Decorate Archives | A Personal Organizer

Our New Home Tour

By Helena Alkhas
Filed Under: Decorate, Living

From San Diego to Chicagoland

Hello and welcome to our new home!

It is hard to believe but it has been almost two years since we moved from San Diego to Chicagoland, after 2 moves in 18 months and a full year in our new home, life finally feels settled again and I can give you a home tour.

You can read about our process of leaving the Navy and transitioning to civilian life here and check the before pictures of our new home here.

I am still working on many small things but the bulk of the work has been done. We did all the repairs needed, painted the house inside and out with some gorgeous colors and now it’s time to enjoy a new season.

I hope you enjoy the home tour and come back often. I will be updating this post with photos from all other rooms as we get them done.

Tell me in the comments what’s your favorite thing! I will love to know.

Helena Alkhas | Home Tour

As soon as you enter the house and step into the foyer you’ll see the living room to your left and the dining room to your right.

This is the first view you’ll have of the dining room when walking into the house.The French doors you see in the back are my office doors. It used to be a sunroom but since we don’t need one more sitting area in the house, I claimed it for my home office.

Addie and I have always shared offices and it’s very nice to have one for each of us now.

These windows….

I was the only one to say no to this house. It’s a large home and I knew it would require time, energy and money to keep it clean to my standards. But these windows and all the light that comes through it all day long convinced me to move here.

The house we lived for the first 8 months here in Glenview was very dark and I had a terrible first winter there.

Until we remodeled our laundry/mudroom this is where the boys were landing their backpacks after school. It worked great except that I prefer not to see all that mess. 😉

From Complete Disaster To Awesome Laundry Room

By Helena Alkhas
Filed Under: Decorate, Laundry & Linens

How A Facelift Transformed Our Dysfunctional Laundry Room Into An Awesome Mudroom/Laundry Room Combo

If you have been following the blog for some time, you know I have lived with a tight, walk-through laundry room in every home we lived in the last 16 years.

Our laundry rooms were either tight or they were outside of the house (think Southern California), without any type of structure or organizing system to support the activity it’s meant to.

I’m sure you know what I am talking about as we all have seen them: laundry rooms that sit in tight corners, dark basements, cold garages, closets or in a passage between the kitchen and the garage.

It’s hard to tackle the laundry when the space you’re working in doesn’t offer much comfort. Even more when it comes to doing the laundry which isn’t my favorite chore around the house, to begin with.

So, when we moved to our new home, I was looking forward to having a laundry area that would be both functional, comfortable to work in and of course, pretty!

woman holding a Yorkshire terrier in blue laundry room — Me and Tuff in the new laundry room.

The laundry here at home has a good size, however, it also works as a passage to the garage – yes, I know, again! and it’s also connected to the side of the house through a hallway forming an L-shape space.

We come through the garage from school, groceries, travels and like every family, we have our stuff and we need a place to store them.

We also use the side door daily when we go for walks, to take the trash out, to care for the yard etc.

In summary, this tight area gets A LOT of traffic and it has to hold A LOT of stuff.

And since we’re no longer living in sunny San Diego and are now dealing with extreme winters in Illinois, we have muddy boots and wet jackets that need a place to dry which means we needed a mudroom.

After we painted the entire house, inside and out, we wanted to take a well-deserved break from anything house related for a while.

The holidays were coming up, winter was showing its face again and we wanted to enjoy the season in our new home. So it was only in March of this year that we took a full breath and decided to get some work in the laundry room done.

We knew we didn’t want a full renovation, moving plumbing around, installing cabinetry or replacing the washer and dryer, so we asked our awesome contractor to work with us on a “facelift”.

Just enough work to make the room new, shake off the bad layout and install organizing systems that would work for our family.

The Plan For The Laundry Room

Change flooring
Paint ceiling and walls
Move cabinets to garage
Add trim and baseboards
Change sink (big enough to wash Tuff)
Install hooks
Install a bench
Install storage
Add lighting
Change hardware

Creating Temporary Solutions In The Mudroom

As I said, the room has an L-shape, being one leg the mudroom and the other the entrance from the garage and laundry area.

In the mudroom space, there were large kitchen cabinets that were taking the entire area, leaving a narrow passage to the side door.

There weren’t hooks or a space for coats, making our arrival in the house a mess, even more, when we had wet coats or jackets. And since there was no lighting on this side of the room, it always looked cold and drab no matter how much I cleaned or decluttered it.

white hallway with white cabinetry — How the mudroom space was before

To create a temporary storage solution for the jackets all I did was to install Command hooks. It drove me nuts to look at it but it saved the day for several months.

