Since at least two or three of you were so kind as to humor me when I offered to give a little house tour of a house we no longer live in, I am here to oblige with lots of photos. (One such reader, dear Clarice, is the one who called it our Okla home, which made me feel a little bit like I wasted the last three years of my life not referring to our house that way…)
One of the advantages to moving often is that it forces you to commit to things, homemaking-wise, faster than you otherwise would. (At least if, like me, you're a sort of overthinking, commitment-phobic, perfectionist type with a limited budget.) You have to move in quickly so you have time to live before you start moving out again.
An advantage to the actual moving is that it forces you to declare things done, homemaking-wise (ready or not!).
And if you're selling your house, you even have pictures to prove it. (Which is good if you keep promising After photos without delivering.)
So here, at last, is a tour of the house we just left in Oklahoma — or at least the start of it, because who can do a house tour in only one post? Not me.
You've seen most of it before in pictures here and there, but never in any sort of systematic way. But I figure that I always appreciate poking my nose around someone else's home (even just virtually), so I'll assume that you won't mind looking at mine, even if we don't live there anymore.
Since these photos are mostly from our real estate listing, I'll try to point out when they don't correspond to how we actually lived our life there (spoiler: any clear horizontal surface is a LIE!) and supplement with a few others and link up to past posts so you can see it in all its ordinary glory as well.
We took the listing photos ourselves, since we were not in one of those hopping housing markets where house staging consultants and professional photographers are the norm. I was pretty sure my husband and I could do a better job than your average realtor with a point-and-shoot (not that our realtor wasn't great, because she was!), if only because I was willing to take pictures over the course of several days so I didn't have to have all the rooms ready at once.
We took the photos before our garden was looking its best, but it was much more colorful by the time we were showing the house. But, you may recall, there was a water feature here when we moved in (look at the last pic on that post for the best shot of it), which was not our thing for many reasons. So we ripped it out and used the millions of landscaping stones to line the path to the front door and, eventually, to make a sort of rock garden there by the door.
I don't consider myself any sort of expert in the gardening department, and goodness knows the clay and the heat and the droughts and the flooding weren't on my side, but I was pretty pleased with it by the end.
When you go in through the front door, you're in the main living area, which is very open:
(All the “before” photos are from the old listing when we bought the house. So obviously, the furnishings don't belong to us.)
BEFORE:
Painting all this space and the kitchen were the two big projects we tackled as soon as we moved in, and you may recall that we ended up hiring some guys to paint all the walls and woodwork — and some of the ceilings, too. It was a huge job! (More on this project here.)
Totally worth it, though. I remember seeing all that brown trim and the yellow and blue walls in the photos on Zillow, and thinking, “if we just paint it all white…”
This is basically what I imagined it would look like.
AFTER:
You can see our little oratory tray there on the homemade bookshelves. That trunk has been used as a coffee table by three generations of our family at this point. The green sofa is a hand-me-down we inherited from Nick and Natasha when they moved to Hong Kong, and the brown leather one is from the as-is section at Ikea (I don't think they have this particular one anymore). It used to be held up by a stack of magazines, but now we're really classy folks who have sofas that stand up on their own four legs.
I never got the curtains hung up in here. Fail.
That blue chair bounced back and forth between the living room when we had guests and a few feet over in the eat-in-kitchen area, so Capt P could sit and keep me company while I made dinner. And in reality, we do also keep toys in our living room, and it more often actually looked like this:
We always sort of wished we had a bigger rug for this room, but having that stretch of hard floor between my desk and the rug made it so there was plenty of room for the kids to spread out and play. The big Legos lived in that basket with the lid under the window, the baby toys got tossed into the basket by the fireplace, and the trains all fit into that very glamorous plastic bin (complete with lid held together by packing tape!), which tucked under my desk.
So it did all tidy up nicely, when it was tidy.
This little corner between the bookshelves and the bar counter is where we kept our current picture books (in the bin on the left), board books (right), and wooden blocks (Nora's chosen seat). I find that my children are well nigh incapable of putting books back neatly on a shelf, but they can tidy them into these wooden bins pretty well.
This setup had the added bonus of cutting off easy access to the corner under the bar counter, which was just high enough so that kids wouldn't really see it, but low enough so that they'd smack themselves in the forehead if they tried to casually walk under it. Ouch.
Ok, on to the dining room, which you can see over the green sofa's shoulder up there. The one with the huge windows.
