In September 2018, Ryan and I became home owners. We bought a 1300 sq ft single story home in Eastside Costa Mesa in Southern California. The house had great bones and we loved the open floor plan and I personally loved how much natural light came into the common areas, like the living room, dining room and kitchen - especially the kitchen. The home’s original hardwood floors were still in great condition. The lot was super spacious, providing a backyard fitting for entertaining, a patio and fire pit area, a garden and the part that just melted my heart - a front yard with a white picket fence. There was a lot of work to be done though. The house was built in the late 1950s - and we definitely wanted to modernize it. Bye bye texturized walls and thermofoil cabinets.

Before we actually moved in, we decided to remodel the kitchen and smooth coat the walls.

The bones of the kitchen were great. We loved how open the kitchen was and how big the kitchen island was. The refrigerator, stove and dishwasher were all fairly new, so our plan was to replace the cabinets, countertops, tile backsplash, paint the bottom of the kitchen island and install two hanging lights above the kitchen island. I wanted a simple, sleek, white (with black accents) kitchen. We worked with a contractor on the kitchen remodel, but we designed it ourselves.

For the cabinets, we went to Builder’s Surplus Kitchen & Bath Cabinets in Santa Ana, CA. The hardware is from Crown Ace Hardware. The countertops are a white quartz from Bella Stones in Anaheim, CA. We went with white Daltile subway tile and black grout (both from Home Depot) for the backsplash. We splurged on the kitchen sink and faucet and went with a white Shaws-branded farm sink, which was totally and completely worth it. As for the details, the hanging light fixtures are from Joss & Main (unfortunately they are no longer in stock - but they have a lot of great light fixture options on that site). The wooden bar stools are from Home Depot. The majority of my other kitchen accessories are from Crate & Barrel or CB2, like the crisp matte white serving bowl centered on our kitchen island.

While Ryan and I eat most nights sitting on our bar stools at the kitchen island, I do love the dining room vibe I created. I love a mix-and-match look when it comes to a dining room table and seating, so I started with a pine solid wood dining table and bench. Opposite to the bench are two black leather chairs and two grey upholstered chairs for the heads of the table, both from CB2. As you can probably tell at this point - my decor palette is very grey, black and white-forward. To add a pop of (neutral) color, I went with an oversized basket pendant light for above the dining room table. The vase is something I snagged from Anthropologie. If you are sleeping on Anthropologie’s home decor pieces, I am here to wake you up. I absolutely love their small decor accent pieces, candles, hardware, throw pillows and wallpaper.

Now for the living room. This room went through a couple of phases before I got it right. The wall art and pillows went through a couple rounds of trial & error before I found the ideal vibe. Before the floor lamp, I tried to mother a big fiddle leaf fig and that went horribly, and thought a faux fiddle leaf fig would be a good fit for the corner, but I didn’t like that much either. The overarching floor lamp I found from West Elm was my third try at finding something for that corner in the living room - and I love it. The black side table in front of it is from CB2, and the vase on top of that is one of many throughout my house from the Pure White Ceramic Vase collection at West Elm. (The dried eucalyptus is also from West Elm.) When it comes to wall art, Society 6 and Fy are my favorite sites for prints. I originally tried to create a collage and it just felt too cluttered. I finally landed on three large prints (Left: Geo/Black Art Print, Center: Am Meer Art Print, Right: Geo Poster). Adjacent to the floor lamp is a blanket ladder from All Modern. Unfortunately, the one I have is out of stock, but they have a lot of other great similar options. Now for the couch - the best and most important part of a living room. Ryan and I are both tall people (5’11” and 6’1”) and wanted to find a couch with deep seats. We went with the Lounge II from Crate & Barrel (the fabric color is Emma Stone), customized to fit our living space. I kept the pillows within the grey, black and white theme. The large grey cotton knit pillow covers are from West Elm, as are the smaller grey cotton canvas pillows covers. The black throw pillows are from Urban Outfitters (which is one of my OG spots to shop online for throw pillows) and the black & white arrow print textured pillow cover is from an Etsy shop, AztecHouse. Probably the most asked question I get about our house is where I bought our leather ottoman poufs. They are the medium square leather ottoman-poufs from CB2 - and are one of my favorite house purchases. If you have kids or a dog, our rug is a must. Lorena Canals makes the cutest rugs, all of which are machine washable. I went with the Tribu Natural one.

