How Our House Looks One Year Later
/
We have officially lived in our house a year! How has time gone by this quickly? Okay technically it was a year on April 21st, the day after we finished filming our pilot episode, since we moved in the very next day. But time got away from us and we forgot to post, so here we are. A year and two weeks later.
We’ve loved living here, in this house and with our neighbors and over the last year have enjoyed making this house feel like a home. When we were fixing it up for all those months and then when we finally filmed the reveal, it didn’t feel like a home to us, really. There were cameras and lights and microphones and people walking in and out constantly, setting things up or helping put things in their place. It was wonderful and exciting, but again, it just didn’t feel like an actual home. It felt more like a movie set, actually.
We tried to make it as homey looking as possible for the show, but with the perfectly placed flowers, the books with their spines turned around (since we can’t show the covers of the books on TV without the author’s permission), and the (beautiful) art that we were borrowing from our local museum, there was only so much we could do to make it feel homey.
Which brings us to the present. A year later we have made this house a home, the way we want it to be and are settling in just fine. We’ve enjoyed making small changes here and there, but for the most part everything has stayed in its place. We thought it would fun to take a look back at how the house looked a year ago, when we staged it for TV, and compare how the house looks today now that it’s had people living in it for a year.
Our living room probably looks the most like it did whenever we staged it for the show. We have all of the same pieces in there but added an antique console table that was PJ's grandma's under the three windows on the left. We also put brown, faux wood blinds in there for privacy. Oh, but the biggest change in there is that we turned all of our books around! Like we said, we couldn't have them facing the camera, so we turned them all backwards so that the cream and yellow pages were all you could see. It's definitely ~a look~ and we can appreciate it, but it's not the look we really want in our living room.
Staged for TV
Today
We staged the room below as sort of a "center hall", well, that's what we called it a least. Just a room that you pass through a decorate with pretty things. It didn't serve much use in the show, but these days we use it as a breakfast nook of sorts. We eat most of our meals here, especially when our dining room table is filled with clothes that need to be folded.
Staged for TV
Today
The master bedroom below almost looks the exact same, minus the addition of a few pictures, new lamps, and new bedside tables. Oh, and we switched out the rugs in here, too. We put our bedroom rug in our dining room since we felt it was too big for our room, and brought in the rug you see in the center hall above.
Staged for TV
Today
The kitchen is also pretty much the same, except we added some bamboo blinds for privacy and warmth/texture, and we brought in our stainless steel commercial island that we had in our last house. Fun fact: PJ had orginally built an island made out of wood that he salvaged from this house, but once it was completed and we got it in there, it ended up being too big, so now it lives on our back porch as a potting table/place to set food when we have guests.
Staged for TV
Today
Hate that we didn't get a proper "before" shot of the kitchen from this angle, but the behind the scenes picture from the pilot will give you an idea of what it looked like. Our kitchen is almost completely white, so the chalkboard wall gives it a little bit more personality, visual interest, and makes it feel like we're in a coffee shop :).
Today
We staged the front room to the right as an office for the show, complete with the schoolhouse desk PJ found on the side of the road (!!!!), floor plans from our last house, and books. We actually kept it as an office for the first few months we lived here and had our TV room upstairs. We soon found out it was an inconvenience to go uptairs just to watch TV, when we didn't really go upstairs for any other reason, so we turned it into our den. In fact, we mostly keep the air turned off upsatirs (we're cheap, so what) when we don't have guests because we have everything we need on the main floor. Whiiiiiiiich is why we rarely take pictures of our upstairs and why you won't see any in today's post :).
We are actually working on redoing some of the rooms and making them look more presentable so we will be back in a few weeks to show you all the progress we've made!!!
Staged for TV
Today
Today
Our master bath wasn't shown too much on the show, so we did minimal styling. Mostly just white towle and green plants sitting on our marble-topped window ledge. Since then we've added some affordable (and bright!) cafe curtains and a new storage cabinet between the two sinks. We were supposed to have a vanity instead of the double sinks, but our cabinet maker couldn't get to it in time before our deadline for the show, so alas, we are stuck with two sinks and little to no storage in our bathroom. There's something that's charming about the pedestal sinks but more storage and counter space would be sooooo nice. We plan to put an actual vanity in next year or so.
Staged for TV
Today
Today
The hall bath REALLY wasn't shown on the show (like, at all) so all we did was throw a little rug in there. Notice how we didn't even put up a shower curtain. Everything is pretty much the same in there now, just with a shower curtain and a black and white picture of Marlon Brando above the toilet because, who wouldn't want to use the bathroom with Marlon Brando jumping in the air making a funny face?
Staged for TV
Today
Our dining room in the back of the house. We originally built this room as a sun room, and then we reworked the windows and planned on making it a den/family room (since our office was in the front room on the right, remember?) BUT THEN we found the table. Ahh... the table. We had seen it at our favorite antique store for years and when it came time for the show, we knew we had to have it. We were able to get it for hundreds off asking price, because you should never pay full price for furnitire. EVER. The only problem is it was 12 ft long and wouldn't fit in the original dining room, so the only room it would fit in is the new den/family room, which was an addition. So, we added a chandelier and had our trim guy cut it down 3 ft to make it a 9 foot table (because 12 ft was still too long for that room!!) and that's the story of it. Below the before/now pics, you can see what it looked like when we first put it in the room to see if it would fit.
Staged for TV
Today. We've actually done more to the dining room since this picture was taken back in February, like adding bamboo woven blinds, more pictures, and more plants. Currently our table is buried under a mountain of clothes, so we'll stick with this older picture for now :)
So that's it! This was a long post but a fun one to look back on and compare. We're just showing you the downstairs for now, minus the laundry room which we are still setting it up the way we want it to look, but that wasn't shown on the show anyway. We plan to show the upstairs once we get that completed, again, hopefully in the next couple of weeks.
Which look do you prefer? Staged for TV or "lived" in?
