When we were dreaming of owning our first home it seemed so easy to imagine how it would look, what it would feel like and how it would function. But when we moved into a real house - not the perfect, easy to change dream house in our heads - it became so much harder to visualize what we wanted. We started to feel overwhelmed with the possibilities and limitations of our new home and how much money and time everything takes - and because our house is one of the most standard blueprints for UK homes (there were thousands of them built in a UK housing boom in the 1930's - growing up at least half of my friends lived in houses almost identical to this one) the structure itself seems super ordinary and hard to pull inspiration from.
Once we got through the moving process and lived with our house for a few months there were a few things that helped us to start making decisions and changes. It has really helped me to remember these three things every time I'm feeling stuck or overwhelmed.
This is something I read here from Johnathan Adler - "The #1 thing I would say is come up with three words to describe what you want your house to say. So like a three word brand identify for your house – and work backwards from there" - and it was so helpful for us when we were faced with a big empty space. Me and Kindface talked about it over dinner one night and came up with our 3 word mission statement for our new home.
no. 1 - cozy
Cozy is big for us. We want our home to be full of the things that make it easy to relax and get cozy after a long day - and a fun, warm and comfy place to hang out through the long winter months (we live in the UK and our winters are long and wet with short days - sunset is around 3:30pm mid-winter). In the summer (when it doesn't get dark till after 10pm) black-out blinds, fans, doors and windows that we can swing open, and places to hang out outside will make it easier to relax when it's hot and humid.
For me it also means amenities everywhere - and making our guests feel comfortable, welcome and wanted. A stack of blankets in the living room, a guest room full of pillows and books, slippers by the door and a kitchen stocked with good coffee, chai and hot chocolate.
As well as cozy being an actual physical feeling, for us the most important part is the vibe. I have this word NAC - nineties-american-cozy, which I talk about a lot (and is basically the philosophy of my life - no! I'm joking - it's not! But seriously...it kind of is.) I have an auntie from the US and I remember going to her house when I was little and feeling so cozy and welcomed. There was a line of fruit stickers next to the fridge, and a never ending supply of peaches, grilled cheese and welches. We would ride bikes and paint and play Lego. The sofas were cushy and we would make forts and watch Camp Nowhere. It was full of neutrals and Persian carpets and it was my happy place. I want to create that same vibe in our house too.
no. 2 - functional
We really want to make sure that we make this home work well for how we live. Our old house was small but the size wasn't as big a problem as the layout and the hard to clean and maintain finishes. We want this house to work hard for us and make life easier instead of more complicated. Easy to clean surfaces and furniture, rooms that flow into one another, places to play and for guests to stay - a space that functions perfectly for our family and our life.
To us functional also means organization and simplicity - our current house is so much bigger than the home we rented for the first 6 years of our marriage but we quickly saw how easy it was for us to expand to fill the space. We want to make sure that we don't overspend, don't have much more than we need and that everything has it's place - to us life feels calmer when there is less, and easier when we know what we have and where it is.
The first two words we landed on straight away but we couldn't agree on a third. Kindface's 3rd word was 'clean' (as in not dirty) and mine was 'textured' - to me having a clean house was definitely something I wanted but not something that helped me imagine the style/look we we're going for - so I'm going with textured (sorry Kindface - I promise I'll try to keep it clean too!)
I love layering different fabrics and wood-tones and neutral shades. I love it when a room is not too symmetrical or matchy-matchy but still feels balanced. I love wood next to metal and natural textures next to high gloss finishes. I love cotton and linen layered with faux fur and leather. I love new and old mixed together and angles balanced out with some softness.
Trying to visualize our style in general rather than room by room really helped us. Because we were starting from nothing (when we moved in we didn't have much furniture and nothing that we were planning to keep long term) each room felt so blank that we didn't know what to buy and how to move forward. I created a pinterest board and saved everything I saw that I thought reflected the feel and style that we wanted to create in our house. It didn't matter if the image was of a room that we had in our house or not - it could be a nursery or a corporate space or a restaurant - we saved any image that reflected the colours, textures and shapes that we loved. This really helped us visualize where we were going and meant that when we saw something in a store that we knew fit with the whole-house style we could buy it knowing that it would end up working somewhere in the house. This is what we landed on (see the pinterest board here).
The last but most important thing was a conversation with the same auntie who has the cozy house I talked about before. I was saying that I didn't want to make expensive mistakes and she just said "you will" - and it hit me that we really had to get ok with making mistakes to move forward. Although we don't want to waste money on impulse buys or things that we know we don't really love, we have to remember that if we buy something that doesn't work out we can sell it, donate it or give it to a friend - it's not the end of the world! Taking away the pressure of getting everything right first time allowed us to start taking risks and making decisions.
