I feel like we have made enough updates to most of our main level, it would be fun to do a home tour. If you know me or follow me online you know I enjoy DIY, Home Decor, Home Design and I am a big time homebody. I spend a lot of time here at home. So I need the spaces to bring me peace, joy and comfort.
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Our home is a 1954 home and my husband bought her in 2008. God bless his young bachelor self because I truly question almost all of his paint choices! I moved in summer of 2011 and brought along items from my first and only apartment. We were young and broke. Many of my items came from Craigslist and Bobs Discount Furniture. Ryan had a bunch of hand me down furnishings from his parents. All her cared about was his black leather sofa and a big tv!
We lived with all these things for several years. Until I woke up one day and could not handle it anymore. My style and how I viewed my home had changed. Safe to say we needed to make lots of changes.
One of the first projects was in 2021 we redid our dining room. We were ready for some more adult furniture. I had a small round glass table from my apartment. It did not serve us well in this home so we sold it on FB marketplace and got a more formal larger table. Our style when we met was all black and white. But my heart lives for neutrals. You can see the dining room makeover here.
Paint Changes Everything
Paint is the cheapest easiest way to change the look of a room or object. I tell everyone who follows my DIY posts to start there. We happen to be big fans of Sherwin Williams so all our paint is from that brand. If you click on the dining room makeover you will see we started there. The two paint colors I did not hate are the dining and living room colors. Both are shades of gray. Dining room is Mindful Gray and Living room is Dovetail.
Our walls are a mixture of drywall and plaster and they soak up the paint. So thankfully painting on a fresh coat of the same color was not hard. We have not changed anything in the dining room since except for the centerpiece.
After loving the new vibe of the dining room, I woke up a few months later to our dungeon of a bedroom and said I cannot take it anymore! Over the years I had bought white comforters from Home Goods hoping to brighten the space. It did not work! I don’t know the name of the color but it was a dark blue. Also my husband had a bedroom set of cherry wood that had lots of ornate detailing. For years I thought this was a family heirloom and thought id be stuck with it forever…..
That morning I woke up and could not handle the deep blue paint any longer, my husband casually said then paint it. I don’t think he really thought I would. But once I got the all clear I immediately went out and bought paint. I chose SW Pure White. Remember I said our walls soak up paint. Well I ended up with 2 coats of primer and at least 3 coats of paint because I swore I still saw a blue hue showing through!!!!
After I painted I ran to Bed Bath and Beyond ( RIP) and got a new comforter set and throw pillows. After a few days, my husband said well I guess you are going to want a new bed too now right? I said if that is an option than yes! So we got a new bed and then new dresser and nightstands. You can see how I turned our bedroom from drab to fab here. While I loved it, it always felt unfinished.
Cut to a few years later and I recently gave it a glow up. I absolutely love it now. Better brighter bigger curtains that give it an airy feel. Auto mated roman shades make me feel like a 5star hotel, and the accent wall with the prettiest neutral wallpaper that adds the pop this room needed. I shared all those details in this Primary Bedroom Makeover blog post.
The 3 things that really added to the glow up are the accent wallpaper, the airy curtains and of course the motorized blinds.
Oh and remember the existing ornate wood bedroom set I did not like? We moved it to the guest room where it lived the past several years. But stay tuned because it too will get its own glow up.
Changes of all kinds, even career changes
When I had first moved in this home I was a school teacher. I left my old school system and was trying to get in the local public school one. Since I no longer wanted to be a special ed teacher, and just wanted elementary, I could not get a job. While I was still working with kids, just not in the school system I also became an online fitness coach, then an instructor and trainer. After a couple of years balancing it all, I went full time with fitness. Now I was working from home daily when I wasn’t at one of multiple gyms.
I was on zoom calls and making training videos and well I needed an office that screamed JACKIE in the best way. While most of my following online thought for sure I would paint my office pink, I am a neutral girl at heart remember. I also have seen too many design choices where it looks like pepto bismol threw up in the space! So you guest it, I painted the office white the same SW Pure White.
