southwestern guest room inspiration

The past two months of settling into our new house has been fueled by impending visits from Nate's mom and step-dad from Arizona and some college friends traveling from Dayton. We have been running ourselves ragged trying to get most things tucked away and ready-- painting the living and dining rooms, finishing off the kitchen, unpacking boxes, etc. It's been nice to have some motivation to finish projects and let some rooms take shape!

One of the rooms that we've been working on most recently is the main guest room. I didn't really have a fully-fleshed out idea of what this room should look like until Nate suggested a southwestern-theme. Most of our decor is pretty eclectic, melding many styles together to put out a very collected vibe, which led me to give our southwestern guest room a retro twist--  almost Route 66 inspired. While we aren't doing anything major in this room quite yet like painting (I need a break) or switching out fixtures, we have a nice little refresh planned to make this space feel cozy, inviting, and well-traveled for our future guests.

Take a peek at some things that have majorly inspired me for this room---

sources: 1. bison skull 2. retro desert print 3. wigwam hotel print 

4. leather fringe pillow 5. potted cactus 6. woven pom pom pillow

Okay, that Wigwam Hotel Photo by Kevin Russ was preeeeetty much the cornerstone of our color scheme in this room. Ugh, it's so cool.

@meganjbailey

I love that kilim-style lumbar pillow! 

@collectivco

@kristanmiranda

Have any suggestions or comments on what I should add to our guest room? Let me know in the comments below!

Cheers.   --Julie

Kitchen Refresh Part 1 - There's a special place in hell for people who paint over wallpaper

If you peruse through the last few years of any design or DIY blog, Instagram, or Pinterest account, there is no doubt that wallpaper has made a comeback-- and for good reason! Your grandma's gaudy florals have stepped aside for more modern, contemporary patterns that seem truly endless.


Before I moved into my house in July, I incessantly brainstormed ways I could incorporate Instagram-worthy wallpaper patterns in different rooms. I dreamt about a completely pattern-clad papered bathroom that would somehow withstand the steam of the shower, and an accent wall in every guest room.


My fantasy didn't last long.


Only two days after Nate and I got possession of the house, we started prepping for our DIY overhaul. We had grandiose plans to paint every single room (save one or two) in two weeks before our boxed belongings consumed the space.  We started in the kitchen with washing walls and scraping little bumps off to prepare for painting, which is where things spiraled out of control. The kitchen was one of the rooms that we definitely wanted to paint since it was slathered in an ugly beige. Otherwise, there wasn't much to be done in that room compared to some of the other homes we looked at that needed complete kitchen renovations. As I began scraping the walls in the kitchen, I gouged a huge hole in the paint- I only wish that was where my nightmare ended. For a split second, I thought "Oh well, I'll just spackle it and it will be fine."


Nope.





I pulled an edge of the paint that was separated from the wall in an attempt to smooth the spot that I had mangled, and it just kept peeling and ripping off. It kind of felt like that scene from The Poltergeist where the man is standing over the sink in front of the mirror, ripping his skin off his face piece by piece. Sorry, is that too graphic? We then realized that the prior owners or the owners before them had gotten lazy and painted over wallpaper. It was crazy to find out that way. Usually it's so obvious that you can see the seams of the wallpaper through the paint, but they must have put at least 4 coats of paint over it.


Some of it came off really easily with the edge of the spackle knife, and some took a little more elbow grease, hot water, and vinegar. My mom, Nate and I spent a good two weeks - the two weeks we had planned to paint every single room- getting the kitchen walls down to the plaster (and in some places, dry wall where the addition was added). Whichever devil had put the wallpaper up had also put the hot pink textured sizing to help the wallpaper adhere to the wall, which ended up showing through our paint.





I felt manic. It was so incredibly frustrating and draining to work on making the kitchen walls look good and then when it came down to it- it still looked horrible. Normally, I would have preferred to try a DIY technique, but we were all so tired of looking at these walls that we opted to have a professional come in and skim coat the walls to perfection.

It was so so so worth it.


Now we have our walls smooth and painted. It looks much better and brighter, it almost doesn't seem like the same space. We still have a bit to do in the kitchen- finish painting the window trim, eventually replace the back splash, hang art and style the space. Once that is all done, I'll post a big reveal of how our kitchen turned out!

a long overdue announcement...

We bought a house!



It's been a long, long, tiresome journey to this point-- Nate and I are official homeowners!!!



