Have you ever heard the song A House is not a Home? I’ve really only listened to the Glee version of it, but I think the title is so true! To me a house isn’t really a “home” until you make it YOURS and have somehow invested in it, whether that’s just emotionally and because you’ve done a lot of living in it, or by adding your own personal touches to it! So that’s what I decided to name this new blog series that I’ve been wanting to start to share the progress were making on decorating and renovating our first house! I’m really excited about it and can’t wait to share what were up to…

When we were house hunting this past year, we were almost positive that we would end up in an older home…The area of Richmond that we love and now live in is filled with tons of charming old houses…and not very many newer houses. We ended up choosing a little colonial that is about 70 years old and has been the perfect size for us…If you’ve been following the blog a while you might know that we moved in last summer…Well we are JUST now starting to feel like we’re getting settled in…In the beginning, I thought that I wanted to complete each room before sharing the before and afters on the blog…but at this point, I’ve finally realized that living in an older house and having a budget probably means that it’s going to be a work in progress the entire time we live here! I love how on one of my favorite blogs..Young House Love…the couple shows “Progress” on the rooms instead of just Before and Afters…I’m also excited to share some different smaller projects that I’ve done to help make our house into our home…The other general idea behind these blog posts is to share that you can make a house a HOME on a budget! I think it takes a lot more work and creativity when you don’t have a ton of money to put into your house to make it pretty, but it is definitely possible…These posts will not only be fun to share with my friends and family, but will also be valuable for ME..to be able to look back and see that YES we ARE making progress even when it doesn’t feel like it…

We spent a lot of our free time during the first few months that we owned our house painting almost every room…The previous owners had chosen super BRIGHT colors that were just a little too much for us…We replaced those colors with a lot of neutrals…grays and tans and really pale blues and mint greens…We love how just changing the paint colors made our house feel so much more light and airy!!

Even though the colors we chose have made a big difference, our house still has a very unopen floor plan..similar to most older homes…so we’re really excited to have begun the process of giving our kitchen a makeover to make our house feel more open and to make it more suitable for entertaining! We are going to try and do most of the work ourselves to save money..Ryan’s really good at these things, but still we expect it to take a while. Eventually the wall between the kitchen and dining room will be coming down though which is really exciting!

To kick off this series, here is the Ideabook for our kitchen I made using the website Houzz (if you’re not in on this website yet and you like decorating..you should check it out! You can find inspiration and search for products and it shows you where to buy them…AMAZING!)…Since our kitchen was partially renovated when we moved in, we are sticking with the colors the previous owners chose for certain things to save money…some would not be my first choice…but I think it’s going to turn out great! Take a look at the idea book kitchen renovation inspiration and let me know what you think! Next time I’ll be sharing some progress!