BEFORE:
AFTER:
Goodness, did I love all that light. Our dining room table was a craigslist find in California that at this point has seen better days. If I weren't committed to finding a bigger table, one that wasn't an odd-sized square, I might be motivated to fix the wobbles and scratches, but the time has come to move on.
(Exciting development: we brought a new old dining room table down this summer from my in-law's barn, and Capt. P is refinishing it for us.)
We actually have six of those chairs, plus my trusty green high chair for the baby and two adjustable high chairs (affiliate link!) for the bigger kids. (We can talk about those more sometime if you want to, and it sort of kills me because I couldn't find them used anywhere nearby, so I had to stalk sales and stack coupons and they still each cost more than the rest of my dining room chairs combined. But twice now it's gotten to the point where I'm being driven crazy by a squirming child at every mealtime, and my husband tells me it's worth any price to keep our sanity, and I finally agree, and then they can reach the table and rest their feet and be strapped in, and our lives are so much better.)
But anyway, we moved all the extra chairs out of the room for the pictures. Normally the high chairs are all up at the table, and the extra “grown-up” chairs are against the wall. That's why the room looks so empty.
Ok, one more room before I wrap it up for today. This was the “bonus” room — the previous owners had it set up as a fourth bedroom:
BEFORE:
It was at the very front of the house — the very first door there just on your left as you came in through the front door. We called it the study, because of the big built-in bookshelves (cue angel choir) and Capt P's desk area in there. It's also where we kept our TV, but I declared that I didn't want to call it “the TV room,” so study it was.
(We do have a TV — a rather nice, big one, actually, because my husband is the kind of person who cares about electronics and we like to watch movies and baseball and things like that. But we don't like having a big TV right in the middle of everything, and we especially don't like it to be the first thing you see when you walk in the door. With our very open floor plan, this solution worked very well for us.)
This is the last room we tackled before we moved — it was really awful. I shared a few “before” photos in this post (and if you're at all tempted while seeing all these photos to think I have my act together, you should really click on that link…) but never got to the afters:
AFTER:
The curtains are the ones I had always intended to hang up in the living room, but I think I had miscounted when I was buying curtain rods at Ikea, and ended up short. So they never went up there, but by the time I was dealing with this room, I no longer had these curtains mentally earmarked for another room, so up they went, thank goodness.
The sofa and desk were both Capt. P's from before we got married (the sofa is from Ikea, and I did get a new slipcover for it at one point) — oh, and there's one of the other dining room chairs at his desk! The rug is a nice indoor-outdoor one from Target that we got to replace the one Nora spilled the can of paint on while we were painting the bookshelves.
(I was actually super happy about this, because I hated that old rug, and there were lots of things in that room — including Nora herself — that I did not want paint spilled all over!)
I know everyone always says that they wish they didn't wait until moving to make their house look nice, and this is the room that I do really wish we had tackled earlier, not that I'm sure I know when we would have done it. (Actually, when we hired the painters on first moving in, this room and the laundry room were supposed to be part of the job, but when it took them much longer than expected, we sacrificed these last few areas in order to have our home restored to us. So it's not my fault after all!)
But it's a room that we used all the time, and the paint (and the new rug — thanks, Nora!) made such a big difference. Next time! Next time.
Ok, I'm signing off for now, but next time I'll show you my kitchen (ooh!) and laundry room (aah!). If it's possible that you still have questions about anything after this long post, go ahead and ask away in the comments — obviously, I am happy to chit-chat about homemaking things for days!
diane says
The white that you used on the walls is such a lovely, soft white – do you remember what paint company and what color number it was? No biggie if you don’t.
Rosie says
Thanks, Diane – I cleverly put it in a blog post so I could find it again. 🙂 The walls are Sherwin Williams Crème — SW7556, with Benjamin Moore Chantilly Lace — OC-65 for the trim.
Leila says
If you are on our mailing list, refresh your page — Rosie added more pictures!!
Michele says
Thank you for such an amazing post! My two favorite parts are: 1) the before and after living room (prior owners before). What a beautiful change! I love your style; and 2) the idea that Capt. P’s chair moves from living room to kitchen. Fabulous! I’ve always had an extreme fondness for an old house we owned that had two comfy chairs in the kitchen. They were always filled and made cooking such a special time of day. Instead of — you know — a demented time of day. I love that Capt. P’s chair does double duty.