Did I mention it was long & tiresome?? Okay, if I'm being realistic for once, it was only two full months of searching until we stumbled upon this little place-- but it was a very robust two months of house hunting. Almost everyday after work and on the weekends, we would set out with our real estate agent, Tim, to see one or two or four houses. We lucked out having him as our agent because he lived just a few streets away and he was open to us texting him that there was a house and he'd set something up for that same evening. We probably saw fifty houses or more before we found our home. I'm sure I've said it before, but the real-world hunt for a home is nothing like HGTV.




I think what helped us land this house was that it was overpriced for the neighborhood, for the quality of renovations & updates that were made before they listed, etc. What was also interesting was that the sellers had put the house on the market for a lot less a few years ago. It didn't sell (obviously), and they took the time in-between listings to put some time and money into bringing the house into this decade. Or century, depending on how you want to look at it. Anyway, this house had been on the market for almost a month before we saw it in person, so I think it played to our advantage that they were probably feeling a little desperate.


When it was listed initially, it was about 15k or so over our budget, so we didn't even bother our agent to show it. About a week and a half later, they took the asking price down by 10k. Another week and a half went by, they lowered even more and we finagled our way into seeing it that night! We probably loitered in the house with our agent for about half an hour. Our agent, Tim, asked us "Could you see yourself living here?" and my resounding "yes" was probably the most certain I've been about a house the whole time we searched. There were a few other people walking through while we were seeing it which I think helped stoke the fire under our butts because we ended up writing and submitting an offer that evening. The sellers accepted our offer outright the next morning and didn't negotiate at all. It went pretty smoothly, if I say so myself!

And here we are! We celebrated immediately after getting the call from my agent that the title transferred by popping a bottle of champagne on the porch and aimlessly walking through the house for hours. It was more fun than it should have been, haha.

It's been almost two months since we closed on the house, and a month or more since Nate and I moved in. It still feels very foreign and weird at times, and we're in no way close to feeling settled- but that will come with time, right?! With the help of my mom (bless her), we got straight to work on the projects we wanted to get done, and of course, ran into some snafus-- which I'll get into in another post down the road. I finally feel like I'm making visible progress, so I hope to post some of the things we've accomplished here soon.

I'm so excited to share with you all my plans for the house. We feel so inspired and have a lot of ideas brewing, it will be so fun show all of you our progress!

house hunting in cleveland: part two

Searching for a house to buy is nothing like I thought it would be- and worlds different than what HGTV makes it seem like. I've never been so stressed out in my life! I wanted to start looking for a house last February and had all the meetings set up , but I got cold feet because I wanted to save more money for a down payment. It wasn't necessarily a terrible choice because I am certainly in better financial standing than I was a year ago, but I am kicking myself now for not going forward last year when I had the chance.

I wouldn't go as far to say that the search is going horribly- but it's not going great. The good thing is that we are seeing a lot of houses that we like, but the bad thing is that a lot of other people like the houses we like too. Every one and their mom want to live in the neighborhoods that we're looking for- which is frustrating.


how cool are these floors? major design inspo from one of the houses we saw.

The first day we went out, we saw 6 houses that ranged from our highest price limit to our lowest. It was kind of shocking to see the range in quality of the houses as the prices decreased. Of course, we loved the first house we saw, which so happened to be at the top of our price range. Nate & I started to talk about what we could offer to the owners, and that was sure a learning process for us. We waited to see this house three days after it came onto the market- that was our first mistake. We then notified our agent that we wanted to draw up an offer, but that we wanted to take the night to sleep on it and make sure it was the best decision for us- our second mistake. By the time we were ready to sign off on the offer, they had already accepted another offer.

We saw a couple of houses after that, but we didn't see another that we liked for another week or two. The next one we saw was a familiar house- one that I had seen on my daily Zillow hunt before we even got preapproved and talked to a realtor. The house had a prior accepted offer from before we started looking that ended up falling through because of financing- it felt kismet to us, that the house was meant to be ours.  It was such a cute little cottagey house with adorable curb appeal, and it met a lot of our criteria. After taking a tour, we decided to make an offer but were sadly beaten by another couple who offered A LOT more money, according to our agent. It was probably for the best, I started to get cold feet about this little house and wonder if it was too small for us. Right now it's just Nate and I (no babies yet), but we want a house that we can grow into rather than have to up and move in 3 to 5 years.

