We said goodbye our townhouse in the city in June 2014 before moving to a suburban area. Our family was growing and we needed more space and were thinking about the kid’s futures. I grew up on a farm in the country and although I LOVE living in a more urban/populated area, I like peace and quiet in rural areas. So here is our Townhouse Home Tour – Our First Home.  I believe it took close to 5 years before I really liked the way we had our furniture/decor set up.

The entryway had a little nook area that we used for a bench, coat hooks and shelving with storage baskets. The door across the bench is the powder room and to the left of the bench is a small coat closet.

The kitchen and living room were right off the entryway. The hardwood floors and tile in the kitchen were pre-existing when we purchased the house. The appliances were also existing when we purchased the house – all but the microwave and the refrigerator – those we purchased when we remodeled the kitchen.

The cabinets are from Cabinets-To-Go and you can find the style here. They can do the kitchen design for you, we just sent them pictures and measurements and they sent us the cabinets that we would need to make it happen. We kept the original layout so we wouldn’t have to redo the floors, just added taller cabinets on top and a lazy Susan in the corner. I will have to link to a before-and-after picture with more details about that Kitchen makeover in a later post.

There were cabinets where the lights now hang over the bar and drywall behind it that we knocked out to open the space more.

The dining/breakfast nook.  We added wall shelving for extra storage and mirrors to make the room feel bigger.  The round table was a craigslist find that we refinished.  The chairs were also a Craigslist find (Pottery barn) and a steal!

Our family room/craft room/office connected from the kitchen.  It had a corner fireplace which made arranging furniture difficult, but we ultimately decided to have the sofa face the fireplace in the center of the room.  This actually made more space for a desk and extra seating on the back wall.

Don’t get me wrong, I LOVE having my own space for a craft room in our new home, but I also liked crafting in our old house because I could still spend time with our family and be at the heart of the action.

This a view of the house from the fireplace so you can see where the stairway is located.

And this was the backyard.  We had so many great memories in this house, with great neighbors, friends, and family.  It is hard to find a small house in the city with some backyard and this one had some privacy with a little stretch of a wooded area before reaching a road.  We built the deck along with my brother, Mark’s help when we first bought the house.  We added the garden surrounding the deck later on – in my attempt to grow vegetables believe it or not!  The garden ended up consisting of some herbs and flowers when we sold it.

The Second Level

The second level of our last home included a shared (boy and girl) bedroom, master bedroom, baths and laundry room. The 2nd level had two master suites, both with full bathrooms.

We used the room at the back of the house, which overlooked the back yard, for our master bedroom.

You can see the bathroom, hallway, doors to the laundry room and the kid’s room from this picture. I am not sure what the paint color is in this room since it was painted this color before we moved in. The paint color looks lovely in these photos but I feel like it wasn’t that pretty in person. I guess it was nice enough to leave that color for 4.5 years though!

The bathroom looked pretty much like this when we bought the house. We didn’t do much updating in here since this was the go-to-bathroom for the kids (they took baths in here since the other full bath only had a stand-up shower). I spent a weekend painting the original honey oak cabinets white, which dramatically changed the look, then we changed out the faucet and the towel rack.

Having a laundry room on the bedroom level could be a blessing or a curse. I think most people love the idea but I think it encouraged me to do laundry every day, versus now in our new home, the laundry room is in the basement and I do laundry every 2-3 days. This room used to have one shelf above the machines. The hubby removed it and added 3 new shelves to increase our storage in our small home. The baskets held toiletries, laundry items, toilet paper and paper towels.

The kid’s bedroom was so hard to figure out when our son was born.  The room started as blue and we immediately painted it avocado green for our daughter’s nursery. Her theme was pink and green and so we still had a lot of pink when our son was born. Even though green was a good neutral color, I opted for a gray since this room also served as a guest room. The day bed is Ikea Hemnes and pulls out to a king size bed. The drawers underneath also created functional storage space.

I went with an owl theme and really tried not to go overboard with the owls since you can find owl nursery items everywhere now-a-days.

There was just enough space in their room for the two of them and we kept the room open so they could play.

The bathroom in the kid’s room was a sea-green color, again, a color that was here when we moved in.  The only updates we did in here was stained the honey oak vanity a darker brown and changed out the faucet and the towel racks.

So that wraps up our last home 2nd level house tour. Be sure to check out my other Home Tour posts 🙂

Psssssttt…Right now I’m offering a FREE 3-Day Course to Organize your Kitchen FOR GOOD!  The free course includes instructions, tips and pictures for how to de-clutter, simplify and organize your kitchen in only 3-days!  Hurry up and sign up here!  (Course instructions will be sent after subscribing)

(Disclaimer: Affiliate links are included in this post.  Please see our Full Disclosure for more information).

How to pick the right paint colors

Have you ever had trouble picking the right paint colors for your home? Choosing the right paint colors for your home can be overwhelming. There are so many different “whites” and “grays” these days, how can anyone know they are making the right paint color choice?

That’s why I put together the best tips on How to Choose Interior Paint Colors in this post.

Every home is different… the entryway in our first home was much different than the entryway in our second home, and both of those were very different from the entryway in our third home! So I chose a different paint color for each entryway in all three of our homes. Not to mention, from the time that we bought our first home, to the time that we bought our third home, home paint color trends changed drastically. The colors that I used back then were no longer a trendy color and well, I just didn’t like the brown-ish tan that was in our first home, haha.

So if you need help choosing paint colors for the rest of your home, head on over to this post to see my paint-picking tips and what has worked for me in all three of our homes 🙂 My post with how to choose paint colors for your home is one of my most popular posts and readers have benefited from reading it before heading to the store to buy paint that ends up not working out.

I also have some ideas for choosing paint color combinations for bedrooms (with themes!)

Paint Versus Peel & Stick Wallpaper

Peel and stick wallpaper has become very popular recently since not everyone has access to tools to build their own Shiplap walls (thanks Chip and Joanna) or wants to tile an entire wall with subway tile. I love tiling but if I could slap up some wallpaper and call it a day, that would make me, the hubby, and my wallet happy!

You can find peel and stick wallpaper online at Target, Amazon, Home Depot, and more! I’ve linked my favorite peel and stick wallpaper and the ones I’ve used personally below.

Cheap Home Hacks that’ll Increase Value

Renovating a home can come with a high price tag if you’re not budgeting and deciding which updates bring the best return on investment. After selling our updated first home in just 4 years, we bought an even bigger house that needed a lot of updating. We sold our second home after 4 years while doing the much-needed work to produce a profit by following the same strategies we did in our first home.

If you enjoy updating your home, want to increase your home value or just want your home to look better, you should check out thee 10 Cheap Home Hacks That’ll Make Your House Look So Much Better.

Tour Our Homes

Tour our First Home here

Tour our Second Home here

Tour our Third Home here

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Psssssttt…Right now I’m offering a FREE 3-Day Course to Organize your Kitchen FOR GOOD!  The free course includes instructions, tips and pictures for how to de-clutter, simplify and organize your kitchen in only 3-days!  Hurry up and sign up here!  (Course instructions will be sent after subscribing)

Disclaimer: This post may contain affiliate links or a sponsored post. All opinions are always 100% mine and I don’t partner with any product or company that I don’t use and love. Please see our Full Disclosure for more information.