Summer Tour of Homes 2015

I am so excited to be joining Gina’s Summer Tour of Homes series this year! Things kicked off yesterday with some absolutely stunning home tours, I was so inspired by all of the ladies that shared yesterday, and cannot wait to sit back and enjoy seeing the rest of the tours this week.

Today we are kicking off Day 2, In My Own Style finished things off yesterday. I was floored to find out her beautiful peonies in her foyer were faux from Crate & Barrel. I loved her tip of adding water to the vase to make them look more real, I was totally convinced, and such a great tip! If you are visiting today for the first time, I am SO excited you’re here. My husband and I live in a renovated 1846 Farmhouse near the New England coast, where we are raising our two small children. We have been putting our mark on our house over the past 4 years, with our relaxed farmhouse style and love for historic New England charm. It’s totally influenced by our surroundings and love for the beach. You’ll find a little bit of everything. Some modern country (or I’m told “clean country” is the new term?!), some cottage, some beachy, a little vintage, and some of our own personal made pieces. So come on in!If you have been here before, and especially are a regular reader, than you know how this neutral loving girl loves her white! (Can I get an Amen?!) However one of the best parts about having a mostly neutral home, is I can add color whenever I feel like it. These beautiful buffalo check pillows are from Caitlin Wilson Textiles, and they were the perfect shade of navy to freshen things up in our living space. The navy and white together pull on my heart strings for anything that is nautical, so it was a match made in heaven, but you know of course I couldn’t completely leave out my gray. The fun print of their grey silhouette pillow was so crisp and summery to me, it was fun adding a bold pattern in a subtle way. The show stopper of course I think you will see are these gorgeous deep violet lilacs I spread throughout our house. My neighbor so kindly let me come over and pick to my hearts content. My husband thought I took her whole tree down, but I hardly made a dent. It was so much fun Growing up my grandmother had two large lilac trees at her house, and I have such fond memories as a kid, laying under those trees in the warm sun smelling their sweet fragrance. 

I added some fun details, like tying this nautical rope (found at Micheals) around our curtains to add some texture. On our coffee table I found this white washed driftwood garland at HomeGoods and tucked in a basket I recently got at Target for $1.74. I loved the crisp white band around the top so much, and could not pass up the price.I recently shared our front staircase gallery wall, however since then I re-did the gallery wall around our tv! Nothing is safe or permanent in this house. I think that’s been the most fun to see how we’ve changed things over the past 4 years. I’m always tweaking, so knowing I have the freedom to move things on a whim makes it fun and exciting to change things up.

My hubby got me the large round copper hanging art you see to the right of the tv. I loved it so much I re-worked everything on the wall to fit it in. I still have yet to fill all the frames (pay no attention to that), but sometimes just getting the right frame in the right spot is more of a big deal. I can always put a photo in it, but having the right frame or arrangement in a gallery wall is key to how it flows. *You can see here where we debuted the printers cabinet tv unit, including stain and hardware choices.*Our living room and dining room have more of an open concept. They flow together as one long space, separated by half walls with white columns. On the living room side we added shelves for built ins. And we will get to the dining room in just a bit

On the opposite side of the living room we have a pair of white slip covered chairs, part of the Ektorp line from Ikea. We’ve had them for years, including our sofa, and I just recently shared in our Spring Home Tour how I finally replaced a dying blue and white striped chair cover to now having them all white. It makes our living room feel so much larger and brighter, and of course I love having the all white!

Above you are looking into our living room from our dining room. Below if you turned around you’d see the rest of our dining room. I painted the panel of what was once a play room door, which is now sloooooooowly turing into my office door (seriously feels like the never ending process) with chalkboard paint years ago, and I’m still so glad I did. In old houses you have so many awkward walls, or random doors (we have them everywhere), and nooks and crannies, and part of making the house ours has been learning how to disguise parts of the house that awkwardly stuck out at one point, or showed the age of the house. My husband always gets scared when he sees me looking at one spot in our house for too long. He always says “What?!, What are you thinking now. You scare me when you look that way at something for too long”. He knows Project wheels are always turning.

* You can click here to see how I transformed our dresser/buffet in our dining room to get this lighter gray washed look.*

Right to the left of that dresser is a doorway which leads into our kitchen. One the opposite side of that wall, to disguise yet another awkward wall, I prefer to go with the term “highlight”, I highlighted this wall with a DIY chalkboard treatment. I wanted something that wasn’t the traditional black chalkboard paint (even though I love those), I wanted my kitchen to feel light and airy. So I mixed paint colors I had on hand to come up with this custom color, but you can read all about that here.

The open shelves below where another attempt to “highlight” an awkward kitchen layout from feeling to cabinet heavy on one side of the room. These open shelves made with corbels from Home Depot and wood shelves from Ikea balanced out the feel of our kitchen, while also letting me display all my favorite dishes and serving pieces.

I’m so glad you were here! If you’re new around here and want to see more, or something caught your eye and you want to know where it’s from, check out some of these detailed posts where I share lots of sources.

Living Room Sources

Dining Room Sources

Kitchen Sources

Next up on the tour is East Egg Style, and you will want to be sure and stop by her charming home!

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