The Choices We Made with Our First Home

Smookes’ Homestead, open living room

As some of you might know, we purchased our first ever home this past October. It was a dream come true for both of us who are first-timers, young professionals, and parents. Today, I would like to walk you through a virtual tour of the house and explain a few choices we made. I thought this might be helpful for someone who are looking for a little inspiration for their home decor, or interior design needs.

But first, let me be clear: I’m well aware that we are incredibly privileged and not everybody can afford these decisions. We were in the right place at the right time with the right circumstances. David’s first ever job was an early employee at a high-growth startup, and David owned some stock in it. This actually deserves to be its whole other blog post, about how young professionals, myself included, often undervalue their contributions to a company by not negotiating for their fair share of its ownership. (I actually touched on this topic a bit, from a woman’s perspective, here) Or, they might trade short-term returns (higher salary) for long-term benefits (equity). But anyway, the stock David owned in his first startup liquidated, affording us the down payment of the house, five years later. You can learn more about David’s take here.

Without further ado, let me walk you through our choices!

Single Family Over Condo

This short street is full of single-family homes <3

It took us almost 2 months to find this house. Although it doesn’t have some features we wanted, such as an extra bedroom for our guests (important since our friends & family don’t live close), or an office space (we work from home so this is vital), nor does it have updated appliances for the kitchen or any bathrooms (most kitchen & bathroom things are about 20+ years old); the house was a Single Family Home, meaning it shares no roof/wall/driveway/garage with any other property. One of the first comments I made about the only other house we considered buying, was about changing the exterior paint (it was a deep red). Everybody laughed, as it was a condo. Changing even the paint color of the outside walls would involve talking to your condo neighbor, on top of getting permission from the Homeowner Association. We don’t want that kind of dependency. I’m glad we didn’t choose the other house, even though I still think about its spiral staircase and the open office space designed by an actual architect every now and then.

POV: our home from the open space facing our back porch

Neutral Doesn’t Equal Boring

We decided early on that this house’s greatest quality was its natural light, which we wanted to highlight instead of distracting from. A tried and true way to make a space feel light & airy, is to fill it with items of neutral color palette. But this poses another conundrum: how do you make a house where everything is white, cream or grey not boring?

Smookes’ Homestead, an Open Concept.

Here are a few of my tips to make a neutral color palette interesting:

First, vary the shades of your neutrals. You can very well decide that you want a grey couch as well as greyish wall and grey area rug - but make sure that the colors of these main items don’t match exactly. This will accomplish two things: your eyes will scan the room and still identify these different sections as part of the same “flow”. From afar, different shades of neutral blend together. At the same time, you will still be able to distinguish the items from each other, making them stand out in a not so obvious way.

Second, if you have two objects of the same exact shade (this is fine too!), vary the texture of the items. Textures can feel like colors too. Some interesting textures to think about: wood, burlap, fur, or leather. Make sure you incorporate these (in moderation) to your otherwise monotonous room!

Pastel Kid room with different shades and textures of pink and cream.

Third, did you know? Certain things can “pass” as neutral despite not being neutral at all! An excellent example of these are house plants, and greeneries in general. Sprinkle as much or as little, it’s your call, of greens around your house. As with woody stuff, plants and flowers will add life and energy to your space, without taking away attention from other things at all!

Mantelpiece, fireplace, and some greens.

Third, contrast the neutrals with some some unexpected pop of colors. In the example above, the bold red pattern on the ottoman really adds a lot of character to our living room, despite not really fitting with our otherwise cool and calm flow of the room. Or in the example below, the velvet blue quilt, which is otherwise “too blue” as a couch or a duvet color, is a perfect accent for our bed. This is deliberate. Think of these pops of colors as the spices you add to your dishes: too little, and your meal is unmemorable. Too much, you can’t appreciate the star of the show.

Neutral beddings with accented blue velvet quilt

Personalized Art Makes All the Difference

If you follow most advice up until this point, your place might look amazing, but something is still missing… And my friend, that je ne sais quoi quality, is often than not, expressed via art.

Since everybody’s taste is different, it’s hard for me to give a generic advice on what kind of art to use. But here’s my little secret: a piece of art doesn’t have to cost an arm and a leg for it to be “worthwhile”. As long as it personally means something to you, or makes you feel a certain way, it’s enough. In fact, some of my favorite pieces of art around the house cost nothing at all, like a framed poem from my grandpa to my grandma that’s yellowish and tattered looking, or Norah’s first ever painting. That’s the beauty of personalized art: it’s unique, and there’s nothing else like it.

The framed art on the upper left was something Norah created with her own hand when she was 18 months old.

Our custom family portrait

This was made from a Colorado artist based on several pictures we sent her of David, Norah and I at our colleague Dane’s wedding. For a more zoomed in view, visit my about page.

Art Collage, all personalized

My favorite of this collage is the painting of Cinque Terre on the left. When David and I were still dating, we went to Cinque Terre as our first trip together. The trip meant so much to us that we named Norah’s middle name Corniglia to commemorate our time there. You can’t see it here, but if you zoom in enough on the painting, you will see our wifi password inked in red :)

Travel Memorabilia

To go along with my last point, this piece is our latest addition from one of our travels. Heather Bischoff, the artist who made this piece, named Meditation 546, made a lot of mixed-media art and even some murals. When we were at Crested Butte this past weekend, we actually saw some of her murals on buses. When she went down to her studio in a tugged away corner off Elk Street, she explained to us her processes and the idea behind her art. We instantly fell in love with a much bigger, more expensive piece. But this little one grew on us. It has a great story behind it (reminds her of her time with her grandpa), and we know what each of lattice piece is from. It felt special and just right in this corner of our house.

Closing Note

There are still many work-in-progress aspects of our house that in this short blog post, you didn’t see. For example, our kitchen, much potential though it has, is pretty much dysfunctional at this point. Our fridge leaks water, our dishwasher stops working several months ago, and our microwave crashed. (Thank goodness our stovetop still works and David is such a great cook!) In fact, our fridge leaked so much water it created a hole in our garage the other day that we need to air out for days on end to dry out. Also, the temperature difference between our first floor and our second floor is enormous. We make do by including a space heater in each of the rooms downstairs. Even still, every time Norah goes downstairs, which is where her room locates, she skips and hops so her feet won’t touch the cold floor.

But, trying though it might be sometimes, owning a home means you own all aspects of it, good and bad. Every time we make a choice to improve our house, we improve the value of the home, of something we own. The joy of home ownership lies in just that: the project after project to make it a better place to live. I’ve lived in many places before in my life, but this is truly the first time I feel motivated to channel my creativity and taste into inanimate objects. And it’s been nothing but rewarding.

I hope you find aspects of this blog post helpful. If you do, let me know if this topic is something I should write more about, and if yes, what specifically. I usually write more about motherhood and career, so this homemaking/design stuff is a bit out of my wheelhouse. But if people want it, I will write it :)

Also, lastly, if you happen to visit Edwards, Colorado, you can book my place for your design/aesthetic needs. Deets here.