Dining Room Makeover Plans

Most of the first floor has come together in the last year, which has only made my agony about what to do with my formal dining room worse. The dining room is sandwiched between our living room and the TV room in an open concept-like manner, so it's been really hard to decide on colors and themes that won't be a carbon copy of the other rooms but still work seamlessly in transitioning from room to room.

The overall feel of the room hasn't changed much since we moved in last summer. We used the same paint shade from our living room, "Marshmallow" by Sherwin Williams (our favorite shade of warmish white!),  and replaced the chandelier with a more modern, playful brass fixture from Kichler.

The furniture aspect has caused a lot less stress than the color palettes and design plans thus far, but still a fair amount of stress, all things considered. My current dining set (not the same as the picture above) and I have been together since my junior year of college- while being pretty utilitarian with its self-storing table leaf and surviving living with a handful of artists, I've decided it's time we part ways. It's just too traditional for my taste- why keep something around that you don't fully love?

I took a trip to Main Street Modern (a 40,000 square foot warehouse full of mid-century modern goodies in Canton, OH) at the beginning of last month with my mom primarily to shop around for dining sets. We came out physically empty-handed BUT apparently all I needed was a trip through this warehouse to find the inspiration for EXACTLY what I wanted my dining room to be-- because, figuratively, i was scrambling to handle all of the ideas I had.

While wandering the space, we came across this MASSIVE fiber art triptych. The panels were probably 12 feet high, maybe 3 feet wide, and I was mesmerized. I still can't get over the colors, which inspired me the most.

Mustard yellow is super en vogue right now, but even if it weren't-- it's been my power color for a few years now. Combined with a very light millennial pink, I knew I had landed the perfect palette to tie in the pink from the kitchen and the mustard that I've used in both the living room and TV room. It was definitely a "light bulb" moment.

I've already found a new-to-me dining set, fabric to recover the chair seats, and if you follow me on Instagram and watch my stories, I finally pulled the trigger on the rug that I've been lusting over. RIP, bank account. I still have a few things I need want to source-- like a matching Broyhill Brasilia credenza and some appropriate art-- but I finally feel like my agony is over and things are falling into place.

Check out my mood board below and let me know what you think!

Kitchen Refresh Part 2 - It's done! (sort of)

Before you start reading this post, I want you to take a deep breath- the following will leave you incredulous. (too dramatic, maybe?)

The kitchen is DONE! (ish)

When I last checked in over a year ago, I recapped our kitchen painting debacle- to which I fondly refer as "The Great Wallpaper Discovery of 2017." They'll be teaching that tale in U.S. history classes someday. From when we first saw the house, to having the walls scraped and professionally skim coated, to being PAINTED almost two months after we moved in-- it's quite a transformation and was well worth the sweat, tears, and dermatitis from the plaster dust.

Our kitchen isn't exactly how I imagined it to be-- which is a good thing. I had plans of painting everything white to give it a fresh feel and filling in with colorful accents. Looking back, I think it would have felt way too sterile and devoid of personality. I collected so many "cutesy" dessert-like trinkets when we lived in our duplex that it only made sense to lean into that theme in the new house. I'm so happy we did!

We painted the wainscoting a bright pure white and the newly smoothed walls above "Lotus Petal" by Behr. It ended up being the perfect hue! And before you ask how I got my partner to agree to so much pink- Nate took some convincing. It is kind of intense shade of pink after dark, but in the mornings with the light pouring in, it's perfect.

We ended up landing on our paint shade after we requested a sample from Big Chill (the retro refrigerator company) for their pink and mint colors to see if we could find a match-- the pink fridge is actually perfect match with Behr's Peppermint Stick, but we went a shade lighter with Lotus Petal.  I dream that someday we'll order a Big Chill fridge (though I'm leaning more toward a white fridge these days) and it will be marvelously cute. Unrelated- anyone have a spare $3000 lying around?

Our kitchen dining set is vintage- my mom and I found it on craigslist and drove over an hour to pick it up. The chairs were originally a mustard yellow floral before we recovered them-- I wish I had taken a before picture of them! This set is definitely the "showstopper" of the space and I'm so happy we stumbled across it.

Another one of my favorite parts of the kitchen is our pendant light! If I could link to it, I would but it's actually a family heirloom of sorts. This fixture is actually from my parents' first house. My mom ended up holding onto it after they sold their house but never hanging it in the home I grew up in, so they gave it to me! It's honestly perfect for the space and so sweetly sentimental.

As far as the kitchen goes- we're done with sprucing for a little while. I have a list of things I'd like to tackle that I'll get into in another post, but most of that can wait for now-- We're content for the time-being and mainly occupied by trying to keep the kitchen clean. Wish us luck with that!

Follow along on instagram for more #ivyleaguehouse updates!

Materials & Products Used
Wall Paint - Behr's Lotus Petal 
Dinette Set - Vintage, Craigslist
White Pendant Light - Vintage, similar here
Retro Microwave - Amazon
Automatic Trash & Recycling Cans - Amazon
Ice Cream and Popsicle Prints - Jodi Lynn Doodles
Ice Cream Hands Print - Sami Wideberg, Society 6
Donut Plaque - Everyday is a Holiday
Donut Neon - Urban Outfitters, similar here
Ice Cream Cookie Jar - Vintage
LuRay Pastel Dishes - Vintage, eBay
Felt Letter Board - Vintage Revivals, similar here
Floral Recipe Box, Rifle Paper Co.
Cake Cone planters - Target dollar spot, closest dupe i can find here 

A year later...

Well, hey! Long time, no see!

It's been a minute since I've posted on here- by definition (my own), a minute is about a full 365 days. Lots of things have happened since then- honestly, it feels like that year has gone by in a blink of an eye. I have quite a bit of catching up to do on here!

In the past year, I've spent A LOT of my time prepping the house, curating spaces as best I can on a budget (you feel me?), I started a new job way closer to home than my last one (!!!!!!!) , and spent a lot of time with family & friends. It's been a good one, but the end of this year and going forward, I'll be posting more consistently here. Fingers crossed.

Anyway- let's catch up a bit! We had a ton of fun last year after I left you on my unintentional blog sabbatical-

We went gallivanting in our favorite orchard with our friends Sam and Lara and baked a loooooot of pies from the apples we brought home 

 

 We had a lot of visitors come to christen our house and explore our city with us

 

And we decorated and celebrated holidays, which was arguably my favorite!!!

 

I can't wait to do more of all of the above this fall & winter and maybe I'll blog about it in real time this time around-- how crazy a concept is that? 

Most of January through now, I have been working like an absolute HOG to brighten up some spaces and bring our house to life, so I'll follow-up with some posts very soon to show you all of the THRILLING things we've accomplished in the last year! It's very exciting and I'm very proud of how everything looks so far. 

 Stay tuned.

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.