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What I’ve Learned Our First Year of Homeownership

June 22, 2018 by jessica Leave a Comment

On June 20, 2017, we closed on our first home. As we popped the bubbly in celebration of our one-year house-iversary, I found myself reflecting on the past twelve months and was struck by how much of a learning experience home ownership proved to be. Here are some of the things that surprised me most after accepting the keys a year ago.

Improvements take time.

There’s so much pressure to have a Pinterest-perfect house shortly after moving in, but doing so takes a lot of time and [primarily] a lot of money. Honestly, I was naive in thinking how quickly we’d have rooms furnished. We didn’t want to have our home look like the West Elm and CB2 catalogs circa 2017, so we spent a lot of time browsing other retailers to find pieces to complement the big box items that we owned. When you pair that with someone who is picky (ahem, me), it’s not exactly a quick process. (I selected our new living room sconces after looking at no less than a thousand options.) And then there’s money. When you’re balancing one pricey purchase with dozens of other pricey purchases, you have to prioritize which items will make the biggest impact in terms of design and comfort as you save money for the other things. Plus, you still need to consider the finances needed for travel and other hobbies. It’s definitely a balancing act, and this doesn’t even take into account major changes like renovations and remodels. I’ve learned to be comfortable taking our time with the house. Purchases are more satisfying after you’ve had time to truly consider them, and it’s better to wait until you know how you’re going to live with your space. Even when it comes to simple improvements like painting, it’s unrealistic to think you’ll have everything done right away. We accomplished a lot last summer, but there’s still a laundry list of things to work on. It’s getting done — just a bit more slowly than I had anticipated.

You can DIY a lot.

Before we moved in, I knew I wanted to paint as much as we could on our own and only hire someone to do the stairwell where I couldn’t reach. (I feel clumsy enough on ladders, let alone adding this contraption to use one on stairs.) I figured that’s where my DIY know-how would start and end. Instead, we’ve learned how to do a lot on our own thanks to help from our parents and plenty of YouTube videos. My dad taught me how to change the electrical outlets from outdated almond-colored and black ones to white. That experience and an online tutorial gave me confidence to swap out light fixtures. Dave and his dad installed our garage door opener. Dave fixed our washing machine when it broke a couple of months ago. I’ve been painstakingly removing paint from our 90-year-old door hardware to reveal the brass hidden beneath. It takes time to DIY, but each project is intensely satisfying and we’re saving a lot of money by making these changes on our own.

There will be unexpected expenses.

Everyone says that houses are expensive and there’s good reason for it. It seems like no matter what you do, you’ll have a surprise pop up that’ll cost you. In the year that we’ve owned the house, we’ve needed to have four trees removed because they were dying, we had a roof leak that needed to be repaired, and we had our furnace go out in the middle of winter. Each expense wasn’t exactly awful or budget-breaking, but when you have money earmarked for, say, a dining room table, it feels pretty shitty to fork over hundreds of dollars for a necessary repair. We’ve been saving roughly 12% of our mortgage each month and putting that money into a CapitalOne 360 savings account specifically for home-related expenses like repairs or furnishings. Having a joint account labeled “Home” has made some of those expenses more bearable because it’s money we already expected to spend on the house.

Everyone will have an opinion.

This was such an eyeopener to me! It seems that no matter what your plans are and how well you’ve researched your options, everyone will have an opinion and their own war story about why you should do something else. They’re well-meaning, of course, but it can be annoying to hear unsolicited advice from everyone from family to friends to colleagues. It’s one thing if everyone is telling you to shy away from one particular decision, but that’s not typically the case. It’s more like you tell one person your plans for X and they had a bad experience. You tell another person about Y and they had a different result. The worst is when someone suggests we skimp on an improvement that doesn’t matter much to them. (Sure, we could purchase run-of-the-mill, builder-grade light fixtures, but I’ll be annoyed with them every day.) I’ve learned to take it with a grain of salt. I’ll re-research some things just in case, but I’ll usually do what I wanted to do initially and it turns out fine. (Don’t let this deter you from reaching out for recommendations and how-tos. That advice is invaluable.)

Focus on what you love when things go wrong.

When something doesn’t pan out quite the way you expected it to, it’s easy to hone in on all of the problems with the house. In our case, there’s a lot of stupid choices made by 90 years worth of owners — one of whom was a landlord and we all know how well renters treat a home. There’s a lot about our house that isn’t easy and there are a lot of things we need to repair or replace that come with hefty price tags. Sometimes I’ll find myself frustrated by the process and wondering why I wanted an old home. Those are the moments that I need to stop myself and appreciate the unique features of the house (the glass door knobs, the perfect patina on the brass, the substantial baseboards, the original hardwood floors that we couldn’t afford otherwise) and the progress we’ve made. I know it’s corny, but oftentimes I feel like a steward of the house and that it’s our opportunity to correct the things that went wrong over the years and modernize it while paying respect to the quirks that make it what it is.

