House Tour #3, Part 1: Our Living Room

I'm so happy to finally be able to share with you the rest of our new(ish) home after four months of feeling out the space, finding everything a home, donating, thrifting, and filling in the gaps with DIY. You can see the kids' room here. Our space will probably change again within a year since we're a military family now so it was important to make it feel like home as soon as I could rather than seeing this as a temporary place that wasn't worth the effort.

I don't want to bore you with every detail of every corner or the fact that I have a story about almost every single item in our home so I'll share the majors and if you have any specific questions I'll try to answer them in the comments below.

We live in an older house with lovely hardwood floors, plaster walls, two bedrooms, one bath, a large studio, and an unfinished basement. The exterior doesn't have much of a style but the inside has enough charm to suit us. We have always been renters so I've learned to decorate standard off-white walls with plenty of color in our textiles and furniture. We both love the character of vintage and have a collection of mid-century and industrial pieces that I've gathered in the last three or four years.

All of our furniture (except our bed) and most of our art/accessories/kitchenware/linens have been found at a flea market, garage sale, thrift store, by the side of the road, or handed down. We happen to have landed in a city full of affordable vintage which has made it so fun to gather together a whole household full of second-hand that we truly love.

Almost everything we had from the last house was purchased after we'd moved in and with that specific house in mind. Most of it works in this space but the biggest change is having a combined living/dining area. In our last house the formal dining room was quite large and doubled as my studio. We ate from the table as a family whenever it wasn't covered in fabric or paint, which was most of the time, and there were always projects stacked along the walls.

We sold our lovely vintage Lane coffee table and the two matching end tables from our last home tour to have more room for baby gear when Ruby was born. There are days when I'd love to have something to set my coffee on but I love that our kids have plenty of space to chase each other through the living room now. It's been one 'must have' that I've been happy to give up as our needs have changed but I may hunt something similar down in a few years.

The yellow chairs used to belong to my friend, Janae, who purchased them from Funtiques, a fantastically curated vintage shop on Commercial St. here in Springfield. I had always admired them at Janae's house so when I saw these on Craigslist I e-mailed to ask if they were hers. I just knew they'd be snatched up right away but decided if they were still available after a week I'd buy them. Long story short, Janae sold them to me and even hauled them over to my house and I've never regretted replacing our previous set.

That mirror above the dining table was found for $5 at a garage sale in our old neighborhood, the table was $40 on craigslist, and the vinyl tablecloth was $2 at a local flea market. I can remember what I paid and where I got almost every thing in this house and have always wanted to tally it up. It's amazing that I have all of that filed away but forgot to put the trash out today.

The large metal wardrobe was a craigslist find that I almost passed up. We have lovely friends who always, always let us borrow their truck to haul big things home and I was able to load that up for $15. Two weeks later I had sanded and painted it pink. I'm now ready to tone things down and may repaint it minty blue or dark gray in the coming months but pink was fun for awhile. It houses all of our Christmas decorations and random items I change out seasonally.

The orange chair is from Urban Flea Market (Charley's) and will someday be reupholstered. I covered the stool with new foam and some inexpensive fabric. It doubles as a launching pad. The crooked globe almost didn't fit into the back of Elsie's Prius on a thrifting excursion and the chalkboard was made from a piece of pre-cut plywood and chalkboard paint.

This wall is my favorite. It was one of the last to get decorated because I didn't know what to fill it with. I didn't want to recreate the same art wall from our last house but didn't have anything else on hand that felt right. One day I was at Urban (Charley's) and spied white plastic letters strewn down an aisle. After finding enough to spell something relevant, I brought them home. I decided to leave them white rather than spray painting them to let their impact be a little more subtle.

My third grade teacher, Mrs. Kirschner, regularly told us that 'nice' was a lazy word. She wanted us to become more creative in our selection of descriptive words rather than using the popular fallback. That lesson has encouraged my writing to this day and often comes to mind when I have a choice between sharing something generic or something colorful. It's also funny to get the same reaction from every person that walks in the door and turns around to see it. You can imagine their tone when they say, "Nice!"

I originally had this shelf in the kids' shared room in the last house but it was begging to be added to the party under the sign in this house. The vintage wallpaper is a 'nice' compliment to the golden tones of the chair and throw on either side. I've currently replaced the yellow bud vase with a larger arrangement of something from the fence line in our backyard and the pink blossoms are gorgeous.

This little corner is tucked away between the sideboard that houses our entertainment set up and my new favorite vintage chair. The crates used to be in the bathroom but are just the right size to corral some of my favorite art and diy books. I attached the metallic trays above them with 3M strips and have some polaroids from the old house on display with magnetic clips.

I didn't share a photo of the vintage Broyhill sideboard with our flat screen because the whole set up isn't really that aesthetically thrilling. We use a flat screen as a monitor and have an external hard drive, mac mini, speaker, wireless keyboard and wireless mouse to watch movies and tv online and to use as a second computer. The sideboard was a craigslist find that was going to be burned if we hadn't brought it home. It's one of my favorite pieces in our house.

When decorating this new space I didn't want to fall back on old arrangements and ideas from the last house because it felt like an opportunity to play and try new things. I always want our home to be warm and welcoming but I love that it can have a sense of humor, too. Having our home reflect who we are and be somewhere we enjoy spending LOTS of time is important to us and we're thankful not only for this space but for the friends and family that we're able to share it with.

I'll be sharing our kitchen next and then our bedroom so stay tuned for parts two and three!

xoxo,
Rachel

Resources
Couch, Craigslist. Curtains, handmade from Urban Outfitters bedspread. Record Player, Urban Outfitters. Lampshade, Target. Scooter pillow, blog giveaway. Vintage wallpaper, CraftVintage, Art, MaryKateMcDevitt, and LifeLovePaper. Cross-stitch, handmade by me.