Our Home, One Year Later

In honor of moving into our home one year ago, I wanted to share all the updates and projects we have done since then. Just because we built a custom home, didn't mean we were able to get everything we wanted right away from our builder. Because of Covid, building costs were at an all time high while we were under construction. We had to make a lot of decisions on what we needed right away and what we could do ourselves later.

I hope you enjoy getting a look at all the projects we have poured ourselves into the past twelve months. It has truly been a labor of love. This is our forever home and investing in our property and adding equity in different ways has become very important to us. We want our kids to see all the hard work that goes into owning a beautiful home and that they should be proud of it.

Our home will be a continuous work of art for us, adding additional pieces, textures and layers to make it reflect who we are. As James T. Farmer wrote in his book, 'That perfect seasoning of a home comes from that cultivated mix of high and low pieces, storied and new, collected and found--all coming together in such a way that even a newer home can have a soulful presence and age.'

I will try to link most decor items in case you're curious about where I got them. I will also share some sneak peeks of future projects we have planned too. Enjoy!

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Our kitchen is efficient and contains so much storage. Things we wanted: cabinets to the ceiling, dual fuel range, full overlay cabinets, deep seating at our island.

We installed our floating shelves after we moved in. They were milled from a local tree that had fallen and they are HEAVY. Bjorn planed them himself to get the thickness that we wanted and we hung them with the HovR bracket system. Also pictured is the pie safe that was in my parents' house growing up. I gave it a new coat of paint and it stores all the kids' dishes.

Our brick fireplace matches our brick back splash in the kitchen. Our mantel was sourced from a local woodworker who obtained old beams from an 1800s barn in Pennsylvania. He used the beams to create a wrap around mantel, maintaining the original mortise and tenon joints. Our television is the Samsung Frame TV, our chairs are old and we had them recovered a few years ago,

I wanted to do something different in our primary bedroom. I kept getting drawn to the prints and patterns from Serena and Lily and ended up choosing the Kensington Stripe fabric in Grove/Coastal and Priano wallpaper in Grove for the bedroom and closet. All of our bedding is Pottery Barn, Boll & Branch, and Casaluna. Bed frame is Magnolia Home. Frames are Ikea. Nightstands are Ballard Designs. Lamps are from Homegoods and Ballard Designs. Future projects in here may include faux beams, art over the bed. Our closet is the Ikea Pax Closet System with custom finishes. If you're interested in the steps I took to create our closet, I have it saved in my Instagram Hightlights 'DIY Closet'.

For our primary bathroom, we kept it very neutral. Our finishes were all white, beige, natural wood and we went with a dark grout for contrast. Window shade is a woven shade from Select Blinds in Primrose color, rug is the Sarrah Hazel from Ruggable, The teak stool was a recent find at Homegoods.

Our front porch is 8ft deep and 38ft wide giving us two nice sized areas on either side of the front door. Bjorn made this custom twin bed sized sofa for ultimate afternoon naps, and the wicker chairs + black coffee table + rug are from Greenfront Furniture. Side console table is from Wayfair, and porch floor and ceiling are stained Behr semi-transparent stain in 'Woodchip'. Our Hardee Plank color is 'Arctic White'. We are still working on completing the other side of the porch, which will likely include some rockers. Also, we have these solar lights all around the perimeter of our porch and they are amazing!

Our latest project was our guest bathroom. We were lucky to find a great contractor to complete this for us in under two weeks. Bead board color is Accessible Beige by Sherwin Williams and wall color is Westhighland White by Sherwin Williams. Vanity and medicine cabinet were sourced from Wayfair, all tile was sourced from Lowes. I think one day we will install a glass door in this shower but for now we just hung an 8' shower curtain. Still looking for art to hang in here!

I'm already thinking about future projects which include the office, laundry/mud room, powder room wallpaper, and of course our outdoor garden space!

Inspiration for Bjorn's Office includes dark bookcases, neutral upholstered armchair with wood and leather accents.

Our mudroom/laundry room currently has brick floors and white walls. I wanted to get used to this room as a dual purpose space before committing to any design choices. I plan to be strategic on what kind of storage will be in here since I need areas for laundry equipment but also kids shoes & bag storage. It is not a large room so will have to plan accordingly. This is the inspiration I keep going back to:

I want to give our simple powder room a PUNCH with some wallpaper, but I'm still browsing for samples. Will likely be equestrian theme (no surprise there!):