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Our Home 2 years In: Video Tour!

January 4, 2016

We believe we should all love where we live.

We’re a couple of homebodies, working to uncover the home our home wants to be. And we’re so happy to have you here. 

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We love to do a video tour every so often so we can compare it to our last tour and see how far we’ve come, but it’s also nice for you readers to get an idea of how everything flows together. I was surprised to look back and see we haven’t done a video for over a year! You can watch our last one from December 2014 right here.

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A few notable things from this tour:
-You get to hear about a few of our big upcoming projects this year. Can’t wait!
– The snow here is out of control
-Definitely should NOT have opened the coat closet.
-Charly is the chillest.
-Tell me you have a “nothing room” too
-And as always, yes, that’s my real voice. And no, I’m not sick. Haha!

We’re dotting the i’s on our 2016 to-do list and can’t wait to share that this week. I’m also updating our House Tour page today so you can see everything in photos, too. It’s a new year and I’m feeling pumped!

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What do you think?

  1. I loved the house tour! Having an 18 months old girlie myself and and also having the industrial amounts of toys that came with her when she joined the family scattered throughout every room in the house ;) I was wondering were do you keep your girls’ toys? I’ve only noticed two baskets in the playroom and a few things in their bedrooms but is that all?! What am I doing wrong?! :P

    • Oh ignore my previous question regarding the toys. I’ve just found the answer going through some old posts! (You might have thought “no, not another person asking once again about the girls toys!” lol- Sorry about that :) )

  2. Jenelle says:

    Hello! Could you tell me where the floating credenza in the living room is from? Thanks! Jenelle

  3. Michele says:

    Julia and Chris! Happy New Year from Philadelphia! Cool to hear that you’re from Pittsburgh!

    I LOVE your blog and stumbled upon it while searching ideas for IKEA kitchens. Your 2015 kitchen rehab is stunning! Really perfect in every way. It has given me motivation to give IKEA a try, scary knowing you need to put it all together, but I think I can!

    I look forward to your 2016 posts. Keep up the great work! And, yes, I never thought I’d find a blog comparable to YHL. You guys rock! XOXO from Philly.

    –Michele

  4. Megan says:

    Loved this house tour – your home is beautiful and it sounds like you have some fun projects planned for 2016. Can’t wait to see those! :)

    -Megan
    http://www.lifeonshadylane.com

  5. Looks great. Thanks for the tour! :) Can’t wait to see what you do in 2016. Those bathrooms have been warned!

  6. Awesome job guys! We’ve just moved into a new place about 6 months ago and are tackling our place room by room too…..always the bathrooms are left to the last hey? Can’t wait to see what you do!

  7. you’re so funny, and cute. love these tours!

  8. Hey Julia, I really liked the video. I love the contrast of the dark walls and the furniture and I really like your kitchen. We also have an open floor plan and it makes it so much easier to entertain. I’m excited to see your 2016 projects. I hope we will finish ours too ;-)

    Have a nice day (or evening)
    bye from Germany

  9. Tara S says:

    Love the video! Absolutely love the flow of your house. Your future vision of having your master and office on the first floor with kids on the bottom floor with the media room is amazing. It’s so fun seeing your rooms unfold. Good luck to a productive 2016! As always, thanks for the inspiration.

  10. Ange says:

    Such a beautiful house.. I love your style and your blog.

    And what a lovely gesture to “type” the tour for one of your hearing impaired readers. So sweet :)

  11. Evelina says:

    I love home tours! Sometimes the flow of the house is hard to convey in photos. I had a pretty good grasp of your upstairs but had no idea how your downstairs was laid out. As always, your house and style is stunning!

  12. carolbaby says:

    Great video – really helped me to get a better sense of the layout. I was surprised to see that the reading room was so close to the great room – I don’t know *where* I actually thought it was – just not there!

    I’m really looking forward to see where 2016 takes you!

  13. Sarah says:

    Hi there! I found your blog through IG this fall and I get so much inspiration for my first home that I’m currently beginning to get my hands dirty with. You made me feel a sense of relief that stages are okay and even inbetweens can help. I love how you work in art and photos throughout your home! I’m anxiously awaiting the post naming paint colors and sources mentioned recently. In the meantime, I’d like to ask about the hardware on your doors of the two upstairs bedrooms. Are those black or oil rubbed bronze? I’m having a hard time deciding, but those are great. Thank you in advance and nice work!

  14. You have done SO much in 2 years! Rock stars.

  15. Sarah says:

    Ahh! So excited for the bathrooms! I can’t wait to see what you guys will do. I discovered your blog around this time last year, and it has quickly become my new favorite! I never thought I would find a blog as good as YHL, but you guys are great competition! :) Happy New Year to the family.

    • Julia says:

      There’s no touching YHL, but we’re happy to keep the DIY blog world going!

    • Erin says:

      Wow! You went far and beyond with helping me out. Thank you! I enjoyed the tour. Looking forward to seeing all that’s ahead. Good luck! Thanks again, it means more than you’ll ever know.

