Master Bedroom Vision

So, I’ve already documented my plans to redo our family room and kitchen. Now onto the next room, our master bedroom. We really want to focus on finishing our bedroom and bathroom first, since those are the two spots are easiest and we’ll use them right away upon moving in.

Here is how the master bedroom looks right now:

Here is what we plan on doing… Paint the walls a medium teal/green color. Next, we already have our bedding, so we’ll make our bed! Then hang up our current headboard, with plans to reupholster it some day in a printed pattern. Next we’ll hang our curtains, which my parents bought us for a housewarming gift (along with a hose). Hang our shelves that we used in our previous bedroom, above our headboard. Replace the ceiling fan/light with a chandelier. Use our existing chocolate brown dressers and find some decor pieces to add, such as a few mirrors to reflect the light all around the room and a fun geometric rug. We also will need to eventually upgrade our bedside tables – we’re currently using Ikea Lack tables. Here is a mood board I assembled to give you a better idea of how it’s all coming together.

I also used this photo from Design Star as my main inspiration for the color scheme.

Ikea Shopping

I love Ikea. I could live there – really who couldn’t? They even have bedrooms, kitchens, bathrooms and more set up for living. Yea the TVs and Computers might not work but still they’ve got a lot going for you already. So this past Saturday Drew and I went down to see our friends Serah & Gabe in Kenosha. Since we were half there already, we figured we’d add another hour to our driving time to visit Schamburg, IL.

We arrived at opening (10am) – did some exploring and got their awesome 99 cent breakfast, Drew even said you couldn’t even buy all those items at the grocery store for 99 cents. The main reason we went is because we are thinking of getting the Karlstad sofa sectional for our living room – I’ve seen it on a lot of blogs recently and I love the fact it’s got modern lines to it, the grey color, and it’s slipcover, meaning you can wash it. I really love the set-up and layout of Young House Love’s Karl sofa, as they call him.

young house love huge sofa ikea karlstad

My goal for this trip was to get Drew to fall in love with it. Right after sitting down he said it himself, I really like this one. (SCORE!) We also tried out a few other couches because we’ll need to eventually get some new ones for the family room. Here are a few others we liked.

Also while we were there, we wanted to check out the Vittsjo pieces. I’d recently seen them done in numerous ways via Pinterest and was wanting them for our new house. We were all ready to get them when we got down to the lower level – and saw the box was 100in long. Yeah, that definitely won’t fit in our little scion. Luckily my parents were up in MN near that Ikea over the weekend and brought home two of the pieces we wanted – just one more to get next time we bring a larger vehicle.

I’m hoping to paint those yellow, like the photo below from Centsational Girl, as long as that goes with our color scheme in our living room – still got to figure out the vision for that room.
colorful vittsjo shelving

Overall our trip to Ikea was a success, even though we ended up only buying ourselves cinnamon rolls that time – but we’ll be back! Funny: when we got in the car to leave I discovered this facebook post Drew posted – that kid! The trip wasn’t that bad, no idea what he is talking about! 🙂

Kitchen Ideas & Vision

I recently shared my inspiration and mood board for our family room, and now I’m moving on to other rooms of the house to figure out how to make them all flow together…now: the kitchen. The kitchen will be the biggest project because we are changing it up so much! Here are the photos of the kitchen as it currently stands (these are the realtor’s photos).






Here is our basic plan: paint walls blue/teal color, tear out floor tile and put in dark hardwood floors, paint cabinets white and add trim to make shaker style, add knobs, turn the island into a longer island that duals as a kitchen table and paint yellow, add dark gray countertops, and add light gray penny tile backsplash, paint mid century modern hutch that I got super cheap, white and dark brown. Here is a photo to help you understand our vision:

Aren’t the original cabinets super ugly? They are basically pieces of plywood… but luckily that gives us a blank slate. Can’t wait to see how it looks done!

Shop this Room

Yes the name of this post totally comes from the new show of the HGTV Design Star winner, “Shop this Room“. At first I thought it was a dumb name, but I totally get it. Sometimes you don’t really “get” the design concept of a room until you go shopping – and that is what I have been doing. Window shopping, online shopping, and real store shopping.

