Florida Living and Coastal Decor
All in Bent Palm House
Our small ranch home’s living space has seen a few renovations in its lifetime. It’s most recent updates involved ripping out the massive corner fireplace in the living room and replacing the dated wood floors throughout with LVP flooring.
I recently refreshed our dining room with a few new pieces that invoke a laid back, coastal feeling by way of natural textures and neutrals. I’m really happy with how it turned out and can’t wait to show you! I’ll also show you what it looked like before…
I finally revamped our guest bedroom just in time for Christmas! I was pretty indecisive about this space for a while and I think the fact that I started decorating it in the fall influenced some of my decisions. You’ll see what I mean when you check out the color scheme. ;)
To start, I’ll show you what this room looked like from before we renovated it and after we moved in.
Here’s how I added a touch of fall in our bathroom with a pumpkin soup bowl that also serves a functional purpose. At the end of the post, I’ll give you ten more ways to repurpose it, as well as sources for other lidded bowls that are perfect for the holidays!
Today, I’m talking all about the new slipcovers I received from Comfort Works and how our pull-out sofa is working out. I bought the IKEA FARLOV armchairs with white slipcovers and really love the way they look! The original covers have a nice Hamptons look with a classic fit and pleated corners that can work in a traditional space or a more modern one. White was great for summertime, but I was really looking forward to trying out a different color on these chairs for fall.
For now, I still have the same decor that was in our last home’s foyer, but I’d like to make a few changes in here. I envision a singular large lamp, a few cute decorative accents and a large vase to swap out fresh greenery on the console table. Below is what my dining room looks like with nothing but lamps and a small picture frame on the console table.
This seems like a long awaited post because I have received so many questions about our flooring! Besides my time being consumed by a dozen home projects, I waited a few months before writing about them so that I could give you the most thorough and honest review possible!
Here is what our floors looked like when we bought the house. Dark wood throughout, except for the carpeting in the bedrooms. To the right is our office and you can see the before and after shots by clicking the links below:
I seriously cannot believe that it’s already June! Time sure is flying. The other day, I took a few minutes to clear my kitchen counters and immediately felt relief! I love clean counter tops, so I figured I should grab my camera and snap a few pictures. ;)
I’ve talked about this before - about 3 years ago actually - when I blogged about my new year’s resolution of always keeping fresh greenery in the house. At the time, we were living in our previous home and I had access to ample amounts of palms and flowering plants in our yard and even some that grew in the woods near our house. If you scroll down on my Instagram feed, you’ll see plenty of shots with vases full of green fronds and blooms, especially during the spring and summer months.
I have a little dining room update, finally! I waited for a few months to purchase the right mirror for our dining room. I knew I wanted a large round mirror to hang over the console table in the dining room, but I couldn’t decide what style. Finally, I decided that a black thin frame would match the frame on our Samsung Frame TV in the living room. I also chose matte black door handles and curtain rods throughout our home, so a matte black frame just made sense because it would balance everything out.
It’s been said that patience is a virtue and I’m here to say that I’ve found that to be true, especially in the home decor realm. If I’m going to spend time and money on a change in my home, I need to know that it’s going to be worth it. I don’t make decisions until I’ve thoroughly done my research and sometimes that means the process can take a long time, but it’s always worth not having regrets later!
With enough planning and creativity, you can turn a small space into one that works for you! Our home was probably the 10th or 11th home we looked at in a two month span, so I had seen smaller living rooms than the one in our house. A lot of the homes in the area we were looking to buy were built in the 1970’s and it showed. Even after some major home renovations and even large additions, some homes still had very tiny living spaces. It was a huge turn-off if I’m being honest and I started to wonder if I could even handle it. My husband assured me that I would “do what you always do and make it nice”, but I really had my doubts.
In my last post, I went through all of the updates we made to our kitchen since we bought our home. Although the new countertops, modern backsplash and lighter flooring really opened up the space, there was one more thing on my list that would completely change the look of our kitchen: Paint!
I was pleasantly surprised the first time I walked into the house we now call home and saw the kitchen. The best thing about the kitchen was that the cabinets were completely worth saving and actually had a lot of great features, like a built in spice rack and sliding shelves. So, we kept the cabinets, but changed a few other things during the renovation. We planned to have the cabinets painted after the renovations were completed and I’ve been sharing bits of that progress in my Instagram stories. Choosing a paint color was not easy! I’ll talk more about that soon, but for now I’ll just focus on the details that have been updated so far.
The warm light just before sunset was so lovely the other evening that I had to get out my camera and snap a few pics. Of course, Miss Summer happily obliged when I asked her to sit in on my mini photo shoot in our new office/guest room. (Sans collar because the those colors just don’t go with my neutral decor.) ;)
Designing a complete gut and remodel of our master bathroom was fun but also the most challenging room in our full home renovation. I have lots of experience with updating dated rooms and styling spaces to give them a completely new look. I did not have experience with all of the intricacies that go along with finding and purchasing the correct fixtures and valves, etc. to get our shower plumbing to work as desired. But more about that in a minute.
Our guest bathroom is going to be so FUN! I’m super excited about the tile, lighting, mirror…and, well, all of it! I hope you had a chance to read my previous posts about the new house design scheme and how it is going to be quite a bit different than our current decor. If you haven’t, here they are, below. ;)
The topic today is how you can completely change the theme of your Christmas decor just by switching out your accents, as shown in the mood boards I’ve created below. It also includes how I would be decorating our new home for Christmas, in the off chance that we actually get moved in before Christmas day! I actually love all of these designs and would definitely try each of them out in the future!
“What’s it going to look like?” I’m very excited to share with you the answer to the most common question I have received regarding the renovation of our new place, aka the Bent Palm House! I’ve posted a few inspiration photos recently on my Instagram feed which highlighted some pretty big differences in my current decor and what I have in mind for the new house. It’s kind of funny to say this, but it’s almost like this house “spoke” to me differently. It was just begging for some “modern vintage nautical” charm. And that’s just what she’s getting!
In my last post, I announced that we bought a new house and eluded to the fact that it will be quite a bit smaller than our current home. There are a few reasons why we are downsizing, but here’s the short answer: Being able to boat from our backyard in the very specific location we liked was more important to us than the size of the home. Now, if you’d like the long answer, keep reading!