  16. Erin says:

    Hi Julia, I’ve followed your blog for a couple years but have never commented before now. First of all, I love all your work! Secondly and the main reason I’m commenting is to ask if you wouldn’t mind giving a brief summary of all that you said in your video. You see, I’m deaf and while it’s exciting to be nosy and get a visual tour, I miss out on what you are saying. It is no big deal if you don’t have time or would rather not, but I thought it wouldn’t hurt to ask. Thank you!

    Ps. And keep on keeping on, I’m rooting for you all over here in NC.

    • Julia says:

      Hey Erin, Happy to! I just watched/listened myself and typed the dialogue as fast as I could for you!

      It’s Jan 1 2016 and we are going to do a video tour. I’m not even sure we did one last year and we love looking back and seeing how our house has changed, so let’s get started. I’m standing at the front door right. If I look to my right, we have the reading room. A few new elements in here but for the most part this room has stayed the same. If I go in and turn around, you can see my little desk where I work. If I come back out, we’re in the living room/great room. You can see how the living room, dining room, kitchen all kind of work together. It’s definitely an open concept. We love it. I recently wrote a post how it isn’t for everyone but it really is for us. We love that entertaining lifestyle.
      Over on this wall, we have our “fauxdenza.” It works great here now, but we’ve contemplated maybe putting a fireplace on this wall. I think it would be super cozy. But we’re still in the planning stages.

      Out these back doors, we have a lot of snow right now! This summer we’re going to do a whole patio, fireplace, pizza oven out here. It’s going to be awesome.

      Now back inside we’re in the kitchen, which we redid this year and I feel like I’ve been talking about it over and over. Through this door is our laundry room/mudroom area which you’ve seen come to life this year. This is our garage door (the black one) where we come in to the house. And this is our coat closet. It’s a nice blue in there. This is also Charly’s room, so we have her raised feeding station which we DIYed. We have her food in this drawer over here and when we have company over, she likes to come in here and basically begs us to close the door.

      Through the kitchen, we added this this year. Our pantry. The door is just from Home Depot. It comes frosted and we stained it ourselves. We talked about maybe adding another one where the sliding door is but it’s still up for discussion. In here is where our pantry is. Changed our lives! There’s a little laundry for kitchen towels in there.

      Now we’ll go straight, back through the front entry. The entry got a few updates this year as well. New art. To the right is our bedroom. We moved the blue bench in here (that was originally in the entry) and it fits so well. We recently added a tv in here.

      Through our room is our master bathroom and the biggest project of 2016. We’re going to gut the whole thing. It still has the old tile that used to be throughout the whole house. A tub which is in horrible shape, a little tiny shower and we can’t wait to get rid of the toilet closet that takes up more than half the whole room. We’d love to take out the tub completely and put a huge shower right here and put the toilet where the shower is right now. That gives us this whole space to play with double vanities, maybe even extend the walk-in closet a little bit. We’ll see what actually happens.

      Across from our bedroom is Faye’s room. We’ll walk in there really quick. The graham glider has held up really well. Could not recommend that enough. Greta’s really gunning to have Faye in her room so we might move her downstairs this year.

      This is our hall bath, the bathroom our guests would use. It doesn’t have a shower or tub or anything. I love adding art to every room. But this is something that hasn’t really changed this year at all.

      We’ll go downstairs now. This staircase is something we’re definitely going to address this year. Tearing up the carpet and hopefully updating the banister too.

      When you come down the stairs, there are three bedrooms down here. The first one is Greta’s room. Faye will be 2 in April and then maybe we’ll do some swapping around. The next room is the guest room. It’s pretty modest and humble. We did it pretty quickly and it’s something I wouldn’t mind revisiting down the road. Not this year. It’s not high on our list. And then the other bedroom is our nothing room. Just a complete catch all right now. We’re not even sure. I think the trampoline might go in there soon.

      This is the girls’ bathroom. It has two vanities but not bathtub which is kind of funny so we’re also going to do this bathroom this year. Reconfigure it entirely. Bathtub on that back wall. Move the toilet and just make it a fun kids’ bathroom. We’ll probably have to do this one before the master since we don’t want to be without a tub. Our girls do love their baths.

      So, turning around this is where we’ll walk into the playroom/media room. A lot is going to happen down here in the next little bit. We’ll move the trampoline into the nothing room and get a big sectional and tv or projector and just make it a fun/cozy place to hang out. We’re putting recessed lighting in so that’s why it’s a little dark in here. We’re going to put a bunch of storage on the back wall and we’re still trying to decide if we want to keep or tear out the weird angled fireplace. Through the door in the corner is a storage room.

    • Jen says:

      That was super nice of you!

  17. Maria says:

    I love how the house looks! I missed the periscope you did the other day and maybe you addressed this question but: If you move Faye into Greta’s room, what will you do with Faye’s actual room? Any plans?

    • Julia says:

      We’d love to have one more child, so that could be another nursery for him/her, but long term, it will be my office. :) I love my little desk right now, but the idea of having a filing cabinet, supplies and everything in the same room makes me more than a little excited about the possibility one day after the kids are all downstairs.

  18. Meagan Briggs says:

    Love the video and can’t wait to visit some time soon!!

  19. Beautiful home!!! Can you tell me where you got your rug in the kitchen?

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