How One Magazine Changed Everything About Our Home

Have you ever felt this tug at your heartstrings that something just didn’t feel right? You have done all you thought would make you happy yet you still feel like something in your home is off? Over the past several months I have been feeling this way more and more.

With each finished project, there has been something nagging inside me saying “This is wrong and you know it” “Why won’t you listen to me?” Most of the time I just try to ignore it and go on about my day.

Obviously, I  love our home and I do love what we have done to it so far but having that crazy feeling all the time was really depressing and made me feel unsure about the direction we were going.

Our living room was supposed to be one of our biggest makeovers yet, I mean everything we owned before was brown so of course, it would be drastic. But almost the instant I finished editing the photos that nagging feeling came back and this time I stuffed it way down deep so nobody could hear it… Including me.

Then a few weeks ago I was making a monthly trip to our local Sams Club, if you aren’t from around here it is basically like Costco, as I finished up our shopping I decided to go check out some books. I don’t read as much as I would like to but now and then I will buy a few new books, as I turned the corner after making my selection I noticed the most beautiful dining space on the cover of a magazine, this wasn’t just any dining room it literally jumped off the page and spoke to me.

“Hi, how are you doing?” “Geez, I thought you’d never pay attention,  I have been waiting for you to come by and see me, this is what your home is supposed to look like” “That nagging feeling you’ve been having was because of me, you were going the wrong direction and I’m here to show you the way”

Yes, I was for real having a mental conversation with a magazine inside the store….. Weird much?

Any guess what that magazine was called?….Modern Farmhouse!

If you have read our story then you know the first time I tackled our home was a total fail in the style department, I went full blown shabby chic farmhouse and I absolutely hated it! The whole family hated it!

So the moment I found myself standing in the middle of a store wrestling with everything I had ignored up to this point, while a dining room was speaking to me I thought it was pretty much time for me to be committed…

I quickly threw the magazine into the shopping cart and out the door I went. Not brave enough to look at the cover again for fear a dining chair may reach out and touch me I went on about my day, later that night as I sat down on the sofa Modern Farmhouse Style in hand, I took a deep breath and started flipping through the pages.

The moment I did I felt something way down deep, maybe it was heartburn or maybe it was the months of denial I had been in finally coming to the surface, either way, it came out and I found myself saying something I never thought I would say EVER again about anything farmhouse!

” This is it”  and “I love it”

I knew that I had really been struggling lately with the way things were looking and I kept feeling the need to tone things down as much as possible but it was nearly impossible considering a few things in our living room, bedroom, and office were anything but toned down. So once I finished devouring the entire magazine I knew what I had to do.

Let’s Pause a moment: You may be slapping your palm against your forehead wondering why I am just now realizing this and what in the hell I am thinking but hear me out, please.

You see I hated things so much the first go round that I literally thought I hated farmhouse entirely, only I didn’t. I hated completely old shabby chic farmhouse where everything is covered in chippy paint and looks 500 years old. That is why I wasn’t happy with things but obviously, I should have realized that somewhere inside me I had a love for farmhouse just not the kind that I had created then.

Just take a look at the photos, I mean these spaces say lots of things to me and farmhouse isn’t always the first. 

Before we go any further let’s talk about what Modern Farmhouse actually is and what you can expect to see.

 

Modern Farmhouse is pretty much exactly what it sounds like, you combine elements from each of the styles to create a curated palette that blends the two seamlessly.

• White walls
• Textured/worn fabrics
• Clean Lines
• High Contrast
• Natural Wood Elements
• Modern Elegance
• Industrial Elements
• Mixed Metals

 

You are probably wondering what this means for our home/blog and here it is, things will have to change some.

Don’t worry there will be no crazy huge changes where our home becomes unrecognizable because keeping a neutral foundation in our home is going to make the transition easy peasy and if I’m being honest I have unknowingly already started the process with some of my most recent purchases. Here are some of the changes you can expect to see.

Living Room 

•    Ottoman: It has always been a source of frustration for me due to the color and honestly, it is one of the main things that bother me in our current living room. So after searching high and low for one of similar size in a neutral color to no avail, I decided to just reupholster the one we have instead. You can spot a few of the swatches I have picked so far in the images.

 

• Lamps: Our navy lamps were one of those choices where I was hunting for a pair and just picked the first set of gourd lamps I came across. HUGE MISTAKE!

 

• Flooring: In the beginning, I convinced myself that we didn’t really need to update the flooring right now but the moment I finished shooting our living room makeover I knew that it needed to be done like now!

 

• Back Wall: When you walk into our house everything is open, our office door is right off the entry then the wall wraps around into the living room. The thing that drives me crazy about it is once the loveseat or chairs are in place that back wall is not centered. So anything that is placed on it looks like it is off to one side of the loveseat. See below Basically, I would like to add wainscotting to the entire wall from the front door and through the living room. This will give the wall some detail and help it not to look bare while also preventing the uncentered issue.

 

• White Paint: Yep, I’m painting the walls white! Good thing we aren’t done with the main areas yet.

Master Bedroom:

• Change duvet cover to an all-white option

 

• A new rug which we needed anyway

 

• Neutral Pillows

 

• Window seat cushion

 

Office:

• New white curtains

 

• Change brown cowhide rug

 

• Neutral pillows

Overall I think this will be an easy process and the neutral foundation that I preach to you is what will make this process so easy.

 

Insider Tip: Use this as a lesson, if you know deep down you are drawn to something don’t allow yourself to be convinced otherwise even if you weren’t happy with it the first go round. 

For the last few months, I have really been dragging my feet on our entire home reno and I finally feel good about the way things are headed. Sometimes decorating is not easy and over the years your taste will most likely change some but once you replace loud pieces with pieces that are more neutral and timeless you will be able to change things up easily without breaking the bank.

I hope that this sudden change doesn’t make you all head for the hills, I promise that it won’t be some crazy drastic change but I needed to do this for my own sanity and basically so I will stop having mental conversations with magazines,  I hope that you all will stick around to see what happens!

Don’t forget to show some love by pinning the image below. 

If you’d like decorating tips you can check out  the following posts:

How To Decorate Like A Pro

How To Hang Curtains The Right Way

9 Decorating Must Haves For A Well Styled Home