No “Instaworthy” home photos here today. Nope. Today you get the real deal—the bare walls, dirty floors, and cluttered room look because this is what real life looks like for us right now.
We have packed half of the house so far. If you look at some rooms, it looks like we’re making a dent in things, but in other rooms, it feels like we have such a long way to go with very little time to get it all done. I definitely have moments of overwhelm with it all—last night being one of them. So what did I decide to do? Quit packing and switch over to decorating mode, that’s what!
Last night, after packing, Dean and I decided to peruse Pinterest for a bit, looking for decorating ideas for the new house. I have a secret board over there that’s filling up pretty quickly with inspiring English Country Cottage ideas.
I love the English and French Country looks. Our current house is based a tiny bit around these styles, particularly the French style with lots of white and well-worn everything! In our new house, I want to sort of do the opposite by warming things up a bit with some muted color instead of going for the all-white look. Don’t get me wrong. There will be plenty of white because I love that bright, clean look, but this time around, I want to create more of that cozy, warm look in this home. I also don’t want to go quite as rustic with this new house. Our current house is set in the mountains, so that rustic cottage look really worked here, but with our new house, I’d like things to be a bit more polished—still worn and used with plenty of patina, but not so rough. Does that make sense?
When it comes to starting from scratch and gathering ideas for this new house, I start by pinning things to a secret board on Pinterest. First, I begin by searching Pinterest using keywords like “English country kitchens.” Any images I see that I like gets pinned to that board. I even leave little notes about what I like in each photo in the pin description if need be. After I have enough pins, I create sections within the board for the different rooms of our home, such as kitchen, bedroom, bathroom, living room, garden, etc. Having all of these ideas in one place really helps me to get a feel for the look we’re going for, and it makes me excited to see what our new house may become (with a lot of work and investment that is). I’ll also say that splitting my board into sections really helps me to focus on one room at a time. Seeing all of those images together can make it difficult to hone in on one room. Aha!
I love having mood boards on Pinterest, as that is essentially what this is, because it’s something I can refer to over and over again during the remodeling process, as well as anytime I want to shop for decor for the house. Below are a few images I’ve pinned that give you an idea of the look we’re going for in the new house!
During this process—the process of finding decor inspiration—I’m finding that I have to continually remind myself that these images are NOT what my new home is going to look like right away. Achieving this look is going to take time. I mean, we’ve been in our current house for 6 years, and just this year, I felt like we got the house close to looking the way we wanted it to look—and then we decided to move! Ha! No matter, my point is this. Making a house a home takes time, folks! If you wanna check out the progress we made with our current house, you can find those posts in the archives here.
It’s easy to look over Pinterest and Instagram images of houses and want what you see right away. Instant gratification. I’m totally guilty of it myself, but I know that mindset isn’t realistic. Making our house into the home I want it to be, filled with many of the inspiring ideas I have on my secret Pinterest board, is going to take time and money.
Not only that, but I’m also not trying to recreate someone else’s home. I’m using these images as inspiration so I can take bits and pieces of them and create a home that I want to live in with my family. And yes, I do ask my husband’s opinion quite a bit when it comes to decorating our house. He has to live there too.
With that said, when I’m browsing Pinterest, and I start to feel myself getting frustrated or becoming less happy with the plans I have for our home because it’s not going to look like these images right away, I have to sit down and have a talk with myself. A literal talk, people. I have to tell myself to stop looking at pictures for a while and to accept that our home isn’t going to be picture perfect the day we move in. This helps me to recenter myself and get back to reality. I then tell myself to focus on the next steps—the big picture to-dos—that need to happen before all the little finishing touches. I list these big to-dos out on paper by room (or read over them, because let’s be honest, these talks happen frequently!) so I can focus only on them. I sometimes even list out some next step to-dos, so I have some sort of vision as to what is coming next.
Ultimately, all of this helps me to get out of Pinterest-land and back into my own universe. It helps me to feel encouraged about having a plan and knowing where we’re going, and it also allows me to acknowledge that instant gratification isn’t always possible. This isn’t HGTV, people. I’m not a decorator. I don’t have a crew working for me and a large budget. It’s just me and my husband doing the work on a smallish budget, and I’m getting my decorating ideas from the web. With that said, if HGTV wants to reach out and send one of their designers and crews over to help out on this big project during October, I’d be all for it. Just saying!
So where are we at when it comes to getting started on this new house project?
Right now, we’re focusing on getting all of the big things done on our house before we move in. We have one month before we have to live in the house, so we’ll be spending the month of October working on the big projects below.
- putting new flooring down,
- painting ceilings and walls,
- painting kitchen cabinets and updating hardware,
- installing new kitchen appliances,
- installing new countertops,
- updating sink hardware,
- updating and painting all trim,
- remolding the dining and laundry rooms, and
- updating the boy’s bathroom sinks
If we get those projects done, I will probably move to some smaller projects such as:
- replacing all light/electrical covers and floor vents,
- replacing lighting fixtures in rooms,
- purchase new furniture where needed, and
- putting up curtain rods and curtains
I’m sure there’s more to be done, but I can’t think of it at the moment. We’ll just have to take it one day at a time this coming month and see how much we get done.
Thanks for being here and following us through this process. I’ll be sharing much more of our house remodel and design process as we go.
Love and light,
Meagan