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Spring Refresh with Cottage & Bungalow + 15% Off

April 6, 2018 by jessica Leave a Comment

I swear that spring is on the horizon, despite this week’s snowfall, making it the perfect time to freshen up your living space. We’ve been cleaning everything, cracking open the windows whenever the mercury creeps above 50 degrees, and adding a few new home decor items to make our space feel new again. It’s so easy to get in a decor rut once you find a piece you love, but swapping out items (or moving them around your house) is one of the easiest ways to give your home a facelift, and items from Cottage & Bungalow are perfect for a warm-weather makeover. Established in 2004, Cottage and Bungalow offers coastal furniture and beach decor and accessories that are chosen for their design and quality. Their products have been featured in a variety of national design and lifestyle magazines, including InStyle, Country Living, Coastal Living, and more.

As I’m sure you’ve gleaned, we have a mid-century-modern-meets-traditional vibe in our 1920s house. Cottage & Bungalow specializes in coastal design, but don’t let that dissuade you if your aesthetic is similar to mine. There are plenty of pieces that can fit within any decor. One of the pieces I was most excited about was this gorgeous alabaster lamp. The shape is spot on for mid-century modern decor and the stone adds a welcome natural element to the space. In another area of the house, a Dash and Albert rug from Cottage & Bungalow adds a bit of global glam to the entryway. (I had a buffalo plaid rug down for fall and winter and I couldn’t stand the heaviness of the pattern this season.) Plus, the rug is made from polypropylene, so you can just hose it down and let it air dry when it gets dirty. Other pieces I love include this quilt, a macrame throw pillow, a bar tool set, and this gorgeous rattan chair.

You can save 15% at Cottage & Bungalow through July 6, 2018 with code BEDKNOBS. Some exclusions apply due to manufacturer restrictions.

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Living Room Progress: Inspection vs. Today

March 7, 2018 by jessica 2 Comments

We still have work to do in our living room in terms of accessorizing and styling, but I thought I’d give you a peek into where things are at right now compared to when we did our inspection in May. Obviously the before photos are on the dim side and that’s not an intentional editing choice to make you think it’s worse than it was. It was really that bad. Most of the light bulbs were partially unscrewed so they wouldn’t turn on and just about every window in the house was covered by fabric (men’s shirts and old sheets rather than window treatments). The paint was this awful creamy color that wasn’t quite as yellow in the images below, but it was as dingy and soul sucking as it appears here.

The first thing we tackled (after removing kitchen cabinetry from the guest room and a random square of teal carpet in the coat closet) was repairing cracks in the plaster walls and painting as much as we possibly could before we had our floors refinished. We got through the living room, dining room, the wood-paneled master bedroom and office, the guest bedroom, and the tiny room that eventually became my closet. The far wall in the staircase was left unpainted at the time because I’d like to wallpaper it. I didn’t want to spend the time painting something I was just going to cover up eventually. At this point, though, we’re leaning toward painting it white and doing wallpaper next year. It’s such an expensive project and we have other priorities to take care of. However, painting everything else white and removing the window coverings opened up the space and made it feel brighter and more welcoming, so the cream wall doesn’t bother me too much at the moment. My plan is to paint the upstairs hallway, ceiling, and trim this month and get to the top of the stairs. We’ll hire someone to finish up the stairwell since I’m not graceful enough to stand on a ladder while I paint. We have pretty high ceilings there and I have no doubt that I’d fall or get paint all over the stairs.

After about a month of painting every night after work and on weekends, we finally got a week-long break when our floors were refinished. The red oak floors were in awful shape (check out this pic of the floor in my closet) with patches in the floor that were different colors, and scuffs and scratches throughout. Upstairs, the stain was on the yellow side. I’m not sure if it was the polyurethane was showing age or if it was just a bad stain choice to begin with. Our floor refinisher said that the downstairs floors had likely never been refinished, which is great for future owners because you can only refinish floors approximately 10 times since you’re sanding off approximately .75 to 1mm with each round. We went with Minwax’s “Early American” stain. It’s lighter than the original color, but still felt traditional in the 1920s home. The biggest selling point was that it didn’t have red or yellow undertones. We paid $2.75 per square foot and ultimately came in just shy of $2,600. Worth every penny. (Pro tip: hardwood floors will eventually get scratched no matter what you do. Use a stain pen to camouflage the imperfections.)

