Our First Home

Chris and I love talking about our first home. It is the first place we ever had together and where our marriage really took off. This post was was inspired by a company called Compass. Compass aims to place people in homes where they no only will love the home, but the neighborhood around them.

Looking back, I can't believe that someone let a 22 and 25 year old get married and buy a house, but someone took a chance on us and it all worked out.

I don't think I ever properly let go of our first house because of the frustrating process of selling it. Don't get me wrong, it sold in less than a week, but by the time our buyer got together their paperwork, then dropped the ball, then delayed our closing three weeks, I was so annoyed with living out of boxes that, on moving day, I was jumping for joy. 

Our first home didn't deserve that.

Chris and I bought our first house in April of 2012. It was a brand new home with all the bells and whistles. We loved the newness of it, but I admit, it did lack character. We thought about buying a fixer-upper, but we just didn't have the budget or time that it would take to renovate. Plus, the appeal of a brand new home is hard to beat. Warranty, new everything, etc.

Turning our house into a home was my favorite part of living there. We were in that house for two years and I feel like I didn't even come close to decorating everything I wanted to. 

I remember picking out paint and painting all the walls in our kitchen, living room, dining room, and master bedroom. Chris, who hates painting more than anything, helped me as much as he could. It took us weeks to get it all done, but I remember feeling so proud that we were doing it! We were turning our house into a home.

Soon after painting, I was ready to get stuff on the walls. Choosing what to hang on a wall is difficult. Looking back now, I wish I would have searched longer for decor and art that I loved instead of settling for items that I liked.

After the painting was done, we had curtains made and that truly made the home feel more cozy. I chose the curtain fabric in our dining room and Chris chose the living room fabric. Both sets of curtains transitioned nicely into our current house and just recently have I been getting the itch to change them out.

Other than our curtains, the main thing we noticed about moving into our current home was how much our style had changed in two years. When we first got married we were still using a lot of furniture and decor we had in college. Going in to our second home we wanted a more mature feeling and we wanted to wait it out to find the right pieces to bring in our home.

Thinking back to our master bedroom in our first home, I remember loving the color of the walls. We painted them a dark grey and we loved everything about the color. That room got tons of natural light, so going with a darker color didn't take away from the airiness of the room.

In my mind I wanted a white and grey room with modern touches. In reality, that wasn't us. We aren't the couple with lots of white in our home. White, as gorgeous as it is, does not always give off the cozy feeling, and that was the main thing I wanted to change in our second home. Plus, with two dark haired dogs, white gets dirty quickly. There were elements of our first master bedroom that felt so young to me: DIY "love" letters, a DIY sunburst mirror, a hand me down recliner that did not match the room whatsoever, cheap throw pillows, etc. Don't get me wrong, it was a beautiful room that I will forever cherish, but our style has definitely changed!

Even though I sometimes wonder what we were thinking when we decorated a certain way or chose a certain piece of furniture, I am still in awe that our first home was what it was. Chris and I did not experience the fixer-upper woes that some newlyweds and first-time home-buyers experience, but we were able to turn a cookie cutter house into our one-of-a-kind home.

Below are pictures from the day we moved in.

To see our full house tour, click here.