The first of June is when my husband and I officially entered the world of home ownership! Thus, exploring the art of interior decorating may have been a disguise for what was really taking over my life at that moment. Although I call it interior decorating, it hardly skimmed the surface of what that entails. 

What I accomplished in June was merely some painting and some furniture layout, if you want to count that. Though this is technically my June recap, in all reality, it’s already September, so I’ll cover what other major accomplishments have been achieved thus far as well. 🙂

My Passion for Interior Decorating

For the past few years or so, Zillow was like my Pinterest. Contrary to what I anticipated, as soon as we bought our house, the enjoyment I found from Zillow fell by the wayside. It was nice to recognize that I wasn’t just obsessed over every house; I was obsessed with the challenge of thinking about how I’d decorate or remodel that space if it were mine. Once we had found OUR home, I could start focusing on ways to improve it specifically and make it our own!

When I revisited my private Pinterest board filled with home inspiration, I started pulling out the ideas I love that I also then knew to be applicable into a board specific to our house. (This is the best idea ever, because it removes the excuse of not knowing what else to do creatively to your space. It’s a constant reminder of ideas you already love that you can actually apply to your new place!)

Here are some of the thoughts I had toward my previous Pinterest board after I knew what our house would be:

• I could ignore the beautiful ways to decorate a staircase, because now I know that we wouldn’t have one (although there is some potential for our basement stairs).
• I could ignore the desire to knock down walls because we don’t have that need (except for maybe one crazy, future plan… Always keep dreaming!).
• That fantastic entryway? I can now plan for something specific to the space we have!
• Beautiful outdoor living space to host guests in the evenings? Totally a possibility at our place!

The beautiful thing is that I love our house so much that I’m not upset to be lacking some of the things listed above. I am so thrilled with the potential that our house offers to make it ours that I just can’t wait to work with what we’ve got! Also, it narrows down my broad spectrum of ideas quite a bit, so that’s always a bonus.

With a narrowed focus, my creative juices started flowing.

Thankfully, nothing in our house was in dire need of updating upon receiving the keys. It was move-in ready, although I had plans from the start that go far beyond settling at that. We had big dreams to remodel our bathroom prior to moving in, mostly because it lacks a bathtub, so we bought one right away. Props for getting the show on the road, right? Little did we know, that bathtub would sit in its box for at least the entire summer… But to be honest, I was so overwhelmed with the bank and house paperwork, packing, cleaning, and my job that I couldn’t even fathom making any additional design decisions at the time, so we placed our bathroom renovation on hold.

But let’s talk about what did get done!

Painting the Master Bedroom

Jake and I agreed that painting our bedroom was a must before we brought over our bedroom set to avoid moving it more than once. Each room I’ve done has been two-toned––fancy-shmancy, I know––thus it has taken five (long) days to paint each room. Two days for the first color, the third day is to tape off the dividing line, and the remaining two days is for the second color. It is a process, but the outcome makes the extra effort so worth it.

The colors of our duvet cover can be seen in the pictures below, which is how I narrowed my choices down to two berry-magentas and two blueish-teals. Quick sidenote: How lovely is this berry-magenta painted wall? *heart eyes*

Do you remember my terrible Instagram teaser that was never officially revealed? #worstcliffhangerever… Well, spoiler alert: The dark blueish-teal was the chosen color! With it, I painted one entire wall, plus an additional 30 inches on each adjacent wall––including the ceiling!

That’s right, part of our bedroom ceiling is a dark teal.

I wanted to do something different, and I fell in love with various color block patterns as you can see on my Pinterest board. My favorites are those where even the floor is painted the same color, but unfortunately painting my carpet would not have that same effect. (Jake is happy that I recognize this.) Overall, painting the walls like this really gives the effect of the teal being an extension to the room. It makes it appear to be larger than it is. Something no one would be upset about!

Paint colors used: 

• Dark Teal: Azalea Leaf
• Cream: String of Pearls

Master Bedroom before:

Master Bedroom after:

Painting the Living Room

The living room was our second priority, as we ordered a new couch from Macy’s–it’s teal!–and we wanted to avoid getting white and gray paint splatters on it upon its arrival. Again with the color blocking, I wanted this room to be two-toned. (I like to make things difficult.) The colors white and gray were chosen because I plan on adding pops of bright colors, like our teal couch, into the decorating. That way, if we get sick of the colors, it’s an easier swap than repainting the walls. The majority of each wall is a light gray, with the top ~22 inches being a soft white. The crisp horizontal line dividing the two colors makes the room feel fresh and inviting. Did I mention that our couch is teal? 😀

Our house was built in 1947, so I quickly learned that 22 inches from the ceiling does not result in a perfectly-level, horizontal line. Let’s just say that sometimes the line to the left of a door frame was about two inches higher than the line on the right side of that doorframe. I about went crazy one night eyeballing my tape lines to ensure we weren’t going to paint a subtle diagonal. Of course I would have probably been the only one to have noticed.

I can’t go on without mentioning the champion work of my husband. He was so patient with me when I asked him (many times) to shift his chalk line up or down in the tiniest of measurements, as the level guided me, before snapping the chalk line in place. It definitely was a two-person job!

Paint colors used:

• White: Nautica White
• Gray: Octopus Gray

Living Room before – View 1:

Living Room after – View 1:

Living Room before – View 2:

Living Room after – View 2:

Living Room before – View 3:

Living Room after – View 3:

 

Painting the Kitchen and Dining Room

When we moved in, the wall color in the kitchen and dining room was a darker tan color that desperately needed to be freshened up. We have a window, sliding glass door, and one side door to help brighten the space during the day, but at night, the dark tan made the space feel very dark. Because I don’t want our space to look like a funhouse as a result of exercising too many of my crazy color ideas, I decided it would be best to play it safe and match the living room. This also was an excellent way to speed up the decision-making process! It took a good chunk of time to paint this space with all of the nooks and obstacles. But it was worth it. Jake and I couldn’t believe how much the white and gray brightened the place up, no matter what time of day!

Paint colors used:

• White: Nautica White
• Gray: Octopus Gray

Dining Room before – View 1:

Dining Room after – View 1:

Dining Room before – View 2:

Dining Room after – View 2:

Upcoming Plans

As mentioned previously, we hardly scraped the surface of interior decorating, but it was a busy month. We still aren’t 100% settled into our house yet, including the decoration. Sometime soon I’m just going to buckle down and buy some artwork to hang on the walls — it’s primarily the decisions that are holding me back. But nothing will get done if I don’t just start, am I right?

If you haven’t caught on yet, I’m someone who is constantly bursting with ideas. I don’t want to give away too much quite yet, but I will give a brief insight toward what we plan on doing to our house in the future.

• We might paint the trim throughout the house. Don’t be so quick to assume it will be white… 😉
• The bathroom will get a fairly big overhaul: new tub, tiling, fixtures, etc.
• The basement flooring and ceiling will be updated.
• The second bedroom still needs to be painted.
• Perhaps some landscaping next spring.
• Updating the fire pit area.
• And adding many small, decorative touches!

I love interior decorating because the advantage of it being a never-ending project is that it can always adapt with your interests. Overtime you can slowly shift around different pieces and buy new décor. It is fun to see how your tastes ebb and flow throughout the years!

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