This Saturday we hosted our friends and family to our house for our official housewarming party. Although we’ve been living here since November, I wanted to get as much of the house decorated as I could before opening our doors to show it off. If you remember, we literally had no furniture prior to moving in, so furnishing our house has been a big undertaking for me!
My approach was pretty unorganized. I knew what my overall style was (cottage, country, shabby), and basically just started buying things I liked and hoped they would go together. Thankfully, I think for the most part it did all come together. I had some organization with the help of excel spreadsheets and Pinterest, but the for the most part I just had a mental vision for each room.
By far the hardest part for me was picking out suitable rugs for each room. Since our house has hardwood throughout, each and every room needed a rug. I tried it both ways, picking out the rug first and decorating around it and picking out the rug last to compliment the room. Both were hard and I second-guessed myself a lot! Thankfully my rug go-to’s RugsUSA.com and Wayfair.com made the price of the rugs more palatable, so I didn’t feel too much pressure with each purchase.
Since I didn’t show you guys the outside of the house (for safety issues because this blog is public), I thought it would be fun to show you some pictures of the inside. My goal with this house was to have a mix of vintage, to go with the 1880 build date, and modern fun. Everything in the house also had to be toddler-friendly, meaning not cost so much that I would freak out if it got ruined. Nearly everything is washable, including all the couches/chairs!
Okay I’ll stop rambling on and on, here are some pictures. Enjoy!
Living Room: This is the first room you enter in our house. I wanted it to be the most “grown up” room in the house. The couches are Wayfair custom upholstery in Carly. They are slipcovers that can be dry cleaned, which is good for toddler life.
This gold bookshelf is actually a $70 IKEA hack. I spray painted the IKEA Vittsjo bookshelf with hammered gold spray paint and voila! 
This is the kitchen and back entrance. The previous owners did a fabulous job opening up this space, so we can enjoy an open concept with the old house charm. The counters are a white speckled quartz, the backsplash is mother-of-pearl and the cabinets are a deep brown.
The chandelier and table are from Wayfair, with the addition of an IKEA kids chair. The mirror is an antique store find for $30!
Off of the kitchen is a sitting room with built ins and a bar. Yes that is a kegerator! Probably my favorite feature on the first floor in this tucked away nook that is perfect for Lila’s toys. I painted her that little table out of an IKEA $20 kids table.
The TV room has original doors from 1880, but otherwise, I wanted this to be our fun, casual family hang out area. I got the white Ektorp sectional from IKEA and the entire thing is machine washable/bleachable, making it perfect for kids. The rug is another favorite of mine and is from RugsUSA.com. We repurposed Luke’s old trunk from his days as a bachelor for a coffee table.
The house originally was a duplex, but the previous owners restored it to a single family home. While they did it, they exposed this beautiful brick.
When we moved in, the stair railing stopped in the middle of the stairs, leaving a big opening at the top. I was worried Lila or another child could fall through, so we had this piece of glass fitted for the spot.
At the top of the stairs is a giant window that originally made me fall in love with this house. We turned the space into a sitting room, where my painted chair and an antique trunk now sit. The rugs upstairs are from Wayfair.com and the buffet is from an antique store.
In our master bedroom, I wanted the focus to be on the beautiful antique bedroom set we received from Luke’s parents. It used to belong to Luke’s Aunt Lynette and is in perfect shape.
Lila’s room of course needed to be PINK! so I chose a very pale, pretty pink that she could grow into. Her shag rug is from RugsUSA and the furniture was picked up at a local antique store.
Here’s our itty, bitty guest room. Too small to even really photograph, but still cute!
Lila’s playroom is pretty much all IKEA. The IKEA daybed is awesome because it opens up to have a second twin bed and drawers for storage. This room gets A LOT of use. :)
The fourth bedroom is currently being used for Luke’s office. He rocks the stand up desk, so there wasn’t a need for much office furniture. One thing we got him that he loves is a beverage cart from IKEA that he uses for coffee and tea. And that’s an upstairs porch off his office, which will get a lot of use this summer.
The upstairs bathroom (yes that is singular!) has the classic black and white tile floors with some great modern updates like the built in storage, pretty sink and white subway tile in the shower. Eventually we will outgrow this one bathroom up situation, but for now it’s working just fine. The IKEA cart provides some great extra storage and acts as my rolling vanity.
Speaking of porches, here is the back porch on our first floor. My next project is to paint that table with chalkboard paint on top and blue on the bottom!
So there you have it! Thanks for going on this little home tour with me. It’s still a work in progress, but I am really happy with how it’s all turned out so far. It’s nice after many years of renting furnished places, to finally live in a home that is exactly our style with our stuff.
If you’re curious about anything in the house, leave a comment and I’ll share a link to where I bought it or how I made it!
