Three angles

There are approximately 3 angles from which this house looks clean / unpacked:

Sitting in the front room, looking to the back. 

We don't have a dining room table yet, so bonus clean!

The living room. 

This was supposed to be the dining room (according to the floor plan), but then we bought the biggest sofa known to man and needed more wall space. 

The kitchen.

All the stuff is in cabinets, so this was the first "clean" room in the house!

Colors

I love reading home improvement and family blogs, I have for years. My friends and I laugh when we catch ourselves referring to the decisions of John and Sherry (RIP YoungHouseLove) or Katie and Jeremy like they are people we know personally.

Part of realizing I am not Sherry Petersik is what led us to buy a home that needs less TLC than Justin's current home. I love watching people put a room together board by board. I don't love spending my weekends doing home improvement work. This is something I now know and have accepted about myself.

That being said - I was reading the most recent post on Bower Power and followed a link to an older post about paint schemes. She had painted rooms haphazardly as they were completed, and now had a hodgepodge of paint colors to keep track of. Since we haven't lifted a brush in this new house yet, I thought it would be a good idea to pick a few basic colors we'll stick to throughout the process. I actually like many of her colors as a starting off point.

The top row is meant to be wall colors, the bottom is accents. Perhaps this is where I'll start my planning as well.  It's based around Justin's favorite, gray, with several of my favorite bluey-greens. Since our house is currently a beige-y taupe, we need to shift the color palette towards gray while also recognizing that there are things like brown-based tile to deal with.

Stay tuned for updates!

Today's "mood board"

So I know it's a stretch to call these mood boards, but I like to get a visual for what I'm hoping the room to resemble.

Here's the upstairs bathroom now:

Again with my sketchy use of the Behr ColorSmart website (there were no bathrooms that resemble anything like a normal bathroom, so I fudged it with a mud room):

My goal is to bridge the beige tile with the gray we're planning on painting the house. I think I'll use blues and teals (which are my favorite anyway) for the rooms where we can't get away from brown tones. The color here is majestic blue. The curtain is the closest I can find to one I got at Target. It's pretty close, but it's a window curtain instead of shower. I don't know why they haven't posted the new collection on their website yet.

I like the way the white pops on the dark blue, so I might switch out the mirror for one with a white frame. I love that this one has a shelf!

We'll also have to find a towel storage option. I'm a fan of hooks over the door, which I've already got in place at my current apartment, so I'll just have to see if we can make it work for a family of 3.

The Fun Part!

So I'm overselling it a little, but I do think this is kind of the fun part of buying a house.

1. No problems yet - we haven't had the inspection, so I can't worry about whether the ___ is going to collapse or explode or ... whatever else could go wrong in a house. 

2. I haven't spent any money yet (earnest money aside, but I'll get that "back")

3. Now I get to draw floor plans and pick colors!

I'm going to do this in a mood board rollout, because I think that sounds fun and it's my blog and there's probably no one else reading this anyway.

So this is our bedroom now:

And this is how I envision it:

This is our bedding set, superimposed on one of those online color-picker things. This happens to be Behr Nile River.

Our bedroom has wainscoting, which I find totally appropriate. Right now the walls and wainscoting are painted the same beige color, but we’re taking it back to the more traditional white. The furniture is a hand me down from my aunt, and at some point (SOON) we'll have to build a closet. Because this house, while big and gorgeous, has closets about 1 feet deep, max. No hanging rods or anything. That might be the first project I hand over to mom when she comes to visit. ;-)