Making Home | Strategies for Cohesion & Affordability

In grade school, my bedroom was painted blue like the sky and we stenciled butterflies on the bunk bed my sister and I shared. As time went on, my artwork took over the wall space and felt more like an art gallery than a field of butterflies. Highschool brought a more elegant look, including a quilt lovingly made by my Grandma with turquoise satin material and had gold embroidered flowers on it, and I displayed my black and white photography in on the walls. My college years were spent in dorms with white concrete brick walls that I covered with pictures of loved ones and saint quotes. And when away from college, I bounced between spare rooms and closets and attics and basements and anywhere else someone would take me in exchange for a buck or two. I didn’t decorate a lot while bouncing, but I did carry a collection of assorted throw pillows with me and taped favorite pictures on the walls to liven each place up. Now, I’m married we've been working our house together for awhile...but we also have a move on the horizon which is prompting a million aspirations for our new home.

I love having a whole home to make our own, but with that comes the cost of furnishing more than one room like I did in years prior. With it also comes a lot more big-picture strategizing so that the whole home flows well from room to room. I'm learning that this takes a lot of planning and a lot of patience to for a home to be affordable and cohesive.

Patience isn't something I have much advice on so I'm not going to touch on that here. But planning? Right up my alley because strategizing is one of my favorite intellectual challenges. While I may not have the experience of a seasoned interior designer to back up my strategies as "tried and true," I thought it would be fun to share the approaches I'm taking to make a home that is friendly to the wallet and pleasing to the senses in case they might be helpful to any of my 10,000 readers. ;) 

Step #1 | Learn from the Experts 

Interior Design  & DIY are my favorite blog genres and content on YouTube and IG. Whenever I start dreaming about a new aspect of our home (i.e., incorporating a rug) I'll set off and see what I can learn about what makes a rug work in a space, what to look for in rug materials, what sizes a rug should be, etc., so that I'm not going blind into a rug search. Learning from the experts also helps build a stronger vocabulary for interior design buzz words such as styles, furniture piece names, colors, textures and so on and what sorts of things are possible and what sorts of things work well together. From choosing paint colors to strategizing room layouts to DIY-ing old furniture to figuring out what design style (or combination of design styles) speaks to you, there’s just so much information out there that can help. Here are a few of my favorites! 

Catholic Homemaking Resources: 

Everyday Mamas | Blog & IG 

In Honor of Design | Blog & IG

Theology of Home | Blog & IG

The House You’re Building | Blog & IG 

DIY + Design Resources:

XO, MaCenna | YouTube, Blog & IG

LoneFox | YouTube, Blog & IG

The Sorry Girls | YouTube, Blog, & IG

Cass Makes Home | IG & Blog

 

Designer Resources: 

Nick Lewis | YouTube 

Kristen McGowan | YouTube 

Maria Killam - Killam Color System | Blog

Step #2 | Make Note of What You Own, Enjoy, & Want to Keep 

Take real, detailed notes of what you have and expect to keep. Redecorating a space may mean that some things can get replaced and updated, but realistically, its just really expensive to change up everything at once and some things are probably going to stay the same. The key to making old stuff work with new stuff is to go beyond basic descriptions like "Bookshelves and a dining room table but need bar stools and a bathroom mirror" but get to the nuts and bolts of what you have, like "I have 90's style light oak shelves and a dark, antique, gothic-revival style dining room table." Even if you don't particularly like some of the stuff you will be keeping (I think a lot of bookshelves look cooler than ours), being as precise as possible with what you have with inform your future purchases and contribute towards a cohesive look.

For example in our own home, I've made note of our century-old heirloom table, the cabernet-red traditional-style couches, the 90's bookshelves, the shower curtain that I love, and the variegated grey tile in the kitchen. There are plenty of other things that we're keeping, but these make up some of the bigger, statement pieces that will remain in our home.