I actually have a bag full of these hooks, in several sizes and they have been a life-saver over the years. In every new home, until we figure out the use of the space, they’re a great organizing solution.

A Word On Cabinets As A Storage Solution

One would think that having all those cabinets would keep this space free of clutter but what I learned about cabinets, at least for my family, is that they make it harder to organize and keep things organized.

They require storage solutions (a.k.a. bins, boxes etc) that fit perfectly inside their space, that match their drawers and shelf sizes and it can become hard to find them, not to mention costly and time-consuming.

Having a counter-top also gives us a place to leave everything “for later” which many days results in the clutter you’re seeing in this photo.

So, for that reason I became a huge fan of storage solutions like Elfa from The Container Store which offers the flexibility I need to keep everything organized, easily accessible, and ready to use.

Here is how the mudroom is looking like without the cabinets and with new lighting.

Mudroom with external door and hooks on wall — Without the cabinets, we gained space to move, hang our jackets and dry our boots.

A wooden bench was built and painted for the mudroom and will soon be installed. It’s high enough for the boys to kick their shoes off and deep enough for us to sit even if their backpacks are around.

Fun Alkhas’ Mudroom Fact:

With a house full of “guys” that don’t really care if things are organized or how I decorate the house, I’m used to not hear from them on the changes I make, but this room earned a WOW from each of them when they first entered it. Even Tuff elected it as his new nap room!

The Laundry Room

As you can see below, this side of the room had nothing but a sink, washer, and dryer.

It lacked a surface to store laundry supplies, hold the laundry and the baskets, and the narrow area next to the sink quickly became a pile of shoes from the five of us.

white laundry room with washer and dryer — The laundry room before

I wanted to make this space look like it was a part of the house.

I wanted it to be easy to clean, keep organized and have everything we needed to come in and out of the house in the crazy Chicago weather, but also wanted to use the colors we used in the other areas of the house.

From the months we spent in our rental home, the first house we lived here in Illinois, I knew everything of personal use we needed would fit in 5 drawers, so I just needed to add storage for laundry supplies, paper towels, and the laundry baskets.

Since Addie is a runner and likes to keep his running gear here, I added a couple of drawers for him. This simplified a lot the laundry process of his running gear and my life too! Win, Win.

Tip: If your laundry is close to the door your family uses most consider keeping socks and daily used sports gearhere. One less load for you to carry to the bedrooms! 😉

Planning Storage For The Laundry Room

Armed with measurements and photos of the space, I went to The Container Store to plan the storage for our laundry room area.

The initial Elfa design we did, actually didn’t have drawers, but shelves.

I was planning on using baskets like the one I used in our powder room closet to hold our beanies, gloves etc. but after I came home and started thinking things through, I realized they weren’t going to be as practical as having drawers.

Elfa design for laundry room — The original Elfa design

So before installation day, I went back to the store and we redesigned it to fit drawers instead.

Another important change was the space above the drawers where you see “Short Hang” on the design above and a valet rod. The truth is, we don’t wash any delicate items that need to be hung to dry.

I have created a wardrobe for daily use that only has machine washable items and Addie’s work clothes go to the dry cleaner, so it’s really not the best use of space for us.

Tip: plan your space to work for your family needs. A rod with hangers may look great in a catalog but if you won’t use why buy it?

When your laundry room is so functional and pretty you even start enjoying the laundry! — The short hang rod space still there and was later changed to hold a shelf.

laundry room storage — The ironing board got tucked away and each of us has a drawer.

A sink to take care of my pots, wash dirty shoes or just give our puppy his weekly bath.

Keeping everything we use easily accessible and making it pretty.

organized laundry room with Elfa design — Tuff got his corner of our laundry room. His meds, shampoo, and gear are all here.

Now we have everything we use on a daily basis organized in this room.

From gloves, beanies, and scarfs, to running gear, hooks for jackets and a floor that is easy (and pretty!) to maintain our laundry/mudroom combo is a winner.

Items we seldom use also got a home. Things like Tuff’s travel bag, the kids ski helmets and goggles are now safely stored and out of the way.

I am so happy with this room that I am almost liking laundry day a bit more!

I truly hope our laundry room makeover gives you ideas on how to organize and improve your laundry and mudroom areas. Have a comment or a question? Leave them below.

Until next time!

Shop organizing products on this post — The links below are affiliate links and if you make a purchase using them I will receive a commission at no extra cost to you.

