design love

lately i've become more and more obsessed with interior design. i love homes and everything about them pretty much. as a child I would draw house plans relentlessly and wanted to become an architect. somehow i found myself with a civil engineering degree designing water lines, interstates, storm sewers and wastewater treatment plants. just not what i wanted to do with my life. so now that i'm a stay at home mom I'm delving back into my passion of making homes beautiful thru remodeling this house and someday when we move, we'll probably do the same to that house. thru this remodeling process i've had some really trying moments, like the 1 year period of time while carrying my first baby and after having him where 6 of our 9 rooms were basically gutted, but all in all, looking back i know that I've LOVED this time. thru the process i've also scoured the internet searching for design ideas. i will share a few below.

Below is an office before/after from Office from Rambling Renovators. I LOVE the bold green walls (something I am not sure I'd have the guts to do) and black and white accents as well as the creative use of IKEA storage units. Someday I'd love to have a similar office space.

And check out this office from Honey We're Home. I love the cheerful yellow and the IKEA expedit shelves and the desk with the "X" legs.

Another fave of my design blogs that I follow is Casa Greer. I LOVE their bedroom, office, laundry room, etc, etc. So much use of the fun color turquoise! Below is a pic of their bedroom. Love the contrast of the dark gray walls with the yellow, white and turquoise accents. The chevron curtains are super cute.

Below is a pick of where someone used an awesome stencil for accents on a wall instead of wallpapering. I love this idea. So much easier to paint over if your taste ever changes. Which of course with me is bound to happen...I could redecorate and move furniture every week...

Found the kitchen below on Kelly Moore's website via Young House Love. I love that they have the same fridge as us. To anyone considering stainless steel appliances I highly recommend the Frigidaire Gallery series. They clean up way easier than Whirlpool. For someone with a child this is super important. We've seriously only cleaned ours about 3 times in 6 months and they look great.

But back to this kitchen picture, I love how they painted their cabinets a fun yellow color and the stainless steel and black island from IKEA is really a nice touch. Dave & I are also determined to have an apron farmhouse sink in our next dream kitchen. Of course they are like $1000 so we'll have to start saving....but anyways. I like the white ones. Dave wants a hammered copper farmhouse apron sink. I'm sure that costs even more. What can I say? I married a man with EXPENSIVE taste.

The other cool thing about this is that they DIY'ed their concrete countertops. We're in love with granite after tiling our current kitchen counters but now I"m highly considering concrete in some setting in my next adventure of remodeling. I think it looks very cool.

The dining area below is also from Kelly Moore's website. I love the use of the IKEA Expedit shelving (again) and the gray walls. I'm loving gray these days. And that table is AWESOME. Maybe Dave can build me something like that someday.

Another blog I frequent is Our Humble A{Bowe}d  This couple shares our love of DIY-ing practically everything. And I love all the amazing paneling they put in several of their rooms. Check it out on their website (I especially love the office and dining room.) But below is a pic of the built ins in their office. Gorgeous, huh?

 

Another blog I'm checking more often lately is a friend of the bloggers on Young House Love, Bower Power. Check out their living room in their former house. I'm in love! I am simply obsessed with that cheerful green color lately.

And of course I love Young House Love. As you've all heard before...time and time again...but here's a photo of their bathroom in their old house. I love that green wall color, the beautiful black floor tiles and the DIY'ed sink.

And this office is also one of my favorites. I love bright cheerful bold colors with crisp white and black. This is on Three Men and a Lady.

Anyways, that's just a glimpse of my ever-evolving list of favorite rooms on the internet. Dave has pretty much let me run the show with decorating this house since we're basically staging it to sell. But he keeps warning me that in our next home he's going to be more opinionated. Hhhhhh...I fear what that will mean. Anyways, now we are in the process of sharing ideas with each other. He leans more towards the rustic, convert a barn into a home type style, reclaimed wood floors and wood paneling type stuff, and I lean more towards what you've just seen in this post. So we are earnestly searching for examples that we can use to help us meld our two styles in one home. I think it will be super fun.