Step 3 | Pin Like Crazy

Using Pinterest is a bit of a no-brainer in general, but consider a method to your pinning madness. Like any other Pinterest endeavor, certainly collect inspiration of all the home-things that pique your interest, but also incorporate the specific items you made note of before and general things you may have picked up in your learning and research which can be as simple pinning specific colors from time to time to pinning specific furniture styles. The point is to both broaden your design repertoire by dreaming  a little bit with your pins and to incorporate some general things that you know you'll have to work with when it comes time to decorate. 

Once you have a decent collection, look back and name the common themes you find. I am able to look on my Pinterest board and see that I like rich and earthy colors, particularly dark red and a dusty, teal-blue. I like vintage woodwork, I like antiqued gold, I like glass pendants, I like black metal, etc. I like some clean lines but also plushy-traditional furniture too. My style tends to lean traditional/transitional, with some modern elements. As you pin and look back you'll start to get a better sense of your own style and what individual things work well together. This is great because it's one thing to be able to find stuff you like, and a totally different thing to be able to combine things you like in such a way that is attractive and functional. Pinterest can help with both. 

Step 4 | Make a Mood Board

I love using Canva for this. Here I consolidate my favorite and most realistic pins or even images from my own home into one place to use as a specific guide while I’m shopping. While I reference my Pinterest boards often, my mood board is what I live, plan, and shop by: its a consolidated and realistic version of what I want, similar to a elevator pitch compared to a full introduction.

In these mood boards I make a very conscious effort to include what I have and what I can realistically can have in the future. Featured above are parts of my Whole Home Storyboard - so I can see a cohesive color scheme and style throughout my home - whereas below, I have a board dedicated to just our bedroom. Again, I strive to incorporate things I already own or can't change (like the El Greco painting, bedding, Morris Lampshades) but also I work to incorporate new things that would make our home work better as a whole (like the bed frame and lamps). 

The mood board mostly serves to reign in my shopping and keep me on topic. Its a quick reference guide of my style and way to recall what items will work with that style. If an item doesn't look like it will fit into that mood board, I won't buy it. Easy peasy.

Step 5 | Make a List of What You Need & Measure What Will Fit

Figure out what your space needs and keep that list on your phone and measure what will work. I keep note of how much space I have to work with or, for example, how tall a second nightstand has to be to match the first one I already have because there's a good chance I won't remember these details later This is especially important if you’re decorating with thrifted items or expect a project to take a long period of time (like for budgeting reasons)!

Dreams are great, themes are great, styles are great, but having hard data to work with so you can be assured that you need a certain item and that the certain item will fit well is super important for cohesion and for making sure you don't waste money on something that wasn't quite right. I also recommend having a tiny tape-measure attached to your keychain so I'm always prepared to take measurement!

Step 6 | Consult Budget, Save Up, Search, Wait, Search, Wait….Wait...Wait....

We work with a tight budget and expect to purchase things second-hand and to collect over a long period of time to spread out costs. I’m in the business of “slow decorating” primarily out of financial necessity, but also because I’d rather wait to find something I love than to get something that is just alright and I’ll want to replace later. It’s a long process and I’m learning patience as we go, but so far it has proven to be the better way for us. I keep track of my budget, my list, measurements, and my mood board, then I visit thrift stores every week, check FB marketplace most days and...I usually end up empty-handed. But, I’m 100% more confident and more pleased with what decorations and furniture items I do end up purchasing! That goes a long way for me in terms of making a home affordably and making it all work together towards a cohesive vision. It's not my favorite thing to be patient, but there is nothing else I can recommend that will get you better success with a budget and a desire for a functional and beautiful home!

So there you go: 6 steps to refining your home-decorating strategy for the sake of better affordability and a cohesive style. May you have the best of luck in your dreaming, planning, and searching....And please let me know if you find a nightstand that is 28" tall, 28" wide and a style similar to the one shown above...because I've been looking. Thanks. ;)

Love,

MK