Rosie says
Thank you, Michele! Of course, in an ideal world, I’d probably just have two chairs! But that was asking too much of the furniture gods, it seems. 🙂
Kim F. says
Wow, I love yellow and blue and probably would have been too lazy to paint all that. But what a transformation! Your house was so welcoming and cozy, even with all those high ceilings. I wish I could work magic like that! It just goes to show you that any house can be made a home, and without spending a fortune. Can’t wait to see the rest of the house. God Bless!
Claire says
Attractive, comfortable, and functional — what a great job you did! Love it. (And oh, those windows!)
You absolutely did the right thing re: hiring out the painting. We once bought a house casually figuring we’d paint the woodwork — and, holy moley. What an endless — *endless* I tell you — job.
So, lesson learned: if it’s a big job, and I can possibly shoehorn it into the budget: painters. They are magical!
Melissa D says
One thing about living in NC is that you are so close to all the furniture makers there that you can find beautiful furniture really fast and inexpensively. We have some lovely pieces that we bought (gulp) new, but if I could do it all over again, I’d spend my time in thrift shops and look on Craigslist — the quality of used in NC, and especially near Hickory, is superb.
Love your erstwhile house, especially all the white!
Cristina says
“You have to move in quickly so you have time to live before you start moving out again.” You’ve summed up my life exactly. We just found out we have another year at this duty station and I don’t quite know what to do with myself. I haven’t lived in the same house for four years straight since I was eleven 😬
Maryanne says
This post makes me laugh– I’ve noticed your high chairs in previous posts (because I’d love one but can’t find one used, anywhere!) and thought, “no way did she buy those!” Thanks for the info on the knock-offs. I had no idea it existed. How old was your oldest before he outgrew it?
Rosie says
He hasn’t yet! He’s sitting in a regular chair at meals only because the straps on the green high chair aren’t, ahem, robust enough to contain my little escape artist Nora. So he got booted, despite his protests, because I couldn’t handle buying a third chair (my husband’s solution). But they’re strong enough to hold an adult, and adjustable enough to last a long time.
Maryanne says
Thanks! I am going to think about it. Our youngest is 2, but a peanut at 27lbs. So we can get a few years out of it. Our floor is a mess after every meal and I’d love to not have to sweep every single time a meal or snack is served. Anything to get her closer to the table. I have stalked my FB groups, CL and consignment shops looking for one of those T-T. brand chairs. Good luck in your new home!
Christine says
Thanks the the tip, Rosie! My little one was born just a week before your Nora and she is doing the same thing! It is driving me crazy how she squirms and stands up and changes her seating preferences every day. Wooden high chair! Travel high chair! Bench! I don’t want to be a permissive parent in following her wants but I just want her to eat with us for 15 minutes. Maybe this chair would be worth the price…. Any other advice? In case you hadn’t guessed, this is my first child :-). Also, I just love your calm, cozy home! I can’t wait to see what you do next!
Julie says
What fun chairs! I’ve periodically threatened to buy assorted belts at the thrift store to buckle children in at the table.
Margaret says
What’s it like going to a modern home after the house you grew up in? I’ve always lived in old places with lots of character, and couldn’t imagine anything else, but I know there are areas of the country where that simply isn’t available.
Rosie says
It is definitely different! I miss the character, but in that area, there’s really not much in the way of homes that are actually old and charming, and the ones that do exist are, sadly, not in very good neighborhoods. It cracked us up, actually, because all the workmen and utility guys who came to help out would talk about the quirks of “these old houses,” and we were like, “um, it was built in 1994.”
Katherine says
For some reason, the “miscounted curtains rods in Ikea” struck me as really, really funny.
I don’t know why more people don’t use white paint. When I’m looking at house listings, I often can’t get past the red, teal, orange (whatever bold color) painted rooms to make a good decision about the house. We bought our current house despite the green dinning room because we were renting the house when the owners decided to sell it to us (so the green wasn’t technically “ours” for awhile). One of the very first things I did – before the ink on the escrow papers was dry – was paint the dining room white.
Rosie says
I know the curtain rod thing was ridiculous. But I had committed, and ikea was 3 hours away (we went once on a trip to Dallas), and once I had committed, they all matched, so I couldn’t just use different ones… I’m hopeless.
Kelsey says
Thank you for this! Your living room toy storage has given me some ideas for my own living room – which also is the first room you enter upon walking through the front door and has an open feeling. Although – it’s way smaller! Our whole house is 870 sq. ft. 🙂 It’s a little nuts.
Also, I applaud you for leaving your little oratory intact for the listing photos. I always feel weird about the advice to remove all religious art and family photos from the house when staging. I know I really appreciated those personal touches when my husband and I were looking at houses. It showed me that real life happened and real people lived there!