The next house we saw has been our favorite to date.We loved it before we even walked through it. Granted, it needed A LOT of work to make that house into a home with the decrepit kitchen and peeling paint over ancient wallpaper... but it was a house we could see ourselves really making our own. Nate and I toured the place with our realtor the day the house came on the market and when we arrived, there were mobs of people there. MOBS. And that was probably around 6:30pm, so god only knows how many more people had already been there. We were pretty competitive with our offer and went over asking price, but there were 17 competing offers. We ended up losing this house, which has caused me the most heartbreak thus far. I feel slightly guilty, but I keep hoping that something bad will happen to the people who had their offer accepted. Isn't that terrible??


Anyway, we just found out about a fourth house we made an offer on just yesterday (yes- you read that correctly. Fourth. House.), and we were outbid on that one too.  So, we're trudging along, and hoping that by some miracle, we'll catch a break sooner rather than later.

we're staying sane by making nate try out all the tubs, obvi

It's really, really hard not to give up hope and wallow at home everyday, but we know the right house for us is out there-- just maybe not right now. That's where we're at.


The funny thing is- with each house that you fall in love with, you start to wonder to yourself, "What did I see in that last house?" We are just trying to stay positive, and hope we find another stunner that we have to have.

house hunting in cleveland- part one

After three years of dreaming and penny pinching, we're finally doing it. Nate and I are starting to look for a house!

April was the official 1 year anniversary of Nate and I cohabiting, but this June marks 4 years of living in my apartment for me-- I can hardly believe that it's been this long.

While we love our apartment and our neighborhood, we decided it was time to move on and find a place of our own for several reasons. Owning a house is a much more cost-effective living situation than renting (for us, at least) and it gets pretty tiresome listening to the slightly-muffled sounds of techno music at 3am from your upstairs neighbors, or fighting for a street parking spot. As I'm getting older, I come to value more and more having a home that reflects us and our style- which is only attainable to a certain point when you can't paint or install a backsplash or rip out carpet without the blessing of your landlord. Looking back, I wish I would have gotten a little more daring in DIY renter-friendly solutions to spruce up our space, like experimenting with peel-and-stick tile or removable wallpaper. Oh well!

We are pre-approved for a loan, have an agent that we're working with, and seeing houses already!

Here are some of the features of the homes we want to find:

• Single family home
• See above. So long, noisy neighbors! We did consider that it might be nice to have additional income if we bought a duplex and rented out the other level, but the attraction of a quiet, private home is so much more important to us than money.
• Multiple stories
• Personally, I find multiple-story homes visually more interesting and attractive than ranch homes. While we love mid-century modern style ranch houses (a la Palm Springs, CA), I don't see myself being able to commit to one interior style. Nate and I love unique furniture, and we usually end up with an eclectic assortment. Maybe someday we'll end up winning the lottery and we can fulfill our desire through a desert vacation home with a brightly colored door! We also envision ourselves having a finished (or semi-finished) third floor that would serve as an art and music studio for the two of us to share, since Nate is a graphic designer.
• 3 bedrooms & 1 bathroom
• We currently have an extra bedroom in our apartment, and it has served us well these past few years. We both have a lot of family and friends visit from out of town, and it would be nice to have an additional guest room if we have more than one person come into town. If the third floor studio dream doesn't pan out, it would be nice to have an extra bedroom to serve that purpose as well.
• Natural Light
• I promised myself that I would not buy anymore plants until we buy a house, because the light in our apartment is kind of abysmal. We only have so many windows that aren't obstructed from closely neighboring houses or the roof to our front porch, so we can only have so many plants vying for light in the same spaces.
  
  In case you're wondering, the promise I made to myself is not going well.
• Hardwood Floors
• Our apartment has such icky carpet- when we found our place, we asked our landlord if there were hardwoods underneath the carpet and he divulged a horrifying tale- his tenants from years before had a cat that peed all over the floors, and he couldn't get the smell out until he sealed them with some sort of black tar. My heart hurts just thinking about it.
• Old homes with unique charm
• We are so drawn to homes with little nooks and built-ins that you just don't find from modern homes. Bring on the exposed brick and creaky stairs!

All-in-all, the features that are listed above might not seem like much. Nate and I know more of what we definitely don't like than firm wants/desires. We'll see how that goes.

Wish us luck on our search-we'll definitely need all we can get!