Home is where you hang your mini jacket

We moved into our current house just one year ago today, and it has been a bit of a troubled journey making it our own.  If you remember, we had some home problems including several mouse incidents (refer to posts: “The mouse incident” and “The mouse incident, part two”), a roof to replace unexpectedly, a pool that wasn’t closed properly before an extremely cold winter, among some other small troubles.  The upside to our new nest is that we were able to spend the year making it our own.  And while we aren’t done, we have made a nice little abode here, complete with a newborn.

The easiest changes that you can make to your home to change the look without major remodeling include two big things: paint and fixtures.  Here’s what we did:

• Paint every room in the house, including ceilings and trim.  In this case, our house had original dark brown espresso trim, windows and doors.  We updated this look to white trim.
• Replace door handles.  Our espresso colored doors (now white) were complete with some old and outdated gold-ish round knobs.  Since we were taking doors off of hinges and repainting, it seemed a waste to put them back on with the old hardware, so we updated with brushed nickel hinges and lever handles.  We have a lot of doors, so this made an incredible difference in the look of the house.
• Update light fixtures and cabinet hardware.  We updated some light fixtures (e.g., nursery), salvaged some light fixtures with a little paint or rewiring, and changed cabinet hardware in key places (e.g., bathroom).

Nursery - before:

Nursery - after:

Guest bedroom - before:

Guest bedroom - after:

Master bedroom - before:

Master bedroom - after:

Bathroom - before:

Bathroom - after:

I am so happy to have a house we can call a home for our little family of three.  I look at our house as the first makings of the background of so many family memories.  This is the house that our kid(s?) will remember fondly as the cool house they grew up in.  It will be in the background of so many family photos, and has plenty of memorable spaces.  Home is where you hang your mini jacket.