I still get a bit overwhelmed when I think about how we are going to fill and use our new space, so I'd love to hear what helped you to make the first decisions in your new home...any tips?
Once we got through the moving process and lived with our house for a few months there were a few things that helped us to start making decisions and changes. It has really helped me to remember these three things every time I'm feeling stuck or overwhelmed.
- Choose three words that define how we want our house to feel -
This is something I read here from Johnathan Adler - "The #1 thing I would say is come up with three words to describe what you want your house to say. So like a three word brand identify for your house – and work backwards from there" - and it was so helpful for us when we were faced with a big empty space. Me and Kindface talked about it over dinner one night and came up with our 3 word mission statement for our new home.
no. 1 - cozy
Cozy is big for us. We want our home to be full of the things that make it easy to relax and get cozy after a long day - and a fun, warm and comfy place to hang out through the long winter months (we live in the UK and our winters are long and wet with short days - sunset is around 3:30pm mid-winter). In the summer (when it doesn't get dark till after 10pm) black-out blinds, fans, doors and windows that we can swing open, and places to hang out outside will make it easier to relax when it's hot and humid.
For me it also means amenities everywhere - and making our guests feel comfortable, welcome and wanted. A stack of blankets in the living room, a guest room full of pillows and books, slippers by the door and a kitchen stocked with good coffee, chai and hot chocolate.
As well as cozy being an actual physical feeling, for us the most important part is the vibe. I have this word NAC - nineties-american-cozy, which I talk about a lot (and is basically the philosophy of my life - no! I'm joking - it's not! But seriously...it kind of is.) I have an auntie from the US and I remember going to her house when I was little and feeling so cozy and welcomed. There was a line of fruit stickers next to the fridge, and a never ending supply of peaches, grilled cheese and welches. We would ride bikes and paint and play Lego. The sofas were cushy and we would make forts and watch Camp Nowhere. It was full of neutrals and Persian carpets and it was my happy place. I want to create that same vibe in our house too.
no. 2 - functional
We really want to make sure that we make this home work well for how we live. Our old house was small but the size wasn't as big a problem as the layout and the hard to clean and maintain finishes. We want this house to work hard for us and make life easier instead of more complicated. Easy to clean surfaces and furniture, rooms that flow into one another, places to play and for guests to stay - a space that functions perfectly for our family and our life.
To us functional also means organization and simplicity - our current house is so much bigger than the home we rented for the first 6 years of our marriage but we quickly saw how easy it was for us to expand to fill the space. We want to make sure that we don't overspend, don't have much more than we need and that everything has it's place - to us life feels calmer when there is less, and easier when we know what we have and where it is.
no. 3 - textured
The first two words we landed on straight away but we couldn't agree on a third. Kindface's 3rd word was 'clean' (as in not dirty) and mine was 'textured' - to me having a clean house was definitely something I wanted but not something that helped me imagine the style/look we we're going for - so I'm going with textured (sorry Kindface - I promise I'll try to keep it clean too!)
I love layering different fabrics and wood-tones and neutral shades. I love it when a room is not too symmetrical or matchy-matchy but still feels balanced. I love wood next to metal and natural textures next to high gloss finishes. I love cotton and linen layered with faux fur and leather. I love new and old mixed together and angles balanced out with some softness.
- Visually define our whole-house style -
Trying to visualize our style in general rather than room by room really helped us. Because we were starting from nothing (when we moved in we didn't have much furniture and nothing that we were planning to keep long term) each room felt so blank that we didn't know what to buy and how to move forward. I created a pinterest board and saved everything I saw that I thought reflected the feel and style that we wanted to create in our house. It didn't matter if the image was of a room that we had in our house or not - it could be a nursery or a corporate space or a restaurant - we saved any image that reflected the colours, textures and shapes that we loved. This really helped us visualize where we were going and meant that when we saw something in a store that we knew fit with the whole-house style we could buy it knowing that it would end up working somewhere in the house. This is what we landed on (see the pinterest board here).
images:
- Make mistakes -
The last but most important thing was a conversation with the same auntie who has the cozy house I talked about before. I was saying that I didn't want to make expensive mistakes and she just said "you will" - and it hit me that we really had to get ok with making mistakes to move forward. Although we don't want to waste money on impulse buys or things that we know we don't really love, we have to remember that if we buy something that doesn't work out we can sell it, donate it or give it to a friend - it's not the end of the world! Taking away the pressure of getting everything right first time allowed us to start taking risks and making decisions.
I still get a bit overwhelmed when I think about how we are going to fill and use our new space, so I'd love to hear what helped you to make the first decisions in your new home...any tips?
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