If you’ve been following along for a few months then you’ve been seeing, we’ve been having some fun refreshing the house, but here’s what led us to that. I felt like the energy of my house sucked. SUCKED. The space that I was in was completely wrong and Eddie was getting so annoyed with my complaints – albeit largely while concussed – it felt like I needed to just go away. Then quarantine happened and we were quite literally trapped in a space that I felt uncomfortable in daily.
So I had a little extra time {understatement}, so what did I do? I grabbed some wallpaper from my favorites at Anewall and changed up our wall situation. Here’s the thing.. now I had gorgeous walls and still the clutter of a room and panicked a bit. Time for reinforcements. Stephanie Bradshaw is the Founder and Creative Director at Stephanie Bradshaw . She finds this beautiful balance in interiors for personal and corporations and also does insane events. She’s been my mentor for the past 4 years and I called her in a place of utter desperation. I hate my space – get me out.
How we refreshed our house without spending a dollar
We facetimed – because that’s what you do during quarantine – and she sketched out each space and TOLD ME HOW TO USE MY OWN STUFF TO MAKE MY HOUSE LOOK BETTER. Okay I don’t normally resort to caps, but she told me that I had a lot of great stuff, but it was all in the wrong place – mind opening. Lucky Eddie was tasked with moving all the things up and down the stairs and found a new home for so many things. The office can no longer just be mine, it needs to be ours, so that got a major facelift. New Anewall paper and desks and repurposing some accents that had already been in different places.
The living room.
It was suffocating. Stephanie told me we needed to neutralize this space big time starting with the pillows. I snagged these chic black ones from her new shop Stephanie Bradshaw Interiors shop along with these white lamps. I had added this gorgeous mural by Anewall and now it was competing with literally the carpet, the other wallpaper in the dining room – everything.
Shake up time. We moved the white lacquered buffet from my sitting room to be our new, chicer tv stand. We took the ugly brown mirror that laid idle in our basement and gave it a new gold finish. These cute blush chairs that had sat in my office now had a cozy home in family room. Most dramatic of all, that rug needed to move. We swapped the rug from the boys room to neutralize the space and brought the Moroccan rug upstairs where it fit best – in the twin’s room.
The dining room.
We had snagged this vintage table as one of our first home purchases, but with all the furniture in these two spaces… we felt super cluttered. We shrunk the table and moved the bar cart, but most dramatically we stripped the loud wallpaper and once again neutralized the space with black and white. Ah… calm.
The new office.
This was basically a space of furniture where too many ideas collided and I gave up. I had had gold tiles on here and it was just too much! Everything was too much. I had been super inspired by this Gucci Flora pattern seen on – of all places – a kid’s party thrown by my friend Lara Held of Ida Rose Events and had to find something that felt like that.
The basement.
Oh em gee a workable space! I hated the way our playroom was. It was awful. There was a projector screen. At one point there had been theater seats that we never used. It just completely lacked functionality and now all of a sudden we are in the playroom, quarantined 24/7 and I’m loathing it. We removed the screen, added marble wallpaper from Anewall and popped this funky Playroom sign from Yellow Pop for a modern edge.
The kitchen.
Though not pictured yet, we shuffled a ton of things around, but not ready to share juuuuussst yet. My former office is transitioning and I’ll have more to share with you soon there too. So where did all our stuff go and how did we spend $0?
I’ve talked a lot about how to flip stuff for money and then putting that money into places or things you love, so we did exactly that and I shared how here and how we made 20k in 6 months selling stuff here. Once we sold a bunch of things, we started buying more wallpaper and swapping desks, mirrors, etc. Net-net we have made more than we spent in refreshing!
Here’s the thing.
As much as I love design and styling and fashion, I let my space not evolve with who I am today and that is a huge problem. I’d like to say it was the kids, I’d like to blame it on a bunch of things, but the truth is I let it slide. It paid to work with Stephanie Bradshaw, who brought her professional eye to help me reimagine something when I was stuck. It’s also okay to know it’s a process. The dining room isn’t there yet, neither is the office, but it’s evolving and feels 2049248024% better!
So since we are talking about spaces, I’m so excited to share that I’ve partnered with Winchester Homes to discuss their design process with their Interior Designer Doris Perlman, who is the founder and president of Possibilities for Design and works with Winchester Homes on their spaces. Join us this Wednesday, July 8th at 12pm EST to chat about all things home decor, making the space work best for you and sharing how incredible Winchester Homes has thought about the livability and multifunction of your home – something that’s extra necessary today.
Scroll for some of the fugly befores. I’m sure I’ll add to them, but this is what I could find.
How will you give your space a pick-me-up?
Till next time,
Persephone