My weakness is Target – that’s where I’ve done the real store shopping. I have decided I could buy *almost* all the new decor for my house from Target and I would be perfectly happy. There is something so bad about that place that you walk in for ONE thing, yet you leave with TEN. As I’ve been dreaming of our new home, I’ve made a few purchase that are starting to help shape the vision of our new home.

For the Bedroom: White Duvet Cover

For the Bathroom: White Ruffles Shower Curtain

For the Kitchen: Lemon Towel & Striped Rug (both not available online)
target textiles

I’ve also been doing some window shopping, where I’ve taken photos of things I like but weren’t sure about how they’d fit into our new home. So until I come up with a vision that utilizes those items, they’ll stay on my phone and this blog. I recently hit up World Market and took photos of these items that I loved…

For the Bedroom: Curtains, Chandelier

For the Kitchen: Yellow Ikat Lamp Shade, Teal/Silver Pendants

Family Room Ideas

Our home buying process is continuing, without too much stress – let’s hope it stays that way! We had our home inspection on Monday and found two minor things that the sellers are taking care of. We also met with our lender on Wednesday and all is set for that – just have to wait now and plan!

Update: We heard from our realtor that the seller’s found a house, but could be bumped if they don’t remove their contingencies. While we think it’s safe for them to do so, they are unsure. I think the plan is to move up closing to September 12 and them rent it out for a week. We’ll see how this ends up. They have 60 hours to decide what they will do – however this can’t impact our sale – which is comforting.

So planning… I stopped at Sherwin Williams paint store yesterday and picked up the HGTV color books to begin this process. I’m starting to determine colors for the house, but I end up changing my mind a lot. One room I have pretty set is the family room – located on the lower level with a walkout to the backyard. Here are the photos of it again…



This room will be where we’ll put our larger tv, and be more of the lounging around room to watch movies and play games. This will also be a good spot of when Drew has his friends over and they want to play video games. We’ll still have the living room which is just another family room that I can hang out it. This will also work well for family get togethers. One area for the kids, one for the adults. Here is a mood type board that I put together to show how I plan to decorate it and make it feel not as much as a basement.

Our plan is to paint the walls that Drizzle color, do some DIY white wainscotting below to make it feel less basement-ish. Then use the existing chairs we have from Pier 1 for some color splash, and pull in those same colors to use to accent the room. We’ll use our current brown slipcover sofa – but will be updating it as soon as we have the funds to something in the lighter brown hues. We’ll probably end up with a love seat and a sofa – like the current owner’s do as well. I’d love to get a bright green rug in a fun print to pull in color into the floor and presto – a complete room! Another thing we’ll add is colorful floor to ceiling curtains and other colorful accents to complete the walls. Those can be added over time as I find things I love (or to spray paint!)

Accepted Offer & House Tour

We got word yesterday that our offer was ACCEPTED, meaning now begins the rest of the steps (and packing)! Steps such as: 1. Turn in Earnest Money on Saturday. 2. Home Inspection Monday. 3. Talk with our lender about financing again. 4. Get quotes for home insurance. 5. Close!

We are so thrilled that we finally found our house and can start dreaming about it more – I am especially thinking of all the ways I can decorate it and make it our own. A few points that we love about it is the location (a short walk to Pewaukee Beach/Lake), it’s a tri-level (two living spaces are really nice) and has lots of potential – especially the kitchen! Here is a house tour (courtesy of the realtors photos). The next few weeks as we are waiting to close, I’ll share more detailed plans about what we want to do with each space along with my decorating vision.

Pewaukee House - front

Pewaukee House - Living Room

Pewaukee House - Kitchen

Pewaukee House - Family Room

Pewaukee House - master bedroom

Pewaukee House - bathroom 1

Pewaukee House - upper bedroom

Pewaukee House - lower bedroom

pewaukee house - bathroom lower

pewaukee house - laundry

pewaukee house - outside back

Things to Do When We Finally Own a Home

I’ve been thinking about this list lately, all the new things we can do that we couldn’t do while we were renting our apartment. Most of these things are simple, not awesome things, but when you haven’t been able to do them for 2+ years, you start to appreciate them! Here it goes…

Things to Do When We Finally Own a Home
Paint the Walls: you have no idea how much this was killing me, especially being a graphic designer. I tried my best to decorate around off-white walls or add a backsplash made of place mats from target.

