Project Reveal from McDaniel Avenue

The home I’m sharing today is a special one to me that we just finished up. It belongs to a friend I grew up with and her growing family. In fact, our babies are only a few weeks apart from each other! Rest assured, we snuck in a few play dates along the way with this project 🙂

Not only was I honored that Liz trusted me to design her first home, I was also excited to reconnect with an old friend. Liz and her husband, Craig, had some great ideas in mind for their home and needed someone to put them all together. This is where I come in!

And since so many of you loved how I broke down the design process in this post, I’ll take your feedback (thank you!) and try to do the same here….

Creating a furniture layout that fit the needs of their family was first. This included space for entertaining and relaxing, plenty of shelving for books, a fireplace mantel from Liz’s mom, storage for toys and more. Space planning can be tricky (and overwhelming) for many people but especially for a first time home buyer investing in new pieces.

Before sourcing anything, I took their overall budget and broke it down by item to make sure we stayed on track. It’s so easy for this to get out of hand when furnishing one room, let alone multiple rooms. Keeping the big pieces neutral, we added a lot of color and pizazz in the accessories. I’m thrilled with how everything turned out and so happy Liz and Craig are too!

Okay, ready for the reveal? I’ve also included a few notes and tips and I’d love to hear your thoughts! Let’s start in the dining room……

Dining Room

And AFTER…..

Do you remember awhile back when I was SO excited about this dining room design board? I posted all about it and even linked some of the sources. You can see that post by clicking here.

It’s always exciting to see a board come to life.

Favorite details in the dining room:

• The rich navy blue paint color. Since posting a picture on social media, I received SO many requests on which paint color this is. It’s HALE NAVY by Benjamin Moore and it’s a good one.

• Colorful, fun yet classy rug from Lulu & Georgia. It has navy accents and warm tones which go nicely with the wall paint color and table. A perfect combo in my book 🙂

Liz and Craig have collected so many special pieces of artwork and photographs that barely had to purchase any other wall decor for their entire condo. We added shelves in the dining room to display pieces that tell a story about them. From a photograph of Liz’s grandma on her wedding day, to brewery photos, the Chicago skyline (hometown) and more.

Remember the above tip about choosing pieces to scale?  I also like to play around with scale here and there. The only place we may have gone over scale was in the dining room. And this was on purpose since the Wolens love to entertain. We used a bench to keep the traffic flow easy and smaller scale steel chairs so the room wouldn’t feel “stuffed”.

Another piece that was important to add was the secretary desk (see that white piece behind the table?). Liz also uses the dining room as her office when she works from home so this was key to have a designated area she can work from (but also conceal when it’s time for dinner!).

Kitchen

and AFTER…..

We didn’t have to do much to the kitchen! Just added a backsplash (installed by my talented brother, Alex Terry). We also switched out the lighting to match the style of the condo better.

Hallway

Liz and Craig have a collection of photo blocks with personal pictures and sayings. We incorporated some of these around the condo and created a gallery wall in the hallway. That way, when friends and family come over these are on display! They can also add on to this wall with more memories.

Living Room

**Note to self: next time I take after photos, I will get them same angle as the before shots**

Sorry guys! Sometimes it’s so hard to shoot right at windows…. but here’s the AFTER of the living space….

Tips to keep in mind while shopping for small spaces:

• Use reflective pieces, like mirrors and metal, that reflect light and allow the space to feel bigger

• Scale! But also keep in mind function. We played with scale quite a bit in the dining room and I love how the overall feel of the room turned out.

Bedroom

and AFTER:

We did stick to a more neutral palette in the bedroom (I know, I mentioned above how we added so much color to their home ;). The bedroom is supposed to be the most relaxing room in a home and we weren’t about to mess with that.

{pillow details}

A few of my favorite things about the bedroom:

• Personal photographs framed of the couple from their wedding and travels (above the bed and chair)

• Custom painted dresser from MegMade

• Gallery wall above dresser (a little trick to make the TV look like a piece of art)

• Moroccan Headboard from West Elm

• Roman shade Liz’s mom made!

{for everyone that asks, you can mix beige and gray!}

And that’s a wrap!

Thank you to the Wolens for letting me help with your home and for sharing it here. I loved working with you and so excited for your new home!

Now, I need to take advantage of the girls nap time and finish packing for Texas. Off to Waco (home of the famous Fixer Upper) and Austin! I’ll be sharing updates on instagram stories and more on the blog soon!