This is a tour of our lived in home. I have four kids all under the age of ten. Everything you see is real life. I try to cleanup when I can, but as you can see, I have lots of baskets and organizational decor that allows me to hide the mess.
I love finding new products with a modern farmhouse style for our home! It is kind of an obsession really. As you tour my home, you'll find the exact products I love and can purchase them directly below.
Typical Surburban Home
We live in a suburb of about 8,000 people within the Kansas City proper area. Our home is a typical surburban home that had one owner before us. We purchased it in 2012 on my husband's birthday! It was a short sale that took forever to close. We lived in an apartment for the 8 months that it took to close on this house. We purchased it at listing price without any contingencies.
It's a two-story home nestled on a 3/4 acre lot in a small suburb a few minutes east of Kansas City. Since then, I've consistently added to my husband's "honey do list" for our home.
Together, we've done some amazing transformations to our home to make it OURS. We've conceded that it will always be a work in progress, especially with four kids and my love of neutral and whites that get stained from muddy hands and markers. We hope you love our home as much as we do - and hope our tips and tricks help YOU on your renovations. It's always a work in progress and will never be done.
Outdoor Landscaping
We've redone our landscaping over the years. At first, we had no idea what we were doing, and had planted annuals, and realized that it wasn't the smartest of moves.
As we became wiser homeowners, we've invested in evergreens and more perennials so that we didn't have to continue maintaining the landscaping year over year. We absolutely love hostas, junipers, lillies, and any easy to care for perennials.
I do plan on ordering two tree peonies that stay 2 feet in height and width to be grown in the back near our patio. Again, those come up year after year, so it will be just more low maintenance with a ton of blooms.
Front Door
I absolutely love welcoming guests into my home. I hate to admit it, but I definitely do not have a green thumb. Many of the foliage you see here are faux plants, and they do well in all weather! I've also posted about some of my favorite neutral farmhouse pots and planters that I absolutely love.
Foyer and Entry Way
I change up this space quite a bit. For example, I've hung gallery walls before with clocks and knick knacks. Now, I just love the simple black and white photos of my family in this space. It brings me so much joy! These gold picture frames are simply the best. The baskets are where the kids drop their backpacks and jackets at the end of the day, no need to hang it up!
Also, as you can see, the trim is a tan khaki color, which I have grown to absolutely love.
Living Room
This living room has transformed quite a bit. We've been in our home for a decade now. These two story curtains have actually been changed out over the years from a tan color to now white linen that I purchased and had someone custom make, and it definitely makes a huge difference in what the room looks like.
I'll be honest about the mirror - I spent over $500 and didn't even measure to see if the mirror would fit the indent (thankfully it did).
The space is this gorgeous, cream paint color by Benjamin Moore.
This is the television space. I wasn't going to pretend like we didn't have a TV in this space, because we definitely do. We did mount the television to ensure that we could hide the cables. I also wanted an oversized television console. This thing was custom made and weighs over 300 pounds. It's kind of ridiculous.
I've written about my love of slipcover sofas, especially having white sofas with kids in the house. I've also shared my favorite tips for hacking a Pottery Barn sofa slipcover with an Ikea $30 Ektorp slipcover.
This piece below was a dresser that we lopped off the top to make it shorter into a buffet. Check out the transformation of this piece in the dresser transformation into buffet sideboard. We also DIY this wall clock as well and also did a version where it had a distressed and weathered paint edit.
The kids generally chuck all of their electronics on this buffet at the end of the night into the basket to charge.
Here's a bird's eye view of the space:
Family Room / Loft Space
We did a TON of work in this space. When we first moved in, I was a family photographer that had clients come up to this loft space for photos. You can see the before and after family room makeover. We DIY the hardwood floors on the second floor of our home and I feel like it brought new life to our space.
I also did an inexpensive engineer sticker print for our family photos that was backed up by styrofoam. This was the first time I was able to layer two rugs together, and I absolutely love how it turned out.
Kitchen Nook
When our family just had two kids, this space with this banquette seating was perfect and cozy for dinner. We definitely did not let our kids sit on the banquette seating, so we had high chairs around the table. As our family grew, we had to upgrade the table and the chairs. While I do miss them being little, I do not miss the high chair cleanup phase!
This is what our dining space looks like now. I rarely put anything in the middle of the table because who has time to move decor for dinner?! Definitely not this momma.
I love mix and matching the chairs because it gives the space more interest.
I love having the chairs mix and match. This set and this set are the ones that I got. The kids do not get to sit on this set because it's made out of fabric.
This is a curio cabinet. As you can see, I have our modem on top and a home server on bottom. Can you see how we removed the glass so the server can breathe? This curio cabinet has allowed me to display some decor at the top, and some of the ugly stuff on bottom.
Playroom Transformation
When my kids were really little, I transformed the small room in front of my house into a playroom. The former owners actually had this room as a dining room table, which I did not even understand. This space I believe was actually meant to be an office because it didn't have a closet. Anyway, the first iteration of this space turned into a beautiful playroom for our kids. You can check out the transformation into the playroom for more details on the decals I used as well as how we painted the chalkpaint walls below.
Loft Space
Within our loft space, there was a stair ledge that led into a small cute space. It's almost like a bonus room. This room has transformed from my office to playroom to craft space and then back to playroom. What I realized about a room without lighting was that I could not work in the room all day. Not having natural light drove me crazy.
