Writing a blog post after an entire year so not sure if anybody will even read this post but here we go. Before I start, I guess I need to provide some context for my absence here. Let’s just say 2021 was a whirlwind of a year and lots has happened that year. It started with putting our old house on the market then selling it and buying a new house all within a month. Soon after that I found out I was pregnant which was nothing but a miracle after suffering from infertility and trying to conceive for years! Last year I also wanted to write more about home decor related posts. But I hadn’t done any project since the last guest room makeover at our old house, so I didn’t find much inspiration to write about anything else either.
We moved to our current house in May 2021 and since then I turned one of the upper level rooms my office as I was working from home then. And later that year, I turned it into a nursery but never got around writing about either rooms as I was heavily pregnant and was too nauseous and perpetually exhausted to be doing anything that required focus! Then in December, I gave birth to our sweet baby girl. Since then, I’ve been busy recovering from a c-section and lately adjusting to a life with a newborn while soaking up all the cuddles and all her newness. And finally now I’m coming out of the newborn haze. I am somewhat in the right head space to resume normal activities and possibly start writing regularly here.
I am in fact very excited to be writing about room transformations as I tackle each room in our new house. This is a new build that we were able to buy at an amazing price in this crazy housing market in the middle of a pandemic. Our last house was a let down, we realized we rushed into buying it and thought we may start liking it after a while but it didn’t happen. So after only a year of living there, we decided to sell. We could’ve renovated it to make it ours but structurally that wasn’t possible without having to do major reno and we couldn’t afford that. That house was 60+ years old and like I said, it needed A LOT and I mean A LOT of work to make it work for us. We also knew that we could not afford a new house either, so we were looking for something slightly newer but was particular about our needs. For example, having a certain square footage, certain number of rooms, certain style (we wanted an open concept living dining), etc. But as we listed our home and started looking, we realized it would be really difficult, almost impossible to find anything with that much specification unless we build our own which wasn’t really an option for us. Then came our realtor, our knight in a shining armour who knew EXACTLY what we were looking for and showed us a house and we instantly said yes. Yes, we only saw one house and bought it! Sounds insane but hear me out!
As this was our third house, we knew exactly what we were looking for. So when we saw this house and learned about the price, we couldn’t pass it up. Even though we stretched our budget a bit to get it but despite that in today’s market it was a steal! Our realtor was also able to get us an amazing deal on the sale of our old house which allowed us to be able to afford this new build.
Is this our dream house? No, because there are a few things I would’ve done differently if I had the option to build and design it myself. Firstly I would make the foyer bigger with a better functionality. The current foyer is really small and have 0 space for creating an entryway with a console table/bench set up. But it wasn’t a deal breaker given the price of the house. And the fact that the rest of the house checks off a lot of our needs. I would also love to have a mudroom but you cannot get everything you want in a ready built home. And for us, the price was a major factor and given the crazy housing market we didn’t want to be too picky. And like I said, there are a lot of things we do love about the house. We love the huge kitchen island and the large open concept living/dining space with lots of room to raise our growing family. And who knows may be down the road we will have the budget to fix the foyer and build a mudroom. The best part is that this house does have the structure to be built upon or add extension to make it ours unlike our previous house. Also the rest of the house does not need ANY work at all as it is brand spanking new; so yeah, it may not be our dream home at it’s current state but we can definitely make it into one.
So what’s my plan with this house? Well I’m no DIYer but I believe in the magic of paint and small, doable projects that does not need power tools or a whole lot of money. I also think that the right kind of furniture and decor can make a huge impact in transforming a room as well. Although I do want to invest in some power tools in the future so I can make more intricate designs but for now I want to take one room at a time and transform it with some basic paint, wallpaper, easy to install wall treatments and add a lot of character with thrifted/vintage furniture and decor. On that note, my very first project in this house was my vintage moody office that I made over back in July 2021. I did add some wall treatments which did not require any power tools. Blog post for that is coming soon!
I am currently working on my daughters’ vintage floral themed playroom and I have installed the wallpaper already. I will be sharing a blog post about that too once it’s complete. I’ll slowly share all these posts, so come back here in a few weeks if you are interested or subscribe to my blog so you can be notified once I post them.
As I have said earlier, I will be transforming every room in this house slowly one by one and I am super excited about that and I hope you will follow along as I embark on this design and transformation journey. Until then, take care!