– Play Dance Central and actually jump, not fake it: Due to the fact we have neighbors below us, every time we’d play, we’d pretend jump. It was seriously hurting our scores. Plus, we hope to have more space to spread out and play.

Use the Grill on our Patio: Our apartment complex only lets you use your grill on a paved surface, meaning our driveway. Yea, not quite the idea of the perfect bbq.

Make pizza that isn’t burnt on the outside and frozen on the inside: We seriously gave up trying to cook frozen pizza in our oven because something was wrong with it. We think it can’t maintain a constant temp, just keeps rising which is frustrating when cooking.

Have a real garden, not a planter garden: I have to tell customers at work to not plant things in pots due to bulbs rotting in them, yet I followed my own bad advice. I can’t wait until I can creatively design a bulb garden this fall! I also won’t be giving my neighbors a shower every time I water my plants – yea that really happened.

Vacuum whenever I want: Not that I enjoy this much, but seriously I don’t have to worry about if the neighbors are sleeping and I’m disturbing them.

Not be the loudiness police: Every time we had company over I felt like I had to make sure no one was being super loud, stomping their feet (Drew and his friends do while playing video games). I hated the thought of being the loud neighbors.

I’ll be adding to this list, don’t you worry!

Valleys & Hills

Things are up and down, up and down – like Valleys and Hills.

The valley is, we decided to pass on Cherry Hill due to the fact the seller won’t even counter us on the price – which I think is very stupid in his book, but oh well. There are plenty more houses out on the market. The house and yard needed a lot of TLC and Drew and I agreed we wanted to go in low if we were to get this house. Otherwise it wasn’t worth it for us.

put an offer on this house!

The hill is, remember our first open house on Partridge Ct in Pewaukee? Well, after we declined Cherry Hill, we looked at two more houses that we liked. One was in Brookfield, a tri-level, but the downfall was the small yard and the radiant heating. Then we headed over to Partridge in Pewaukee and were so glad we took a second look. When we first looked, we were more looking for fun, and not serious at all. The more we thought about the house, the more we remembered how much we liked it.

So – we put in an offer! Our buyers agent is actually the listing agent on this property, so again things are moving quickly. This time we are dealing with another offer. However, the other offer is contingent on her selling her home. Sadly, we are praying she doesn’t get an offer in the next 72 hours or decides to have two mortgages. If she walks away – it should be ours!

We’re going to put in our 6o days notice on our apartment and pray that all this works out! This Rocket Summer song came on the other day on shuffle, and basically sum up this “hills and valley” period.

Cherry Hill House Update

cherryhill house hunting

Things are happening so fast!

House Hunting Day 1 – Friday, June 20

Our agent made 3 appointments for us to check out on Friday night. Drew and I grabbed dinner at Panda Express before and while there, we got a call from our lender saying we were pre-approved for the 3% down 30 year conventional loan through Landmark Credit Union – wooot! Then we checked out our favorite Cherry Hill house first, while we did find some concern such as water on the ceiling and basement, we were still in love. Then we checked out a house on Canyon Meadows in Sussex. The house itself was perfect, however it was literally right next to train tracks and we heard from a neighbor they come almost every hour. So that one was immediately off our list. Then we went to another house in Sussex, on Oak Lane. However, the minute we stepped in, it was a no. The owners are heavy smokers and we can’t imagine living in that stink. Plus it didn’t have central air or natural gas.

House Hunting Day 2 – Saturday, June 21

We met our agent out at 10am to check out three other houses. One was a tri-level that we like from day one, but we had to pass due to the neighbor hood not being in a great location for resale. The next house, Drew actually liked, but there was something about it that I didn’t like as much compared to Cherry Hill – and it had blue ceramic floors – so weird. Then the last house was a house my family has wanted us to buy because it had an in ground pool. After seeing the yard and the home we realized it was way too much maintenance for the two of us!

So after thinking about it, Drew and I decided we’d like my parents to come see the house. My dad has a great eye for house issues and wouldn’t buy a house without him looking at it. While he did see some issues in the roof, in the offer they are putting on a new roof before closing, so we’re going on a limb hoping it fixes those issues. The owners are also throwing in a home warranty, so that gives us more peace of mind.

I talked to our agent tonight and she’s writing up an offer for us. Tomorrow we’ll review it, then submit it! Can’t wait to share more!