HELLOOOO friends! Wow, what a summer this has been! So much has happened around our home in the past couple of weeks so I thought I’d do a “life lately” post to catch you up with the latest renovation update! You might want to sit down with a cup of coffee or tea, though….this will be a long one :).

• Before I get into the update, I wanted to let you know that HomeBody Gathering Place is open for a short time to new members! We kick off the fall season with our lovely community of HomeBodies on September 1. If you love creating a sanctuary for your family or would like to be inspired to, we only open a few times a year so we would love to have YOU join us! Click here to learn more and join!

We are SOOOO happy to be so close to the tail end of this home renovation!

The last few weeks have felt like one of the more tiring phases of the whole renovation process. For those who are considering a renovation in your home, I’ll tell you why this is so you can prepare for it! And for those of you who just enjoy seeing the process, I’ll give you a little peek at the messy reality :) as well as the pretty that is starting to show in our progress!

When you live in your home during a renovation, there are many benefits but also some challenges to consider. There are various phases in a reno of this size when you have to change your daily life habits to accommodate the projects in various main rooms of your home. This means you also have to move yourself and your belongings from the rooms you usually like to hang out at home and sometimes you do that multiple times a week.

please note the spaces I’m sharing in this post are still in process, so we still need to sweep, dust and are awaiting paint touch ups
and wood heat registers and some finishing trim work ….

The past few weeks have been spent emptying every closet, moving furniture around and carrying boxes of belongings in AND out of every single room so contractors could install flooring upstairs and on the staircase. Challenging, yes. Fun? No. But SO WORTH IT!

We absolutely love our floors, they are everything we hoped they would be and more. Happy, light and so beachy but also warm and welcoming. They are real European White Oak hardwood, engineered. I unfortunately don’t have a link to them — they were purchased through a local store and have no brand name I can find online.

Also, our living room got a fresh coat of paint and we are THRILLED with the color! It’s Benjamin Moore Beach Glass. It is the perfect blue green combo of moody and happy. The color is complex, it’s beautiful as it changes throughout the day!

If you thought our home would be finished, clean, decorated or photo ready by now ha, well, I’m sorry to disappoint! We really are near the end of this project but as is often the case there are times when it honestly feels MORE chaotic than complete! Even though the projects themselves are close to done (after six months) the finishing work and getting settled is one of those “it sometimes gets worse before it gets better” situations.

Let me share the reality from last week! :) If you are one of those who likes to zoom in on a mess or if it makes you feel better about your own chaos to see it in mine, you’re welcome. :) If it unnerves you to see chaos, I feel that. Just scroll on by :).

So why do we still have so much chaos? We’ve had to shuffle everything in our home and move it somewhere else — over and over again so the contractors could paint the remaining main floor rooms and staircase as well as install the flooring up the steps and throughout the upstairs. Basically, we feel like we moved a few extra times this summer :).

Gratefully contractors helped us move some of the heavier items. We still did (and are doing) a lot of moving ourselves though and our backs are now reminding us we aren’t as young and strong as we used to be. HA!

The past couple of weeks we’ve been trying to put it all back where it belongs — that’s going a bit slower than I’d like but it’s partly because we’re also trying to figure out where we want everything (as well as what we can no longer keep!). And we’re slower because of our backs. :) And other life obligations — oh, and a quick beach trip last week which I can’t wait to tell you about!

Also I should mention we are still awaiting the final phase of this reno, which is the last paint touch ups and any remaining “punch list” items to finish it all off! So even though we’re nearly done, until those last parts are complete it means we can’t use or organize some spaces like we will be able to when it’s all done. Which also adds to the sense of chaos!

For example, waiting on paint touch ups and finishing work is impacting our little mudroom which has to remain filled with stacks of boxes until we can use the shelves and get organized. I’ll share the newly painted mudroom and powder room in a future post!

It’s good to remember throughout a renovation that home takes time, thought and intention, it’s not a one hour HGTV makeover. We will enjoy the journey for years to come! In fact, even once our contractors are done, we’ll still have things we want to do or will need to finish in the future.

However, it’s easy to slip into a mindset during a renovation that you won’t be content until you get every single thing done or even decorated exactly way you want it. Some people DO get to arrive at a perfectly finished home at the end of their renovation, but not us! We are thrilled to return to the slower journey of home creating though and are just so grateful to have had a head start on some of the projects!