Tips To Perfectly Style Your Cart

By Helena Alkhas
Filed Under: Decorate, Entertain

As the weather starts to warm up and we all begin to venture out of hibernation, it’s time to start thinking about entertaining guests again. And what better way to prepare for guests than by stocking and styling a bar cart in your home?

Bar carts are so wonderful because they can be personalized to fit any decor style. They’re more than just a functional place to store your cocktail accouterments, they can really contribute to the overall design of a room and become a signature piece in your home.

If you’re putting together a bar cart for warm weather get-together read on for some tips on styling your piece perfectly!

The Essentials:

There are certain tools every bar cart should be stocked with, no matter what your drink preference is. Things like a cutting board, ice bucket and shaker are almost always must-have items. These items are also a great way to start to infuse some of your style into the design, for example, this gorgeous rustic cutting board would add plenty of character to your cart.

Next, of course, are the glasses to hold your drinks! Depending on what you’re serving you may want to put out wine glasses, beer mugs, champagne flutes, shorter tumblers, or even copper Moscow Mule mugs. Displaying a variety of different size and shape glassware will help create visual interest in your cart.

Finally, we can’t forget the actual cart itself! There really is a bar cart to match any style out there, whether you want something glam and gold, wooden or even acrylic. Personally, I would gravitate toward something simple like this piece from Wayfair so I’m able to add touches of my personal style.

The Beverages:

This one is totally up to your preference, but I’ll tell you what we would stock our bar cart with. We drink scotch, red wine and prosecco so those are all must haves. I also always try to make sure to have a good red wine on hand for hosting guests.

It’s not necessary to have every liquor under the sun available, you really only need to stock what you actually like to drink. However, if you want to please everyone in a larger party, a good list of basics to start with are vodka, gin, rum, tequila and whiskey. From there you can build off and add common mixers like juices, club soda, and bitters and garnishes like lemons and limes. Bonus tip: Display your mixers in glass carafes for a really luxurious touch. Building your liquor collection can be fun and the different colored bottles make for a great focal point when arranged on your cart.

The Fun Stuff:

Now that you’ve assembled your barware and beverage components, it’s time to add your personal touch. The online interior design service Havenly has a fun blog post on just this topic that should give you some great inspiration for styling your own bar cart.

A floral arrangement is a good way to add some height to your cart and hanging a piece of art above the cart will give your guests something to chat about while they fix their drink. You can also express your personality with fun drink accessories like cute cocktail napkins, swizzle sticks, and a tea towel draped over the cart handle.

Finally, try adding one interesting piece (I’d go for something like this patterned vase) that’s purely decor related to really tie in your bar cart-style with the rest of your room. With these last few touches of your personal style your bar cart should be perfectly stocked and ready to serve your guests!

Do you have a bar cart in your home? Planning on putting one together for the upcoming warm weather? I’d love to hear your styling ideas in the comments below!

Organizing A Small Bathroom Packed With Function

By Helena Alkhas
Filed Under: Bathroom, Decorate

How We Decorated & Organized Our Small Guest Bathroom

My good friend and mentor, Geralin Thomas, always says: if you’re going to start an organizing project, start with the fridge! Organizing a small space will give you a quick sense of accomplishment and energize you to tackle what’s next. With that in mind, when we first moved into our new home, organizing our small bathroom and decorating it was one of the first items on my long to-do list.

There are affiliate links in this post and I may receive a commission at no cost to you if you use these links and make a purchase.

This small bathroom is located on our first floor, next door to the laundry and adjacent to the living room. This powder room also works as a guest room and holds our utility closet in what one day will become a shower.

As we have plans to fully renovate that bathroom and make it into a “real” guest bathroom, with a shower stall, initially, I wanted to keep that closet empty to avoid moving things around over and over.

However, where to place everything that we frequently use, if the laundry room next door doesn’t have adequate storage for bulky items, like the vacuum cleaner, brooms or the tall cleaning product bottles?

I didn’t want to place these items in the basement – too far! Nor in the garage – too cold! As we didn’t have the budget to renovate the laundry room/mudroom right away, this future shower was the most convenient place to store all cleaning supplies and tools, as well as other items I’ll show you soon.

Another important consideration is the fact that this is the official “powder room” of the house and I wanted to tie it in with the living areas. So, the least costly and quickest way to do it was with a can of paint and some small changes.

