“This isn’t just our house, it’s our home, I always want to love where we live.”

When you move from a home you loved into a new house it’ a house, and just a house for a while, or at least that was our experience. There is something that drew you to this particular house enough to want to live here, but the shock of settling in makes it a little bit tough to see, or remember, what that was. All that you see at first is someone else’s house, someone else’s rooms, someone else’s stories and it’s so hard to feel at ease, at home. As we slowly chip away at some of the projects we dreamed up when we bought this new house, we are starting to make this house our home.

Let’s be honest for a second, doing renovations (even small projects like painting or backyard refreshes) are a whole new ball game with two little children. So, we’ve learned over the last few months that it’s ok to take our time; Rome wasn’t built in a day, and that it’s also ok to switch things up a few times before they feel right. As we started to take on the various projects we had in mind for making this house feel like our home, we quickly learned to go with the flow and be open about trying different things, especially when it came to design styles and room arrangements. We even bought specific items for one room that happened to work a lot better in a completely different room. We’ve also learned that loving the items we have in our home is important, so picking things that make us happy, suit our ever-evolving lives and bring life to the space is more important that just filling it up the spot because we think we need to.

There are two spaces in the house, ok I’m ready to call it our home now, our home, that we spend the majority of our “awake” time in; the dining section of our kitchen (also known as the solarium) and our living room. Both spaces are unique in the sense that you can kind of play around with furniture placement and the spaces themselves do not dictate what you should do with them, leaving lots of room for the imagination. In other words, I’ve moved the furniture around in these rooms enough times that my husband, as well as visiting family members and friends, might actually think I’m nuts. But in my defence, it needs to feel right and work for all of us. Right?

The Living Room

For us this room truly is a living room, in every sense of the word, we spend a lot of time in this space and it serves so many purposes that coming up with a layout that worked took a little bit longer that I had anticipated. But there was one thing that helped to anchor the space for us and gave us the ability to layout the space the way we wanted; The Gascony Bookcases from Wayfair. Three words: symmetrical storage solutions! I don’t know about you, but symmetry in a space is huge for me, things need to feel balanced or else the whole space feels off. There was a lot of “dead” or unused space on either side of our fireplace and for someone who is used to living in such a small spaces, I have a hard time with this especially if nothing seems to work there. We tried a number of different things, but nothing worked. Then one night I suggested that we move the bookshelves we had purchased from Wayfair out of the office and into the living room. Well, that was a memorable moment.

First of all, they fit perfectly into these spots, and secondly, they have kind of become the focal point of our living space. They add beauty (I finally have a spot to display our pictures plants, books and things we love) and functional storage that will grow with our family; the kids have lots of room for their books and some toys on the lower shelves. Our living room is a casual space in our home that we all use and I wanted to make sure that it truly was functioning for our whole family in this way; that there was space to play, relax and enjoy each other all in one spot.

Our Eat-in-Kitchen (Solarium)

When we first looked at this home there were a million different ideas running through my mind about what we could do with this space, but all of them were connected to food and dining because the space is right off of the kitchen and we didn’t have an ‘eat-in-kitchen’ in the formal sense. The solarium was a focal point for me in the house, it’s a bright, airy and happy spot that I imaged us enjoying everyday, but it’s not a big space and the door to our backyard is right there as well. So we had to be a bit creative when it came to the size and the shape of the furniture that we chose. It took us a while, but when I saw this antique table tucked away at an antique shop while we were on vacation in Prince Edward County I knew it was the one, and I am so glad we drove the truck there so it could come home with us. Now all we needed were some chairs. After shopping for a while to match the perfect country chairs to pair with my find I started to think about how much I loved the look of mixing design styles and I totally changed what I was looking for. Wayfair has so many options, you want something, they probably have it, and when I came across these Eiffel Dining Chairs I knew they were the perfect “mixed-match” for our table. These chairs are great for our casual dining space as they are so easy to clean and I have also used them in our formal dinning room, mixed with our more formal chairs, when we extend our table. They are sleek, clean and blend so well with the antiques in our home.

We still have a long way to go as we slowly make this new house our home and there are so many projects, big and small, that we have in the back of our minds, but we’ve started to take it slow and learn about the home and ourselves as we live in it. Making a space pretty is one thing and it can happen fairly quickly, but making a house your home takes time and that’s more than worth the wait.

Moving into a new house can be tough. What are some of the ways you’ve made your house a home? Would love to hear so tips and idea for the rest of our home.

xo

Vanessa

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