FINALLY we are at the point where we have started putting some of the spaces together. It’s exciting to turn it into our home and to see our style take shape with each layer we add (and to see some things we’ve had for years finding a new place in our home!).

My husband and I were just talking about this today — I am enjoying just being in the house! I am taking my time to sense what feels right and what doesn’t and then I tweak things to impact how the space feels. It’s fun trying or combining different colors, textures, furnishings and accessories to create the right mood. Which mood will be the right one? It takes time to decide that, but I live with things for awhile and if I decide something isn’t feeling right, I can change or replace it. That is my process at this point, it’s little tweaks until it feels right to me :).

This home will be like all of our others in that our style always emerges and takes shape over time. My style doesn’t necessarily change, I’m pretty consistent on what I like, but how our style will be showcased or even re-interpreted in new surroundings will evolve over time.

The process of “getting settled” can’t be rushed! I’m sure I’ll change many things as we live in each space and go through more seasons here, but simple doable “changes” have always been the most rewarding for me. I keep reminding my husband to not get too attached to something in a particular spot because it might not be there the next day :). Good thing he usually agrees once I explain it. And he often has his own opinions on our home too, so we are used to change and moving things around until one or hopefully both of us love it.

It’s the little things that are bringing joy these days, such as hanging art and even this linen board in our guest room. Yes, we now have a real guest room and bathroom (they were occupied by my parents before the Tiny Cottage was complete) so I feel like our house GREW, too!

It’ll be neat to make those spaces our own in time, but it is also fun to use what we have right now just to get settled. We have my sister’s family coming this weekend so we’ve felt extra motivated to use what we have to make it more welcoming :).

My husband has been asking me to display those vintage floats (fishing floats) for ages so he’s thrilled they found a home hanging on a rope on the closet door. Do you recognize other things in this room? :) You never know when or where something will show up.

I had a reader once say she loves that about following me — we move things around a lot and re-use them in new places so looking at my photos is like a game of Where’s Waldo!

This chair is all set for Lily who loves having cozy spots around the house. A little blanket keeps her comfy and the chair clean :).

Speaking of cozy spots for Lily and things you might remember from the past, I still love this rug my girls and I designed for Annie Selke Dash and Albert! Do you remember voting for our rugs in their contest years ago? If so, thank you. What a fun experience it was to get to design rugs for them!

Even though we’ve been so busy around our home this summer, we’ve been taking time to enjoy summer, too.

Our weather has been perfect all season, so there have been plenty of walks …

We’re also enjoying a return to familiar rituals. Even though our kitchen is also still awaiting final finishing work, we don’t take for granted that we’re now able to make coffee and prepare meals in a real kitchen (definitely not sad to leave the bathroom coffee making in the past). Beatrix (our new stove) is a dream and we’re pleased with her cooking ability so far! :)

Coffee alone in the morning is one my favorite things! We’ve had contractors in the house forever so being able to just savor my morning in a quiet house, by myself, is truly the best feeling.

We’re also having the best time planning our backyard and even started planting things outside, our new jasmine is SO happy on our porch! It smells so heavenly. More to share on plants and our backyard progress, but that’ll be a post for another day.

Oh, and this creatively re-imagined book (book #12 for me!) launched this week! Simply Home is a combination of my best selling books Simple Decorating and Simple Organizing, so two previously paperback books in one new hardback! You flip it one way and it’s the decorating side and turn it over for organizing!

There are SO many good tips in here (I think we counted 600!). The book is so relevant and helpful if (like me!) you enjoy simple realistic ideas or inspiration to create order and beauty in the chaos of life :). This was hard earned experience and practical advice from my own home, friends, so I’m happy to share it with you. Simply Home would make a lovely housewarming gift, too. (If you get it and love it, I would appreciate if you could leave a review! Good reviews really help to get a book into people’s homes, so as always, I am very grateful for your support).

We also took a few days to leave our home and go to one of our OTHER favorite beach destinations … Seabrook! You might remember we went there a few years ago, I shared the whole tour of the home we stayed in HERE.

This time we stayed as one of the very first guests in a brand new darling home I can’t wait to share with you. We had a lot of fun. Stay tuned for a post on that and as well as more updates around our own home!

If you made it through our renovation and followed along with this whole post, thank you for being here, friend. ;)

See previous ‘Life Lately’ posts here.

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