Lorelei C Friedl says
Where did you get the wooden book boxes? I have some of those cloth boxes for ours; but they aren’t holding up very well, especially since the 15 month old decided he liked to sit on them and read!
Rosie says
I got them at Joann’s – you can usually find them at craft stores in the unfinished wood section. With a coupon, they’re under $10, I think, and sturdy! (My kids climb on them all the time…)
Lorelei C Friedl says
Awesomesauce! Thank you!
Erin says
Yes, thank you, I had the same question.
Caitlin says
Love the study right off the front door! I want our next home to have an office just there… So the important papers might actually make it to the desk where they belong! We had our previous office upstairs, which was just about useless. And I like having a tv in another room… Available, but not in the middle of things. Perfect.
I am not at all a “paint it all white” kind of gal but it looks lovely the way you did it! That is a nice warm white and it shows off your warm woods and lovely textiles so beautifully!
Shannon says
Oh my goodness it’s lovely! I bet the new owners were so pleased! Hoping for a good out of your new home too!
Cecilia says
Lovely! Your decorating style is so inspiring, very organic, thoughtful, with bright, yet rich colors. I actually really like the front of your house and the layout seems to work. We just moved to the Dallas area and we are looking to buy our first home, exciting! The houses here look a lot like yours, which I’ve grown to like. Our realtor keeps bringing up the possibility of building our own home, which is tempting, but I keep telling him, trees! Trees take 20 or 30 years to grown!
Anyway, I really like that your house is one story, and I’d love to hear your opinion on one story vs. two story. I’d really prefer one story, we have three daughters 4, 2 and 6 months, and I’m just not sure stairs would be the best… We used to live on the second story in an apartment before we moved here, and I remember… stairs and pregnancy are not good friends. I’d like a good size back yard too though, and it seems the chances of that are better with two story houses. Any thoughts? Would it be worthwhile to keep looking?
Rosie says
Thank you for the kind words! I’m with you – trees are so important. Almost everyone else we knew around there lived in new construction, and would come to our established neighborhood and ooh and aah at the fact that we had trees! Between that and the big windows, our house was pretty unusual for the area. I was very happy to have found it. It’s not what I grew up with, but I have grown to like the one story layout (our new house doesn’t have stairs, either.) And it definitely does eliminate the whole baby-stair element. But I don’t think I’d rule out stairs entirely – having the bedrooms upstairs is not the same as having to lug your groceries up to a second floor apartment every day – that is rough!
Amy says
Thanks for sharing, I loved peaking inside your old house. It gave me some ideas and inspiration for our home. I especially like your toddler/preschool chairs, and I’m hoping our next home has an extra room for a tv/entertainment room. My husband is a pastor and we move frequently. Our next move will probably be in 1-2 years, so I’m trying to start thinking ahead on how to approach/get ready for it…we have more kids now and older kids and lots more stuff than the first few times. 😉 Also, when we move into a new home, the ways we start to do things will be the way we continue to do things, like the basic placement of things, flow of traffic, even where I designate dirty laundry for the first week or so, it easily becomes habit. Do you find this happening to you too as you move? Do you think these things through before you move?
Rosie says
Oh yes, definitely. No matter how much I try to imagine things and think through the layout, I need to actually push the furniture around (and usually lug it back again) before I can tell whether it will work or not. If it doesn’t, you have to fight the inertia and try again! I always end up switching entire rooms back and forth. (Thankfully, my husband is always patient and helps me move furniture multiple times without hardly raising an eyebrow at my inefficient ways.)
Kathy says
The couch in your study looks a lot like ours, which was also a pre-marriage acquisition (to be more accurate, it was dorm room furniture. In the common room for 6 guys. And it was acquired from some seniors after graduation, so we don’t even know about its life before that.) I would love to find a new slipcover, but I’ve had difficulties since I think that Ikea discontinued our particular one.
Rosie says
Maybe you’ve already tried this route, but I actually found mine on eBay, where there were more options than at the store, for whatever reason. (They do still sell that one – ektorp.)
Melissa says
Thank you for the tour. I can’t wait to see the rest!
We moved into our current home 15 years ago and don’t plan to move anytime soon.
Watching the transformation, though, makes me want to pretend I just moved in and make some changes. Many changes.
Rosie says
Haha… or pretend you’re moving out, and need to take pictures for the listing! It makes you realize how many little things you can *quickly* do to make a room look much better!