn how to render. Right now, the grand vision I have for the look and feel of our new house – Southern California coastal meets modern Spanish – mostly lives in my head, but I have a deep desire to document this making-of-our-home process, so I’ll start today with the easiest, simplest thing I can think of – an intro to our home and the five big projects we want to tackle.

A peek at our house – I love the arched doorways, the floors, the built-ins.

Our new house is a five-bedroom Spanish bungalow in the sweetest neighborhood with recessed sidewalks and tree-lined streets. We’re in a cul-de-sac, sandwiched between two pocket parks, and the weekend after we moved in, there was a block party. We get morning light from the front of the house and sunset light through the back that makes our kitchen and master bedroom glow at golden hour. We have two sets of French doors – one downstairs, one upstairs for the master balcony – that if it weren’t for the bugs, I would keep open all day long.

We don’t have a dining table or chairs. Our couch is too small, our nightstands got damaged in the move, and I don’t have anywhere to set down my bag when I get home, so it lands on the floor. But we have windows everywhere and so much potential. This is the fun part – this blank slate and open space.

Our little coffee station that brings me so much happiness. Even my cookbooks have a home now!

Another day, I’ll tell the story of our house. Meanwhile, here’s our top five project list:

1. Repaint the entire house white and paint the stair banisters. We painted our last house Benjamin Moore’s Classic Gray, but I’ve realized that I love the fresh, crisp and bright look of an all-white house with pops of black and warm wood accents. Choosing white paint is like traveling down a rabbit hole – there are literally thousands of shades. Currently, I’m considering Benjamin Moore’s Swiss Coffee and Simply White (see Studio McGee’s white paint guide) and Dunn Edward’s White Heat (that Amber Lewis used in the Client What’s the Story Spanish Glory house). I loved how Jenni from I SPY DIY transformed her stair banisters, and we may do the same thing with the Satin Black.

2. Take the downstairs flooring throughout the entire house. The stairs and second floor are currently carpeted, which isn’t the worst thing thing in the world, but I love how easy the downstairs flooring is to clean (and it hides dirt so well!).

3. Repaint the exterior and update the front door (dutch or glass paneled) and exterior lighting. We’re going with a modern Spanish vibe here – a crisp white (leaning towards BM’s White Dove) with deep brown and muted blue-gray accents.

4. Get solar installed to bring down our electric bill.

5. Get a fire pit installed in the backyard for post-dinner party s’mores and an outdoor/dirty kitchen to augment the built-in BBQ.

I love this piano room so much – high ceilings, lots of light. We can’t wait to put our Christmas tree in front of that window.

As a little girl, I dreamed of being an interior designer, so I feel like some big dreams are coming true for me with getting to design and decorate this house. This house marks a new journey for us, and I’m excited to share more in the coming months.

Laundry Room Design.

For the last six months, we’ve done very few home improvement projects. The constraint has been budget, mostly, but also energy. When you don’t have the money to go shopping, it’s a bit of a buzzkill to even be looking, am I right? I’ve been following all the designers (and design bloggers) on Instagram, bookmarking inspiration and a few products, but mostly I’ve been on hiatus from all things house.

Until – a few things happened recently. First, I started scheduling “creative” time in my day – a 40 minute minimum where I write, practice hand-lettering, dream up room designs, etc.  Second, I came across the perfect wallpaper, and the inspiration started flowing. My creative time took a design turn, and here I am now with a laundry room inspiration board.

Side note: this wallpaper (Orange Crush) was the one that started it all. Orange groves have a special place in my heart, and I thought, we should put this in our house somewhere! But our house has its own personality, and Orange Crush in Onyx did not fit it.

Then I came across this Lulie Wallace wallpaper on Anthropologie, and it was the one. I love that Lulie Wallace prints are pretty, with spunk. The muted tones of blues and grays with pops of green better fit the aesthetic of our house, and since laundry is primarily women’s work (ha!), the laundry room was the perfect place to embrace a more feminine look.

For this room, I wanted to balance the floral print with a touch of galvanized steel, birch butcher block, clean cabinet lines, and classic marble (with a more whimsical honeycomb design). Initially, I thought that we would spend $1,000 tops on our laundry room, but then I started running the math. With the cost of materials and labor, even with DIY-ing several things, our budget now is a more realistic $3,500.

The breakdown:

• Lulie Wallace for Anthropologie wallpaper: $185, purchased
• Birch butcher block and countertop work: $250
• Marble honeycomb floor tile (and/or backsplash?): $400
• Pottery Barn galvanized laundry drying rack: $140
• Finishing touches (rolling hamper, decor): $150
• IKEA cabinets: $460
• Closet rod: $10
• Rejuvenation LED flush mount: $400
• Farmhouse door (not shown): $450, painted Oyster Bay by Sherwin Williams

MATERIALS TOTAL: $2,445

Add about another $1,000 for labor to install the tile and the wallpaper, and that brings it to about $3,500. I hope we spend less than this, of course. I almost always buy things on sale – like the wallpaper, which I purchased at about half of the regular price.

We’re going to tackle this project in bite-sized pieces along with a powder room renovation (black shiplap! brass light fixtures!) across the hall, also with a $3,500 (I hope) budget. I wish we were DIY geniuses, but the whole renovation process is so new to us (and there’s the whole full-time jobs, businesses, toddlers, baby-on-the-way thing too). For now, the plan counts for something, right?