However, having this space be a place for my kids was awesome. It hides the mess up stairs. In addition, created inexpensive DIY shaker style fronts for an inexpensive Ikea Sektion cabinet frame, allowing me to hide all of the crafting gear upstairs. You can see how I organize the toy room with baskets and storage bins.
Office
I absolutely LOVE my office. I will say, I crammed a ton of furniture in here. I know it's not the most designer approved space. But I spend a lot of time in this room. It's where I work my corporate day job, where I blog, and where I spend time actually crafting and doing fun projects. You can check out my YouTube video tour of my office/craft space.
Guest Bathroom
Our guest bathroom is very simple. We painted the walls with a chair rail in order to bring more dimension to the walls. If you look closely, we stenciled a morracan pattern on the wall. We painted it matte and then painted over it with a semi-gloss paint with the pattern.
Basement Studio
I've had my husband makeover part of our basement. Our basement is absolutely huge, and I wanted to use some of the space to create a Creator's Studio which would allow me to projects, YouTube Videos, and even photo sessions when I was a family photographer. While this room definitely is not up to code (no insulation in walls), we were able to complete it inexpensively under $3,000. The floors are epoxied, the exposed basement ceiling painted white to brighten up the space, and we made DIY barn doors for the closet space.
These barn doors turned out beautifully, and we matched the tan trim that we had upstairs.
I also use this space for storage for home decor that I don't use upstairs in our living space. I love having it out in the open so I can see what I have.
Basement Storage
One year, we did a massive purge and started labeling things in our basement. We watched Marie Kondo, then started asking whether things brought us joy.
We are now in a place where the things we have stored are things we'll use one day or have sentimental value. When I want to do another purge, I generally will watch 1-2 episodes of Hoarders to get me motivated.
For this basement makeover, we made sure that we had the same storage containers and made labels all on the same day and saved the template. It's worked out beautifully.
Master Bedroom
I have tried to make our master bedroom our sanctuary. I absolutely LOVE our bedroom with all the neutral colors in it. We've recently Upgraded some things in the space because we were suffering from a bit of insomnia. Let me tell you, sheets definitely make or break the bed. I've listed all of my favorite things from this space down below.
We've moved the beds several times, but I think against the blank wall is where it will stay now. We've added sconce lighting without electricity our power, and it's been a game changer.
Little Girl's Deep Pink Mauve Room
I absolutely love this little nursery that we had for our girls. This room is unique in that there are two ceiling slopes, so it's hard to design around. I think we did a pretty good job. We used a deep pink mauve color that I absolutely fell in love with. You can check out this pink and gold nursey reveal.
Bedroom for Two Sisters
I absolutely adore this room that we made over for our older two girls. This was the first time we painted an accent wall. Painting horizontal on a wall actually was a little easier than we thought it was going to be (check out the post for tips on making the lines crisp). I love the lavender and purple hues from this space.
Rustic Little Boy's Bedroom
This room has also transformed from a bonus room that we turned into a photography studio. Here's what Conrad's nursery looked like before:
I absolutely love how the space turned out, especially with the light blue paitn color.
I had put a chandelier in here before I realized that my third child would be a boy. As you can see, this space has transformed a lot. Now that my son is six, the room now has a desk, full-size bed, and Legos everywhere!
Before he was born, we did some projects, like this rustic wall art collage with a white paint pen as well as this wooden arrow growth chart.
Like I said, it's super messy because we are in a lived in home 🙂
Back Patio
Our back patio has had a ton of edits in the last decade. When we purchased the house, it had a screen in space as you can see below. While not having bugs is great, it just seemed like the space felt cramp. In addition, the screen made it hard to sweep.
We removed the screen walls and doors and opened up the space. We love it way more now and it just makes the space look bigger.
I love our dining set. I work from home, so often in the morning you'll see me starting my day here. I sit in that seat with the black pillow, have my laptop in front of me, and I stare out into the hill that is my backyard. Note: that is a raised tiered garden that we embedded a sprinkler in order to water the garden.
Our Home Buying Journey
I documented our home buying journey below if you wanted to follow along. The buying process was pretty fun, but it was hard trying to align with my husband on what we really wanted in a house.
- Selling Our First Home (aka Garage)
- House Hunting While Pregnant
- From Living in a "Garage" to Living in the Suburbs
- Our Home Sweet Home: Moving In
You can also check out my list on how to get your house ready to sell so that you can get the most value during the sales process.
Other Home Tour Posts You Might Like
If you loved this post, check out some of the other links below
Foyer
Living Room
- Buying Furniture at 30
- Two Story Curtains and Mantel Decor
- Mounting a Television
- How to Choose the Right Size Area Rug for Your Living Room
Kitchen and Dining Room
- Kitchen Stool Purchase
- Living Room Television Mount
- Dreaming of a Kitchen Banquette
- Best Spice Storage Rack System Ever
- The Story on our Kitchen Counter Stools
Playroom
Bedrooms
Bathrooms
Basement/Garage
Outdoors Space
- First Year Gardening
- Gardening on a Hill (with an embedded watering system)
- Our Lawn (before and after)
And that's the end of the tour. I hope you enjoyed our typical, average surburban home.