#37. I Designed A House!
But not the one I live in, lol
Hey! Before we dive in, I just wanted to say I am LOVING all the comments on last week’s issue, “Should I Change My Last Name?”(!!!) There are currently 59 comments and counting, and so far none of them are me because I’ve been racing against a work deadline and barely keeping my head attached to my body, but I’ve been reading some of them as they come in and I am absolutely living for this conversation. If you haven’t weighed in yet, come tell me what you did regarding name changes in the comments section! I’m going to jump into the comments in a few days when I come up for air and genuinely can’t wait to pick this conversation back up from last week. Really really really good stuff; thank you times a million for all your thoughts.
Back in issue #22, “Work in Flux,” I mentioned that I had been designing a house for our friend, Jason, this spring. If you want the full back-story of how this project came to be, give that issue a read!
If this is the first you’re hearing of it, let me give you the short version: Jason bought a beat up little house that Paul found for him in my sister’s old neighborhood that had been super neglected for the last 30+ years, and fixed it up for someone else to enjoy. It was easily the worst house on the block in one of the cutest neighborhoods in Minneapolis, and had been sitting for over 30 days with no offers (an eternity in the current market) when Paul spotted it. Jason–who is admittedly not super confident when it comes to the design department–hired me to make all the design decisions for both the interior and exterior, and I very slowly helped him come out of his “I’m scared of color and want everything to just be gray!” shell.
Well, the house sold two weeks ago and made it through inspection! There was a mad dash at the end making final touch-ups and then staging the house for photography, which I unexpectedly ended up jumping in on. Our friend Jess (who was my date to the Eras Tour!!) did the staging for us, and she warned me before she even started that my style–which she affectionately deemed “West Coast”–was definitely outside of her usual wheelhouse. The morning that the listing photos were taken, Paul and I raided our house and ran over with a carload full of stuff to finish the job and make the finished product as close as we could get to the vision I had in my head for the final look. I think we did alright!
It was my first time doing something like this (I did way more for this project than we’ve done in our own house so far lol), and by far the biggest challenge was trying to find high quality things that fit within the budget Jason set for the project, that wouldn’t take months to arrive. I chose all the paint colors, tiles, hardware, and lighting fixtures–and I even designed the entire exterior! Who trusted me to do this?! I had absolutely nothing to do with the work itself so I can’t make any comments on that, but it was a wild and fun process that I worked on sporadically for the first half of the year. I genuinely had a great time. The feedback about the house was super positive and I really love how it all turned out.
I thought it would be a good time to take you through the house and talk about the different design elements in order of what people seemed to like the most, and where I got the inspiration for each room. There are a ton of photos below so you’ll probably have to hit “expand,” and it’s definitely easier to see on a computer vs. on your phone. Okay let’s go!
KITCHEN–
The inspiration
The final design
The room that got the most positive feedback was definitely the kitchen, hands down. It was a full-gut renovation (check out the before pic below; it was rough!) and Jason made a lot of calls based on what had to happen with the layout, but I picked literally every single thing in this kitchen.
The original kitchen was dark, cramped, and super dated. I took a lot of inspiration from two fresh, bright kitchens in California–one of which I saw years ago and loved so much I filed away in my memory banks for later. We dabbled with the idea of light green cabinetry, but landed on brand new white cabinets with modern gold hardware to liven up the space. The floor had to be completely torn out, so just like in the inspo photo, we went with a rectangular slate tile. I wish we had picked a darker grout, but otherwise I love how it turned out!
To keep the look from being too stark or cold, we warmed it up with light wood shelving, a green tile backsplash behind the range (more on that later), and white quartz countertops with a unique gold veining. We went back and forth on this SO many times because it was definitely one of the most expensive things we did, and I was concerned the gold wouldn’t work with the cool tones of the slate floor. Paul made the final call to go with this one, and he was right. It looks rad. We kept things feeling fun and updated with a white farmhouse sink, green pendant light, and a sleek gold faucet. I had to really fight for the white zellige dupe tile on the wall with the sink under the cabinets, but I won and thankfully it looks fantastic.