Replacing the sconces is next on the to-do list for the living room. We’d also like to find a better throw pillow, a larger rug, and redesigning the corner that we have that wood chair in the photo above. The side chair is great for putting on shoes and using for additional seating. However, a mid-century modern bench might fill the space better. I’d also like to find artwork to hang in that area. All that stuff is easy, though, and will fall into place as we find the right pieces. I don’t want to push anything and accidentally have our house look like the 2017/2018 West Elm catalog because I was too impatient to wait for the right item. Now that the living room is in a good spot, we’re talking about what room to embark on next. It’s a toss up between the dining room or kitchen. The dining room is definitely easier and really just requires furniture, a woodworker to fill in spots were the trim and crown molding is missing, and window treatments. The kitchen is a more adventurous project. It’ll all be cosmetic updates and not a true renovation, but there’s a lot to do in that room from skim coating the textured walls to replacing the linoleum flooring that has a gross river rock design.

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Target Launches New Home Line: Opalhouse

February 21, 2018 by jessica 2 Comments

On April 8, Target will launch a new home line with “bold colors, optimistic prints and tons of texture.” The new line, Opalhouse, will have over 1,300 pieces with most priced at $30 or under that recall far-flung destinations for the person looking to outfit her home with an eclectic mix of globally influenced design and elevated details. For example, the wallpaper featured above was inspired by a bird that Target’s design team spotted in Lisbon coupled with flowers found near a market in Paris. While riding on a train to their next destination, a few sketches and watercolor eventually became the design for the wallpaper that will be part of the Opalhouse collection.

As if I needed another reason to turn to Target while working on our house! The chair below is my favorite piece from the collection and I can’t wait to snag two to eventually use in our sun room. And if you’re into that round pillow below, but don’t want to wait, you can snag a similar one at Urban Outfitters. What do you think about the new collection?

For more information, check out Target’s press release.

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Holiday Gift Guide for the Cook

December 7, 2017 by jessica Leave a Comment

I’m not sure if it’s because we finally have a house, but my wish list this year is heavily focused on kitchen- and bar-related gifts to upgrade our college-era things with nice versions that we’ll love for years to come. In fact, I’ve already been self-gifting with some of these ideas as you’ll read below!

I tried to keep this gift guide gender-neutral, since many home-related gifts need to be loved by everyone in the household — and let’s face it, we’re all shopping for more than just women when we look at interest-specific lists. (Does anyone else feel like many gift guides this year have heavy doses of pink and twee details?) Below, you’ll find nine of my favorite gift picks for the budding chef on your shopping list this year.

Serving Platter – Anyone who loves food is going to love a serving board, and there are so many gorgeous ones that any design you pick will be a welcome addition their collection. They’re perfect for curating artisanal cheese plates to occupy guests while the cook wraps up dinner in the kitchen.

Covered Dish – For around $80, you can snag a high-quality covered covered baking dish. This one goes from the freezer to the oven, and is elegant enough to serve from at the dining table. I prefer the white one, but it also comes in blue and red.

Cast Iron Pan – For whatever reason, I assumed cast iron pans were expensive and difficult to care for. I was wrong on both counts. We purchased this one by Lodge on Black Friday, which is the preferred brand for cast iron, and it’s as amazing as everyone claims. It even comes pre-seasoned so the recipient can start cooking right away. Just make sure the giftee knows how to take care of it to avoid rust. (Basically, wipe it out right after cooking, avoid using soap, dry it off with a towel, and then pop it into the oven at 250 degrees for around 15 minutes to dry it off completely. After the pan cools a bit, put a small amount of vegetable oil on a paper towel and rub it all over the pan until the oil absorbs.)

Serrated Knife – Why knife blocks don’t include a bread knife is beyond me. Treat your home chef to this often overlooked kitchen staple to keep loaves from crushing under the pressure of a regular knife. And don’t spend a lot on it. A serrated knife can’t really be sharpened when it dulls. (Granted, how often do serrated knives become dull when you’re only using them for bread?)

Canisters – I personally love the Instagram appeal of pretty canisters, but I always manage to talk myself out of actually buying a set. It seems indulgent, which is pretty much the best reason to treat someone to a set.

Kitchen Towels – If you need an ultra affordable gift or an add-on to something larger, these towels are it. They’re generously sized, wash well, and absorb a lot of water. I bought two for myself and loved them so much that I purchased three more to completely overhaul my towel drawer. Plus, the neutral colors go well with just about anyone’s kitchen decor.

Tea Pot – I don’t drink tea, but how cute is this tea pot?! It’s the tea lover’s take on Bodum’s French press that graced everyone’s gift guides a few years ago. (I do own the French press and can vouch for how amazing it is.)

Pinch Bowls – This is another gift that no one realizes they’d love until they actually start using them. They’re perfect for measuring spices and prepping ingredients before the flurry of cooking begins. The recipient can also use them as individual dip bowls.

Cookbook – Don’t you hate when you buy a cookbook and everything looks too advanced? The recipes in this cookbook look like they’re a good balance of ambitious and achievable. Plus, the cover is gorgeous enough to leave out on display.