Color Selection

As I shared with you in this post, we wanted to try something completely different from our previous home, back in San Diego. That house was beige with white trim from head to toe, and we were ready to try something more exciting. We decided to use Indigo Batik as the main color in some areas and as an accent color in the adjacent rooms.

Considering that this is such a tiny bathroom with only 24 square feet, I thought any choice would be a low risk and easy to change one if we didn’t like it. So, we went for it!

montage of images from a navy blue powder room and utility closet.

Creating a powder room that’s fun and packed with function.

We had the wall painted in Indigo Batik, which is a dark but rich, almost velvety blue. We paired it with pure white trims and the ceiling in Simple White.

Another important decision was regarding the hardware. The original hardware – the door handle, faucet, toilet flush handle, towel holder, door stopper, hinges and air vent- was all gold or brown. It was also old and in many cases, it was chipped or rusted. It was time for a change!

montage of bathroom with rubbed oil fixtures and Indigo Batik walls.

How we selected the colors and materials.

We decided to go with rubbed oil fixtures and the contrast with the white and with the blue is gorgeous.

To carry the colors you’ll see in the decor in the living areas of the first floor, I used a metal candle holder that has delicate, small gold dots, as well as a beautiful trash can and a gray hand towel – all from Target. When we have guests I lit the candle and it looks so delicate!

The framed art is another great find from Home Goods. Can’t beat them!

There are many options of fixtures in rubbed oil bronze on the market these days. Research for a style that matches your taste, but also take into consideration the quality and your budget. If you are planning on renovating anytime soon -even if it’s 2 years from now, don’t invest in the most expensive ones as you may decide to change the sink or even the toilet and the fixtures may not match the new ones.

In our case, to change the sink and the toilet didn’t make sense as we will renovate this bathroom down the road and we just wanted to spruce it up.

Accessorizing The Guest Bathroom – Less is More

I tend to hang less stuff on the wall and have less decor around the house these days.

Maybe it’s a change in taste as I enjoy having “white space” in our home, maybe it’s wisdom -I know how much work it takes to keep everything clean. The fact is that I haven’t felt the need to add anything above the toilet tank as you’ll usually see in other homes.

I also skipped changing the mirror as I haven’t found anything striking and as I know that down the road we’ll renovate the space to include a vanity and a new mirror.

So, I’m keeping it quite simple with the items I described above.

Organizing The Utility Closet

The space for the future shower is small and we hope to find more space for it in an enclosed area next to it. For now, we have a small closet with wire shelving and good lighting.

It has 2 feet 6″ x 3 feet so for a utility closet, it works quite well.

However, because it’s located in our powder room, I wanted to make sure it’s not screaming “cleaning supplies” when guests open that door.

Again, I didn’t want to spend a lot of money here so I invested in these gorgeous baskets by The Container Store to store not only cleaning supplies but also bathroom items like extra hand towels, toilet paper and a basket with convenience items I keep for our guests.

To protect the floor from spills or scratches, I used Elfa shelf liners to line the floor.

I still have to install wall hooks to hold the broom, mop, and other items, but that’s coming soon.

Here is a list of what this small bathroom closet holds. As you can see, it has an important function in our home!

Image of utility closet with blue and beige baskets from the Container Store. — How we organized the utility closet in the powder room for maximum fun and function!

I couldn’t be happier with the transformation of our powder room. It’s a pleasure to walk by it and see the beautiful color and details, it’s also a pleasure to find everything we need for the cleaning and maintenance of our home here. I love this mighty space!

Want to organize your bathroom? Download this checklist and get started!

Do you have a bathroom in need of a little TLC? Have you recently organized your small bathroom? Share with me in the comments below!

Creating An Interior Color Scheme For Our New Home

By Helena Alkhas
Filed Under: Decorate

Pottery Barn Colors Inspired Color Palette

It’s no secret that I love Pottery Barn! Their laidback style has in fact been a source of inspiration for me for over a decade, and the colors, rustic materials used on both their furnishing and home decor resonates a lot with my Brazilian roots.

For some years now they have showcased their interior colors collection, Pottery Barn colors, a selection of colors that you’ll see in their catalogs in partnership with Sherwin Williams.

So, when I saw a dark navy blue popping up in their featured homes, it instantly sparked a desire to give try a dark color in our new home, and as you now know it was a beautiful image at the BHG magazine that triggered the navy blue choice on our new home exterior colors!

Back in 2008 when we were living in Maryland, I bought this gorgeous blue and white rug for our family room. Well, little did I know that I’d fully embrace Pottery Barn’s beautiful, dark, rich blues in our new house.

young Yorkie sitting on a navy blue and white rug

Tuff on my favorite rug!

