READ HOME: The Living room

Life

Jul 27

Date

7.26.22

time

6:00 PM

Place

Media Room

The Living Room. She’s a vibe.

And just like that, we have been living in our charming 1930s cape cod home for 8 months. Honestly, where has time gone? And honestly, I shouldn’t even say that, because it is the most cliche saying these days…time seemingly just flies by and there is no point in mentioning it. But before I start down a rabbit hole of nonsense…let’s talk about home design.

One of these days we can talk about my fear of owning a home and how it took me several years to grow comfortable with making this type of investment. But for now, design. For as long as I can remember, I’ve always dreamed of having a space that felt equal parts beautiful and livable. Unsure of how to do that myself, I knew that one day I would need the help of an interior designer to make that come to life. This notion was further validated and we decided to purchase a home with an open concept living/dining/kitchen vibe. I knew that I was not capable of bridging the gap to make all those various spaces and stories flow together stylistically. Enter Kate Read!

Me and Kate. We became friends in January 2010 and became sisters in 2013. Insert ugly cry.

If you’ve been a part of my community here for a while, then you know that Kate is my sister-in-law (I walked down the aisle with Jason at her and Chris’ wedding…Chris is Jason’s brother). She’s a multi-talented creative who decided a few years ago to lean into her interior design gifting. Knowing that Kate and I have history (meaning she really knows me), I knew I wanted her to help me breathe vision into this home to make it the charming 21st Century Cape Cod I desired it to be.

To kick off this design party, we started with the Living Room. One of the many things I loved about Kate’s process is the in-depth questioning she did. I filled out a very detailed survey asking me questions about every single thing I wanted, how I would like it prioritized, my budget and my various interests stylistically. It was incredible. While the survey required some upfront work and thought, when I walked away from that task, I felt strongly that she had a sense of who I was and what I wanted in terms of design. For me personally, I was highly focused on their being character in the design, the space having a feeling and of course, staying under budget (for…Jason’s sake, because men and furniture cost = heart attack).

For the living room furniture budget, we set aside $10,000…which is a lot of money, but not really in terms of furniture. But again, Kate never made me feel that $10k wasn’t enough. In fact, she made sheer magic out of the coins we had set aside. Here’s a look at the final design we landed on and decided to implement.

**INSPO MOOD BOARD**

Before delving into the design, Kate first provided us with a mood board to ensure we were aligned on overall feel and vibe.

FINAL DESIGN SELECT

Kate presented us with two design options and we landed on this one

If we calculate, the Frame TV and the wallpaper, both of which were purchased ahead of building the design, our all in was closer to $13k. We are still in progress on finishing out things, but they are 90% there and I couldn’t be happier. When it came to determining the budget for our living room, we priotrized pieces that grounded the room, like the green velvet couch and the gold flecked credenza. Additionally, we wanted to feel confident enough that we could transition many of the pieces into our next home, which we will build on a mature piece of land somewhere in the woods one of these days. Jason’s dream to live in the middle of nowhere. Oh yes, I feel it is important to share that we did our purchases for this room in phases. Our first phase of purchases was around $4500 and then we did a secondary phase for $5500. Doing this in phases made things a bit easier to process on the financial side and allowed us to really think about each purchase before we made it, which I found helpful.

SOURCE LIST:

ACCENT CHAIR // HOME GOODS

ART PRINT 1

ART PRINT 2

BART CART // ALREADY OWNED

BURL WOOD COFFE TABLE

CRENDZA

FRAME TV // ON SALE PURCHASE

LEATHER ACCENT CHAIRS // ALREADY OWNED

NEWS PRINT OTTOMAN // NO LONGER SOLD

READING LIGHT

VINTAGE RUG // SOURCED FROM EBAY

And that’s our living room. Eeeeeppppp…I can’t believe I live here. We are swapping out our coffee table for something different due to proportions in the space and as soon as she is done…I will give you a final reveal. In the meantime, meet on Instagram Stories, as Kate is going to be receiving all of your questions about home style and interior. Meet me there!

Learn more about Kate and the interior magic she is making happen at READ HOUSE.