Work in progress

lowly but surely, our house is beginning to look like how I envisioned it to look. When we moved in a year ago the house was far from what it looks like now. I mean, the house had good bones so I wasn't too concerned about how the previous owner decorated the home. The first thing we did was to paint the whole house. My real estate friend who showed us the house thought that we should just keep the colour that was there before, but I honestly hated it. It was a beige colour and it was painted the same colour throughout the whole house. I know that painting makes a huge difference in how a space looks so I wanted to pick something fresh and modern that just brightened up each room. I also wanted to choose colours depending on the rooms. I think a big mistake the previous owner did was to use the same colour in each room. Some rooms get more light than others so you should choose colours depending on the space. My son's room gets little light so I wanted to pick a very light colour and decorate with colourful items in his room. That way it didn't feel depressing and small. Here's a sneek peek at what I mean by that.


We painted the walls in a warm, cream colour that picked up from the walnut colour on his crib. The colours are off here because I took this photo at night. I bought stainless steel wall shelves from Ikea the other day and mounted it on the wall so that I can display his toys and books. I have one on the other side of the wall as well.



I wanted to stay away from baby blue or any blue colours for the wall paint colour that you tend to associate with boys' rooms because I wanted to play with colour with the accessories in his room. As you can see, there's already a lot of colour going on with the mobile and the toys on his shelf. I also made a banner with his name on it in different colours and stuck it on one side of the wall (seen partly on the right).

So what I'm going to do is show you some of the rooms BEFORE we moved in and how it looks like now.

BEFORE Master bedroom


It looks really terrible in these photos because I took these when the previous owner was in the process of packing everything. It was a lot cleaner when we went to view the house, but you can get an idea what the decor was before we moved in.


AFTER Master bedroom

We put a picture shelf up above our headboard yesterday that we got from Ikea. It's a great way to display personal photos without mounting the frames directly on the wall. Plus, I love that I can change the configuration of the frames if I get bored of it in the future. I changed the wall colour to a sage colour picked up from our duvet cover. That way everything was cohesive. I was lucky enough to find pillow shams in the same sage colour at West Elm.


BEFORE Dining room


The dining room was dated and weighed down by a lot of bulky furniture, heavy curtains (that blocked a lot of natural light), and big rugs.


AFTER Dining room


We painted the room in a bluish gray that just really freshened up the room. Now it looks really bright and cheery. We opted to have no curtains and we got a walnut dining table and credenza. We opted for Parsons chairs for the dining table and to break things up we put banquette seating on one side. That way it feels more inviting and less stuffy. I introduced a pop of colour in the red clock and the Mark Rothko print between the windows. We mounted the same picture shelf in our master bedroom (in a shorter length) from Ikea along one wall and staggered it in different heights. I'm hoping to sew a table runner in the near future for the dining table because it's looking a little sparse. Of course, I would love to have fresh cut flowers in a vase everyday!


BEFORE Kitchen

I hated how the vent hood was in white, the oven was in black, and the rest of the appliances were in stainless silver. My eye was drawn to it everytime I looked at the kitchen. Plus, that oven was a 100 years old!


AFTER Kitchen

I would love to do a huge overhaul of our kitchen and do an all-white kitchen, but that means $$$ so for now I have to make do with what I have. For some reason the photo is showing the wall as a pinkish colour, but it's actually in white. We replaced the white vent hood with a stainless steel one and invested in a new convection slide-in oven. Do you like the kitchen towels on my oven door? I made that a few years ago.
My dream kitchen is to have white cabinetry with white subway tiles as the backsplash, an apron sink, and white quartz countertops. I would accessorize with lime green accessories (i.e., a bowl of green apples, dish detergent from Daub & Bauble in Sorrento Lemon and Ginger (actually I already have this!), cook books, etc. etc. You get the idea...).


BEFORE Breakfast nook

An oversized rectangular table in black made this space very tight. Plus, it didn't help that the space around the dining table was very cluttered with stuff.


AFTER Breakfast nook

I put our knock-off Saarinen table from Ikea in this space. The round shape make this space feel more organic. I put 4 walnut-coloured chairs around it and decorated the tabletop with 2 branches of Japanese acorn branches in a vase of pebbles surrounded by tea light candle holders.

I'll post more photos as I take them in the coming days. I'm in the process of fixing our front and back yard. It's a complete mess! I've been picking weeds almost every single day. I'm clueless when it comes to anything garden-related, but I want to learn. My father-in-law has a beautiful garden so I'm hoping to learn something from him when he comes to visit next month. That's my next project!