After our kitchen remodel and smooth coating the walls in our house, our guest bathroom was the next room we knew we wanted to remodel - since it is the bathroom our guests see and use, of course. A friend told me about Tile Expo Inc. in Anaheim, CA, and I loved the trendy tile options they had (like the one we went with). We chose the same white Daltile subway tile for our bath/shower as we did for the backsplash in our kitchen (except this time, we went with white grout). RSSA Home Improvement in Anaheim also came highly recommended and is where we purchased our bathtub, tub fixtures, sinks and faucets. Our cabinets are custom-made and I was so impressed with the quality and the reasonable price we were quoted that I will definitely have that same carpenter build our cabinets for our master bathroom when the time comes. His name was Gary and if you live in Orange County and want his contact information, DM me. Our vanity glass sconces are from West Elm, as is the pure black ceramic vase, dried eucalyptus and the gold nesting glass hexagon shadow boxes. I also found out that this bathroom is the perfect home for a small fiddle leaf fig, so I am proud to report that ours is thriving in its West Elm mid-century turned wood leg planter.

Our bedroom is the one room in the house where we brought color to the walls - well, a wall. We did a grey accent wall, using Behr paint color: Gray Shingle. It compliments the white bed perfectly, in my opinion. Pretty much everything on our bed is from West Elm, and while they no longer carry our exact duvet cover set, they have some beautiful other white bedding options. West Elm no longer carries the blanket at the foot of our bed either, but I love this option. I swear by the Cotton Cloud Jersey Sheet Set from West Elm, and for winter months I swap in their Organic Flannel Cotton Sheet Set. The decorative pillows on our bed are from Urban Outfitters, and of course they don’t carry those either - so at this point, our bed is more of an inspo versus one to share links for. We wanted our bed to be lower to the ground, and love the one we went with from Crate & Barrel (called Atwood Bed, without Bookcase Footboard). Our nightstands are probably one of the oldest pieces of furniture in our house - and in our last place we pushed them together and used them as Ryan’s dresser. Being able to repurpose pieces of furniture is such an accomplishing feeling!

I did not want to create a parallel experience for what sat on our nightstands, and love that Target had this two piece wall art set with coordinating (yet not matching) prints and decided to lean those up against the wall on both nightstands. The table lamp on the one nightstand is from West Elm. I love the lamp itself, but was not a fan of the color of the linen shade it came with, so I ended up swapping that out for a black shade I found at a local speciality lamps & lighting store. You’ll notice my obsession for the Pure White Ceramic Vase collection from West Elm continues into my bedroom. Instead of dried eucalyptus, I filled this vase with dried natural lagurus from Michaels. As for the rest of the nightstand decor - I get a lot of my coffee table-style books from TJ Maxx Home Goods. The wood bead garland dangling from the picture frame is from Etsy and I love that it adds some dimension to the one nightstand.

Updated July 2021

The last room we wanted to remodel in our house is done! Our master bathroom was a project we had been wanting to do since we moved in but waited and budgeted to remodel our guest bathroom first, as that is the bathroom our guests would obviously see more. Our master bathroom had great natural lightning already and a big shower but stylistically looked liked it belonged in a house from the 90s, so we gave it a facelift with new tile, smooth-coated walls, a new vanity and sink, new fixtures and a sleek, frameless, backlit LED mirror that was even more perfect that pictured online. It’s one of those mirrors that makes you look good, even on a bad day - and I love the ambiance it brings to the bathroom at night. The vanity was custom-made, which I have done for both of our bathrooms and have found the cost to be fairly comparable to the quality vanities at say, Pottery Barn. I personally found it hard to find pre-made vanities I loved and with the costs being pretty similar, the custom-made route helped me truly bring my Pinterest-pinned bathroom to life. The hardware was the perfect accent to the detailed woodwork, and I snagged them from Anthropologie. Tip: always buy at least 2 extra knobs or handles for your cabinets, because if they chip and they go out of stock, you’re now looking for all new hardware - or even if they are on backorder, you’re stuck waiting for what could be months. For those local to Orange County, the grey tile in our bathroom is from Arizona Tile and the white tile we used as an herringbone-style accent wall in the shower is from State College Distributors - both of which are located in Anaheim. The sink and gold fixtures are from Faucets & Fixtures in Orange.

As for the little things - the rug (which is super soft) is from Crate & Barrel and the natural rattan 3-tier storage tower is from World Market. And, I don’t know why it took me forever to find a ceramic cylinder vase I really loved, but I finally did from Afloral and I have one a matching one in our kitchen. All the vases on their site are super cute though - so definitely shop around on there if you’re looking for more.

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