FIREPLACE–
The inspiration
My mockup (lol)
The final design
The other feature that got zillions of compliments was this fireplace in the living room. I dreamed this idea up in my brain and then checked Pinterest for a gut check just to make sure I wasn’t crazy. The old fireplace was white painted brick when we arrived and just looked super rough, even though it’s the first thing you see when you come into the house. I knew we really needed a statement-maker here and that’s exactly what we got.
Jason drywalled over the entire fireplace area, then put these delicious dark green tiles over where the fireplace was. I checked seven thousand times to make sure he oriented them vertically and used a dark enough grout that would blend in for a more seamless look (I would have gone a little darker, but it still looks good). The living room is small, so I wanted to use the orientation of the tile to make the room seem larger. I picked Benjamin Moore “Simply White” paint to make the space as light and bright as possible without veering too cool or too warm; it is, simply, just right. (Sorry).
Jason was showing us how easily the ORIGINAL TILE HEARTH would come up by knocking a piece loose with a hammer and I basically dove in front of him in slo-mo screaming “nooooooo” and insisted we keep it. I thought it would be a nice nod to the history of the house and Jason repaired the spot he messed up at my request with a tile from the entryway. I also insisted that the inside of the fireplace remain unpainted, natural brick. I think it looks killer!!!!!
EXTERIOR–
The inspiration
The final design
What a journey it was with the exterior. Shockingly, I learned that you can’t paint siding, so we had limited color options based on what was available. Originally we had decided to do a super moody, modern exterior in a dark charcoal/blue color on basically everything with a bit of a contrasty roof, but Jason chickened out so I pivoted to a white, fresh, California cottage (really just an update to what was already there).
We did a brand new, dark gray roof to keep things modern, painted the brick white (except the chimney–which had some rough spots–but I wanted to keep the original red for contrast and a bit of charm), and did the rest of the house white. We painted the front door “Light Blue” by Farrow & Ball which is a color I’ve never used outside and WOW is it more gray than I was expecting! It’s nice and calm, but would have preferred more color here. Gold house numbers and two dark charcoal planters complete the look. Can you believe the before-and-after though? Transformational.
PAINTED STAIRWAY–
The inspiration
The final design
My personal favorite feature (maybe tied with the fireplace) is the green painted staircase. We worked a ton of the color green into this house. The very first thing I noticed when I toured the first time was how much green–a minty seafoam and a darker sage–was in the house. Allllll over the walls, in the most random spots, and in one entire bedroom.
The entire freaking main floor felt absolutely awash with green. I wanted to honor the color in some way, so I looked and looked and DIDN’T DO ANY SAMPLING and picked “Scenic Drive” by Benjamin Moore on the first shot to paint the stairs; I honestly think I nailed the color. The stairs were just totally beat to shit and I decided we could really lean in and make the stairs a unique feature instead of trying to restore them, and once I saw the inspiration photo on Pinterest I knew we could do it. No one else was that excited about this feature until they saw the finished product, and then they were like damn, can we do the stairs to the basement too? (We did.)
PRIMARY BATHROOM–
The inspiration
The final design
I would have gone a different direction with this bathroom, but Jason surprised me by saying he already bought a vanity, and that it was dark gray with silver and black hardware. EEK!!!!!
I scoured the depths of Pinterest until I found a bathroom direction that I did not find offensive with the vanity we already had, which consisted of keeping things very, very simple. We did white hexagonal tile with medium colored grout on the floor (Victorian style; not quite the right era but still looks classic), black rectangular mirrors with rounded edges (I insisted on this and only this), and cross-hatched white subway tile in the bath/shower.
Everyone uses white subway tile because it’s really inexpensive and widely available, but I thought this crosshatch pattern with a light/medium beige-y grout (never dark gray!!!!!!!) was a fun way to shake things up a bit. For staging I insisted on light toned wood photo frames and I stole a terracotta hand towel from our house to bring some warmth back into the space, though I’m not sure it looks as correct in the photo as it did IRL. The finished design is very very white and clean and isn’t necessarily my preference (my own bathroom is basically allllllll wood; much more moody and warm), but it works! Everyone comments on how cool the crosshatch tile is so I’ll take it.
