House decisions

Some people stress out over design decisions, but I love getting to design a home! We've put so much thought into little details, so I'm going to try and record some of those ideas and decisions here. 

These are samples of tile, countertops (plain old gray quartz and white quartz), paint and flooring that we chose, and I love that they all flow together so well. They've been piling up around our house as we've been sorting through samples galore.

We picked out our floors and are going with Palladio "White Wash" white oak as our color. It's the most similar to another floor we all loved (Stuga Fika - which by the way has incredible customer service!) but that was above our price range, and the Palladio is in our budget. We saw Palladio floors in some other homes and fell in love with the wide planks and textures, and I love the light color that's not too honey and not too pink--exactly what we were after.

We found the bricks I want to lay in a herringbone pattern on our mudroom and powder floor on clearance. Most of our other tile looks like concrete and ties right in.

We're still deliberating over wall colors, but are definitely going with white and are leaning toward "Cloud White" by Benjamin Moore. We want a clean, fresh look (I've been having dreams for 2 years of painting walls white), but also want it to feel warm and not stark. Gryffin prefers "Simply White," Lorelei begs for "Swiss Coffee," and "Cloud White" is right in the middle--a good compromise.

Here are the three whites we like, side-by-side. I know grays are in but I love the fresh, minimalist look of white walls.

For our interior doors, we chose Lynden Door "Aberdeen" with the exception of a barn door we're doing in "Mercer" and painting with chalkboard paint in the kitchen/pantry.

I've been deliberating lately on hardware but think we're going with round concrete knobs mixed with silver pulls in the kitchen and islands and maybe some bathrooms, and these gold and concrete beauties (but XXL size) in the center of our mudroom lockers. Still deciding which green to paint those lockers.

Here are some elements from our kitchen and our exact "Patagonia granite" slab. Mark's ordering a giant LED panel to light it from behind.

Here's what the Patagonia granite looks like when it's back-lit. This will be in the nook behind the stove.

Here's the actual layout and measurements for our kitchen (though I'll need to double-check on those sinks because they look a little small compared with the ones we ordered).

This is kind of what our nook will look like on the back kitchen wall. 

And this is what we envision it will look like if you're looking straight in at the kitchen. We picked up those funky mid-century lights from West Elm.

Here are the great room measurements with a TV area that will look like concrete. We love the extra bench seating on either side of the TV for when we entertain, and all the storage beneath for games. 

Here's an example of what the great room's supposed to look like, with a moving ladder (ignore the paint colors and hanging lamp--they're not in this room).

But let's go back to that lamp, because I worked my heart out to make this and everyone in my family doubted me. First try, the balloon mold popped and the papier mache splattered all over me and the garage. Second try, a gust of wind blew it over and it toppled into mush. Third try was a charm, and now I'm hanging it over our round breakfast and game table (just off the great room in the breakfast/piano room on the other side of the fireplace) to remind everyone that I'm a winner and a badass. :)

I painted the outside white and am debating whether to paint the inside of the lamp gold, or leave it gray. It's going to have a giant edison bulb inside to match the giant edison bulbs in our entry way.

Here's an example of what it looks like past the see-through vertical fireplace looking from the great room into the breakfast room, where that lamp goes.

Because I want our house to feel playful and joyful, we had our electrician wire an outlet into the ceiling for string lights to hang over our great room like in this picture. We've also added some rustic beams over the great room and dining room.

 Here's the master bath cabinet drawings. We have some vessel sinks that look like big stone bowls and our faucets will come out of the wall from a ledge that the mirrors will sit on.

Here's my PowerPoint design as an idea.

This is the opposite side showing the bath and shower. The bathtub is going to sit in a bed of stones like our bath at the Model Angkor Resort we fell in love with in Cambodia.

This was our Cambodian hotel room that we loved so much. We adored that bathtub and those concrete walls!

Kids' bath cabinets. Lorelei gets her own tub and a separate shower, and picked out those cool concrete knobs below.

We're downsizing to a smaller master bedroom from our current home, but get a much larger master closet with a laundry space instead which is a big bonus. This room below is inspiration for our bedroom, which will have a built-in headboard with lights on dimmers on either side for reading at night, and a platform bed.

Here are the cabinet drawings for an extra bedroom upstairs that we converted into a shared home office where Mark will also keep his keyboard (meaning he'll pretty much live in this room--I like to joke he's having an affair with his keyboard). These two windows are where the kids' desks are, and they have a gorgeous view of the high school (what they'll be looking at when they're doing remote learning-ha!).

A birds-eye view of that shared office room. Mark will LOVE having his own desk without all of my clutter and post-its.

Inside the upstairs balcony is the kids' entertainment area with a secret hidden bookcase doorway into Gryffin's room (which is no longer secret--shh!).

The kids' (upstairs) laundry room cabinet design. Not sure on the color yet but I do love this blue.

I've even designed how I want the concrete poured for our entry (concrete blocks surrounded by stones) and driveway (angled).

And this is the color scheme of our house on a color sample house that looks nothing like ours: this stone, cedar colored lap siding, and Benjamin Moore Iron Mountain paint for the board and batten areas.

Basically, if you've read through this entire post, I'm kind of picky and know what I want. :) Still so many design decisions to go, and I love that we've really designed this home together as a family and with our family's needs in mind. I can't wait to see it come together!