Today I'm sharing a small home tour with tons of ideas you can grab and DIY! I see tons of large home tours, and most of them are so stunningly beautiful, but feel very unattainable for most of us. No worries, today I've gotten together with 12 of my blogging friends to show that you don't have to have a large home to have a beautiful home...and you don't have to have a ton of money either. I hope you can grab some inspiration and make some simple changes in your small (or large) home, and really learn to love the home you live in!
I'm so excited that my blog friend, Stacy from Not JUST A Housewife put this Small House Tour together! She's first up on the tour today, so be sure to check her out after you tour my little house! If you are a first time visitor, I encourage you to take a look at my Home Tips Page while you are here! I share hundreds of DIY Cleaning Solutions and Budget Friendly Home Tips to make life easier!
Next on the home tour will be my friend Abby from Just a Girl and Her Blog...she has the cutest style and is all about organization...you will love her!
I'm going to walk you through the the main floor of our home and show you a few inexpensive DIY ideas along the way. We have talked about moving into a larger home many times through the years, but I honestly love our home and the coziness it provides. I think living in a small home has made our family stay close. Sometimes it's a struggle, and storage can be a real issue, but if you just get a little creative, living in a small home can be amazing! Don't forget to check out all of the other ladies that are sharing their small home tours today and tomorrow! I'll be linking to 5 more today and I'll post links to the other 6 tomorrow.
Let's start in the living room, shall we? This is what you see when you first walk into our home. As you can see, I love whites and blues. I guess if I had to describe my style, it would be thrifted, cottage style...with tons of plants. I have plants EVERYWHERE in our home...a little known fact about me, when I was little, I wanted to be a botanist. I once turned the back room in our home into my laboratory. I dug up every flower, plant and weed I could find and planted them in cups and bowls so I could study them. Needless to say, that didn't pan out, but I still have a strong love for plants.
A few little details about our living room...that huge chalkboard above the mantel used to be a mirror on a dresser. I just painted it and it's been there for a few years now. You can find the tutorial HERE! The TV console is actually a shelf from Target.
The plant behind my husband's leather chair (which I try to camouflage with a blanket), is a Fiddle Leaf Fig plant. If you ever read Better Homes and Gardens, then you have probably seen one. I am absolutely in love with them, and have two. The shelf beside the couch is an old whiskey display that my father-in-law brought me a few years ago. I painted it white, and it is one of my favorite pieces in our home. Most of the furniture pieces in our home started out dark or in bad shape, and I have painted them with Chalky Finish Paint. I love chalk based paint...it adheres to furniture with no sanding and really sticks. A little goes along way, so you don't have to spend a ton of money to change the look of a piece of furniture.
I just got these faux paperwhites in the mail yesterday! They are from Magnolia Market (you know, Joanna Gaines shop from the HGTV show, Fixer Upper). They really make it feel like spring!
Our living room leads into our dining area, which is right off of our kitchen. That grey cabinet that you see on the left used to be a cherry wood and glass curio cabinet. I painted it glass and all with Chalky Finish Paint in Relic a few weeks ago so I could store my crockpot, pressure cooker and other kitchen gadgets in there without having to look at them.
There are two more pieces from Magnolia Market in our dining area too. My husband bought me the "Today is a good day for a good day" metal sign for Christmas, and I bought myself the amazing Farmhouse Serving Plank that you see in the middle of our table. I use it to serve dinner on in the evenings, and it's great to use when we have guests over as the world's largest cheeseboard.
This is the view from the living room that shows how our dining space, kitchen and breakfast nook/office are all connected. This is where I spend most of my time. I created a kitchen island using a sideboard that I found at Wayfair. It houses my cookbooks, some fun dishes, our indoor grill and is where I do all of my meal prep when cooking dinner. Since we are super limited on cabinet space, I added hooks to each side to hold my colanders and strainers.
I removed some of our cabinet doors so I could see my dishes. Our kitchen cabinets were originally cherry, and in really rought shape, so I painted them using chalky paint too. The backsplash is actually peel-and-stick faux wood flooring planks that look a lot like our wood floors. I wanted a rustic look, but nothing too permanent. This is the second time I've used this product for a backsplash, and I love it. You can see the tutorial I shares showing how to use them as a backsplash HERE! It's by far one of my most popular posts!
This is where the business of blogging happens. I LOVE all things aqua, and white of course, so this is my favorite space...it inspires lots of creativity. It can see our patio and back yard from here, and the windows let in a ton of light. And of course...I have plants everywhere! Those hanging planters are from IKEA. I saw them in one of their commercials and had to have them. You can even see the cat food bowl tucked in beside my smaller Fiddle Leaf Fig plant. Just keepin' it real here.
So, that's a quick tour of our little home. You can find our Blue and White Bedroom HERE and our Back Patio HERE!
Now onto some more small house goodness! Be sure to check out the rest of the small home tours below!
Thursday, February 25th