But I did add lots of pops of pink for a more soft sophisticated look. Check out the White & Pink Office Design post.
Being a micro-influencer and having an online presence making videos and sharing IG stories daily I need clean bright backgrounds. I am often filming something in the office, writing blog posts, posting to my LTK or Amazon for latest deals and finds, creating email newsletters or watching some business training.
“The creative adult is the child who survived”- Ursula Le Guin
As a kid and teen I was pretty creative. As a kindergarten and first grade teacher that skillset came in handy. But as life changed I lost the skillset. One of the silver linings of Covid was more time. More moments of stillness. In that stillness I had these urges to create. It was like an awakening of something I thought I lost. Now I can’t quite quench the thirst to be creating something. For me that is home organizing, rearranging, decorating and DIY transformations.
A few summers ago Ryan was at a business conference in Vegas for a few days. It was the perfect time with a quiet home to spend hours letting my creativity loose. I have a deep love in my heart for checkered board flooring. Some day I will have a mudroom and kitchen with one, but today is not that day.
Our laundry room has plain square tile floors. I looked into the array of peel and stick marble ones but since I had not discussed a project with Ryan, I needed to keep this one as cheap as possible. While peel and stick tiles are way cheaper than regular ones, because of the amount I needed it was going to be several hundred. So I put my creativity hat on and settled for the next best thing, paint!
I am thankful for the size of our laundry room, but it was very blah in terms of look and feel. The cabinets Ryan saved from the original kitchen cabinets. They were old and dingy. So I sanded them down and bought some cabinet paint in the color SW Stardew. I also grabbed some knobs from amazon to replace the old crappy white ones. Years prior I used some contact paper to cover this MDF counter top. Instant facelift.
You can see the full Laundry Room Refresh here. I had so much paint leftover. Since it was cabinet paint I knew it would be more durable and cheaper than the peel and stick tiles. So I started to tape out the floor and slowly got to work painting. It took a while but was so worth it.
Add in some cute accents and fresh wall paint and instant facelift. No more boring laundry room. I am someone who hates to let laundry pile up, I like an empty hamper so I am doing laundry often. This room makes me happy. Especially since the rest of our basement is mostly storage, we hardly use and is dreary. Its been a project for another day.
Even after doing the floor I had paint left over. In fact, this one can will be used again and again. Since I had the paint I decided to also give the main bathroom (which is small) vanity and mirror some color too. I had done the bathroom refresh a year or so before this. New wall paint, new accessories and the peeling green scary looking bathroom was now bright and welcoming.
Now it got a slight glow up with new paint and a new picture I found at Homegoods that had almost the exact same color blue.
“Simplicity carried to an extreme becomes elegance.“
The biggest and longest project to date is our living room. Remember I said I actually did not mind the Dovetail gray color. Its still neutral, slightly moody but still allowing the space to feel bright with all the right accents. Since the primary bedroom, bathroom, my office and home gym are all white, the living and dining room shades of gray add a bit of depth and warmth.
One of the major issues in the original living room was the ornate mantle was so high you could not put a tv above it. So when my husband first moved in, he had it against the long wall. That meant there were two focal points. It always drove me crazy. So with redoing the living room we were going to change that.
The first thing I did was paint the room. Same color but fresh paint. That meant all the way down the hallway too. We knocked down the pony wall. Patched holes and repainted. That was so fun to destroy! We added wallpaper to create an accent wall, new curtains and the space was really starting to look different. You can see some of that in this Living Room Refresh post. I guess I need to create a new updated living room post.
I got to use my creativity again when I took our old entryway table and whitewashed it. I never knew how to do these things before but google and youtube are amazing tools. For full details I shared that in the How to Whitewash a Table post.
It was a fun project to tackle. It also saved us money not having to buy a new table. This one functioned, it just did not match the new aesthetic. I also love our linen curtains and roman shade. The color is Ivory White. Code Jackieenos may save you 10%.