DINING ROOM–
The final design
Truly not much to say in here, other than that we decided to stage the dining room just like Jason’s house (which is super cute), and I made him get permission from his wife to steal all this stuff from his house for a few weeks for staging, haha. Otherwise we just kept this room really simple. I picked this gold sputnik chandelier which I think is real cute, and can we just appreciate how nicely “Simply White” works with the original refinished floors? A+.
BASEMENT–
The final design
A major project for this house was finishing the absolutely massive basement. Jason snuck around me and installed these plank floors in the downstairs bathroom (which was a new creation and not original to the house) before I could stop him. So basically, same with the upstairs bathroom, I designed the entire thing to look good with the one element I couldn’t change.
I went very Scandinavian/minimal with black and gold hardware, a gold mirror, and white square subway tile that has a sort of a 60s mod look I’m obsessed with. Not sure I love the gold tone of the mirror (it’s a little too yellow for me) but I think it works fiiiiiine, and I chose a carpet color to look good with the bathroom floor, basically just like an extremely inoffensive beige. Super neutral. I hate carpet but super happy with how it turned out.
UPSTAIRS HALLWAY–
The inspiration
The final design
This upstairs hallway was covered, and I mean ABSOLUTELY COVERED in loud, peeling wallpaper. I thought long and hard about what to do here, and ended up recommending that we just paint the entire hallway in “Simply White” to match the rest of the house and make it seem less like a dungeon. I thought we could let the painted stairs and a gold chandelier do the talking and put a mirror at the end next to the window to fake the illusion of length. I really pushed for replacing the ugly stair balusters like in the inspo photo, but I was overruled. Instead, we decided to do something with a much bigger impact in the primary bedroom.
OFFICE–
The final design
We weren’t exactly sure what to do with this room, which we all decided had probably been an attic at some point. The roof lines in the room were really fucking with us so we kept the huge closet, painted the doors white, and decided it would be a nice office. I loved this weird little light I found on Amazon for under $100 and thought it really spiced up the room in a fun way. It was the very last design decision I made for the house; so last-minute it hadn’t arrived by the time photos were taken.
PRIMARY BEDROOM–
The final design
So this primary bedroom has the weirdest layout I’ve ever seen, and the closet was the size of a postage stamp (probably like 2x2; it was crazy). We stewed over this issue for weeks. Like who is going to want to live in a house where the primary bedroom basically has no closet??????
There was a little access panel in the closet leading into an attic crawl space, and one day Paul, Jason, and myself all shimmied our way through it to see what we were working with. Once inside, we found tons of newspapers from the 1930s and 40s (v cool) and then Paul had a lightbulb moment. He realized that the space was easily tall enough to stand up in (at least on one side), and walked all the way to the end, where it looked like there had once been a door to the hallway that had been sealed off. So originally, he mused, this space had been used for something. Why not bust out the wall we had crawled through and turn the whole thing into a slanty-ceilinged closet?
Paul is a genius because it turned out SO well. Where there was once basically a utility closet and an unused, large crawl space, there was now a giant, bright, carpeted closet. What!
Well… that’s about it! Here’s the listing if you want more pics. Tell me what you think, I can take it! What cool shit have you done in your homes recently? Have any new favorite paint colors to tell me about?????
That’s all for this week’s issue; I’ve been crazy crazy busy with work and summer fun time, it’s amazing I even pulled this issue together. I haven’t seen Barbie or Oppenheimer yet because I forgot to get tickets and it was basically completely sold out last Friday 😭 Trying again this weekend!
K bye,
Kelly
the c&c girlies are out there 👏🏼 getting 👏🏼 it 👏🏼
I just bought a house in Minneapolis and would LOVE to have your eye when we decide to do some bigger projects. I hope you plan to pursue this side gig further!