Be Open To Change, And New Colors

The painting job on our last home in San Diego was arranged and contracted over the phone, from Maryland, before our move, and I went on “super safe mode” and painted the house beige from head to toe, but this time around I was ready to try something completely different.

To balance all that beige, in San Diego, I played with colors on pillows, home decor, and even hang super tall red floral curtains (talk about happy!) but here I wanted to go the other way around and create contrast with the walls. Also, this house is larger, and I wanted to create more intimate spaces in the living and dining room areas where the dark color choice would be perfect for that.

On the other hand, I wanted to find a light color that would go on all other areas of the house as the base color. I wanted something that would make the house feel warmer and inviting, even in our family room which has a double ceiling height.

To get me started, I curated images of spaces with navy blues on my New Home Pinterest board. I also downloaded the Sherwin Williams color app (ColorSnap Visualizer at the app store) to see options to the colors I was flirting with by using the similar and coordinating colors functions available on the app.

Get Everyone Aboard

While Addie doesn’t get much involved in the decor of our house, it was essential to get him and the boys involved in the color selection process. Even if they say “I don’t care,” once a color is up, they will let you know if they dislike it. Believe me!

To help the boys “see” the colors, I pulled my clippings from catalogs and magazines, and that together with the patches of color on the wall helped them make a decision; surprisingly, it also gave them ideas and inspiration on what they wanted to have in their bedrooms. Win-Win!

Test Your Colors Everywhere

Since we have an East-West house and the light pours in all day long through the windows, making the colors look very different depending on the time of the day, I wanted to test all these colors “everywhere” in the house to make sure we loved them. So, we lived with the old paint and several patches of colors for quite some time on our walls before we made our final choices.

We started with a selection of grays, graiges and dark slate which I honestly thought I wanted, but we found them cold, formal and not like us at all. We also tested several “whites” and soon I learned that a real, old fashion white is the hardest thing to find these days! LOL

paint samples on wall - selecting interior paint colors

Test your favorite colors on several walls of your home to see how light affects the way it looks.

For the dark color, with the grays and slate out of the way, we decided to try a color similar to what we used on the exterior: navy blue. There are several options on the market, and we tested Indigo Batik (SW 7602), Commodore (SW 6524), and Salty Dog (SW 9177).

We finally decided to test a color called Simple White (SW 7021) from Pottery Barn Colors. It was a match made in heaven to our house and it balanced so well the dark navy blue we were planning on using inside. Above you can see Light French Gray and Simple White.

We tested Simple White on several areas of the house to see how it would look and I can’t tell you how much we loved it. Depending on the time of the day or the weather outside, this color will have tonnes of very delicate, sophisticated pink, other times it will look like an ultralight gray while on other days I will swear it’s just beige, making it the perfect color for me: never a dull moment!

several color strips of sherwin williams for pottery barn colors

Pick multiple color strips of the same color and tape them where you’d like to use them.

Once we felt the colors were right for us we went ahead with the painting process which happened with us already living in the house.

Ultimately, our Pottery Barn inspired color palette became:

Simple White (SW 7021) for all walls, in all rooms except the living room and bathrooms.
Indigo Batik (SW 7602) for accent walls and details.
Pure White (SW 7005) for all trims, doors, baseboards, and molding.
Black Magic (SW 6991) for the front door and shutters

Interior colors pottery barn indigo batik

simple white pottery barn colors by sherwin williams color strip

Used on all, but accent walls.

beige palette pottery barn colors

Used on all doors and trims.

The colors we ultimately used.

I hope our color-journey helps you when selecting interior colors for your home. The best thing about paint is that if you don’t like it, it’s the easiest fix ever!
Next, I’ll share with you our living room which became my favorite spot in the house to enjoy my first cup of coffee.

Leave your comments and questions below. I’ll love to hear from you.

Our New Home – Choosing Exterior Colors & A Checklist

By Helena Alkhas
Filed Under: Decorate

Selecting Exterior Colors For Our New Home

One of the most difficult -but also exciting- parts of the renovation process of our new home was choosing exterior colors we’d use since our house has two completely different “faces”. In the front, we have lots of red brick with two small areas of siding, while on the sides and on the back, we have no brick and all siding.

Our house sits on a wide street and you can see many homes when standing on our sidewalk. They range from beige, light greens and blues to light gray. We wanted to use a different color from our other homes and of course, we wanted our home to stand out in a nice way from our neighbors without clashing with them.