The second half of the living room makeover was a lot more money and time and skill. We removed the old ornate mantle and added this Non Combustable one. Ryan patched the dry wall and painted over it. We chiseled out the old terracotta hearth tiles. We also moved the tv to the basement and added this frame tv.
We had a company install a new modern looking wood burning insert. We now get so much heat when we light a fire. Ryan chiseled the cement that was under the old times to make room for a new slab we had installed. I have a whole IG highlight called living room that takes you long the journey. I love the slab. It really elevates the space and its so pretty. We had quite the journey looking at slabs, debating to do tile and so happy with the final project.
Lots of changes in this space. Change also means getting out of your comfort zone and trying something new…..
We knew we wanted built ins. We also knew we were not about to pay 10-15K to have them built. Over the years Ryan has gotten really handy. The summer before we started this project he built cabinets for his shed. I used that as a trial. If they came out great he could build ours. If not we would find another way. Thankfully they turned out great. This one is before we added the finishing touch with the crown molding at the top. Our cat Big Boy is so happy the construction is done!
Our built ins are huge. 8 feet tall. It took longer than either of us ever planned but it was worth it. Again I have a highlight on IG called builtins that will take you along on that journey. I do love decorating them. I wanted less shelves for bigger items and less clutter. LESS IS MORE!
Over accessorizing, having counters and shelves covered in items stresses me out and brings out my anxiety. As a home organizer I deal with this on a daily basis in other peoples homes. For me, less clutter is peaceful. No knickknacks. Shelves that are are not stuffed. This brings me peace and is not overly stimulating to look at. When I come home from work I can truly sit and exhale.
While I don’t have a blog post, I have also painted our kitchen. Remember I mentioned although I love my husband to death, his paint choices as a bachelor really make me question his judgement? I kid I kid…..well one of those was a burn’t orange kitchen! Now we have a small galley kitchen, so I do not know if it makes it better or worse with that color choice.
Because our kitchen counter is busy with brown gray with hints of black granite and wood cabinets, choosing the right color was hard. Pure white would not work. I also didn’t want a white with yellow hues. Well we happened to have a can of paint that we never used for Ryans home office and the color worked out great. The color is SW Snowfall
Power tools are empowering
Don’t get me wrong, many of my husbands power tools still scare me. However I fell in love with the jigsaw and multitool. Again, he was out of town on a business trip. Perfect time to get creative. Remember that old wood bedroom set? Well for years I thought it was a family heirloom and we would be stuck with it. Turns out it was not. Since it was perfectly fine, it just was not my style, that meant I could DIY it……
Now, I have never transformed furniture before. I mean sure I whitewashed our old entry table but thats mostly sanding and a paint technique that was pretty hard to mess up. This time I would be cutting off ornate wood details, going to town removing most of the headboard, slicing off the bed legs, adding new legs and trying a new faux linen painting technique. And I was going to do all this in 2 days!
Does the furniture color look familiar? Its that same Stardew paint from the laundry room and bathroom. See how many transformations came from just one can of paint!!!
I had already painted the room SW Pure White. I had added the accent wallpaper. I love the look and texture it gives. So I got to town working on it. You can also see the full transformation on the blog Furniture Makeover Coastal Bedroom !!!!
These curtains make me soo happy. Honestly one of my fave rooms so far. We have had a few guests this fall and they all have loved it.
I love the look of these pulls. I am obsessed with these legs! I also equally love this carpet.
Thank you so much for sticking around for this 2025 home tour. Honorable mention is we added a new driveway and walkway since I got a new car this year.
We hope to add new landscaping to the front yard in the spring. I have a few minor upgrades I would like to do and I know Ryan has a few of his own. It won’t be as exciting as these past projects but some years will always be heavier on the DIY front than others. We are taking some time to save as we do have a LONG LIST of home projects for our long term future.
If you made it this far please let us know which one was your fave so far!!!!!?????
We appreciate you and your support. I hope this inspires you to give some aspect of your home a little TLC refresh this year. Even the inexpensive ones can make a huge transformation. So love your home, make it yours and don’t be afraid to let those creative juices flow!
xoxo
Jackie
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