The original color of the house was a light brown with brown trim and it needed to be either refreshed or changed completely. Since we didn’t like the original color scheme, we decided to go for a complete change.

However, a big challenge for us was to choose exterior colors that would go well with the huge amount of red brick we have on our front facade as well as with an “all-siding” back.

Our first color choice was the easy, but always so classy, white with black shutters, which I love, but when you bring white to the back of the house, where you only have siding and trim, you’d have white siding and white trims without any contrast, and that was no fun!

Brick house with black shutters white trim — Exterior color choices Inspiration.

Looking for inspiration, I searched for homes on Pinterest to see color schemes that would be a success with hubby and the boys. I even started this new board just for the new home.

To my surprise, I immediately fell in love with darker colors like slate, dark grays and navy blues, but when I saw this image from Better Homes & Gardens magazine was love at first sight and I knew right away that I wanted to go with blue. I started to pay attention to this color scheme in our neighborhood and vicinities trying to imagine them in our home and all of a sudden, from garage doors to homes, I started seeing it everywhere!

Here is a gorgeous garage door I fell in love with!

Custom blue garage doors — Looking around for inspiration I found these gorgeous garage doors!

But Addie wasn’t yet convinced that this was “our” color, so we made a list of what we were looking for our new exterior colors.

Creating a Process For The Color Selection

To make the process simpler we had a list of considerations to help us select our colors:

It should be a color we love and wouldn’t get tired of.
It should be a happy color.
It should enhance the house and not drag it down.
It should contrast nicely with the red brick, not clash with it.
Should we paint the red brick white? If yes, what are the cons of painted brick? Does it last? Do they peel?
The chosen color should offer enough contrast from the paint color we select for the window trims.
We have a gray stone, near the ground, around the house.
Will we paint or change the gutters if we change the trim color?

A checklist to help you select the exterior colors of your home. Click to download. — Click on the image to download.

[clickToTweet tweet=”8 things to consider when choosing exterior colors for your home.” quote=”8 things to consider when choosing exterior colors for your home.” theme=”style1″]

The next thing I did was to print the pictures I made of all sides of the house, and with the considerations above in mind, I went to The Home Depot to explore the colors available! 🙂 OMG There were so many color options available, if you go there without a plan it will overwhelm you for sure.

I bought several samples – a well-worth investment – and we applied them to the side of the house to check what would work best. It was easy, thank goodness! The grays and slate were too dark and not the vibe we wanted. We are an unfussy couple, we have three boys and we wanted something classic but not serious.

siding of house painted with Hale Navy, slate and grays — Color samples we applied to the side of the house for testing.

Fortunately, we all loved the same color and that’s when we selected Hale Navy by Benjamin Moore.

This gorgeous, rich, deeply saturated color is part of Benjamin Moore’s historical collection and you can find it here as well as on their app, which is a great tool so you can see the color in your room using your phone’s camera.

A New Color, A New Home

After a power wash all around the house – the brick became brighter and sharper, we started the process of painting the house which took about two weeks for the crew to get it done.

Here are some shots of how the new color was taking shape. I was so happy!

[clickToTweet tweet=”Choosing exterior colors? Bring photos of every side of your home to the store with you!” quote=”Tip: Choosing exterior colors? Bring photos of every side of your home to the store with you!”]

The “Before” Exterior Color Scheme

Our new home! A home tour of the house before it all started. Here is the front. — The house before

Next, we needed to select a color for the trim and front door, but that part was easy since we wanted a sharp contrast with the dark and rich blue and the best option would be pure white.

At first, we considered installing black shutters in the front and paint the front door black, however, once we removed the old shutters, Addie loved the clean front and we decided to keep it like that, without shutters which is what you see below.

The Front “After” – New Exterior Color Scheme

front of a brick house — The house after

The Back Exterior “Before”

The pure white trim gives the blue on the back of the house a sharp, clean contrast and we love it. It’s so nice to come to a freshly painted house and I’m so pleased with the result.

The Back “after” – New Home Exterior Colors

Single family home painted with Hale Navy by Benjamin Moore and white trims. — The back of our home

Now that the painting is done, we will work on other projects like do a new front yard, move the air conditioning units to the side of the house, install a walkway on the right side of the house where we have access to the laundry and mudroom and create a mini-patio for the trashcan storage.

The biggest project will be building a patio or a deck, which we can’t decide on but with so many things on our plate, that will probably be a project for spring 2019!

And there you have it! I hope our “color journey” helps you choose an exterior color palette you love for your house!