I was recently contacted by Compass to participate in sharing about our first home. Whether you are looking to buy or rent, Compass is a website that enables you to find the perfect place to call home. When we were searching for our first home, something like this would have be so helpful! Hopefully someday it will be available in the Kansas City area. Not only does Compass provide you with a super easy layout to navigate through, but you can actually match a name to a face of who is helping you find the home that suits you perfectly. It’s the best of both worlds; online, but extremely personable.

A lot of what I talk about on this blog is our current home that we are building here on the farm in Nebraska. But today I get to take you for a walk down memory lane and revisit our starter home back in Olathe, a suburb of Kansas City.

After months of searching for a place to call our own, we finally came upon a house that we felt like we could call “home” A place where we could settle down and start our lives together. They layout was perfect for a couple like us who love to entertain and invite people into our home: open, spacious and easy to move around in. As much as I would have loved a two story, the side to side split level is pretty common in the southern Johnson County neighborhood that we were wanting to live in, so split level it was. It had three bedrooms upstairs, two and a half baths and a finished basement and laundry room. It was the perfect place for our family to grow and still have room for company.

After closing on the house, the first step for us was paint and a general facelift. There wasn’t a whole lot of “life” in the house and most of the rooms were just ho-hum, so it needed some desperate love and attention. The first floor and upstairs hallway were a very neutral beige and we didn’t feel the need to paint these (I was secretly grateful, as our ceilings were 16ft tall and I am terrified of heights!). I chose the paint colors of the other rooms based off of accent pieces that I had found; pillows, artwork, bedding, etc. It was so fun finding beautiful pieces that I was really excited about and then using them to bring the rooms to life. My decorating style has always been more vintage/rustic, but even in the past two years has changed to more of a country/farm style since moving into the country.  But my husband and I had so much fun going to antique stores and finding pieces to place in our home that made it feel like “us.”

One of the things that we loved about our house from the start were the new hard wood floors through the entire first level. They were absolutely stunning and I feel made our first floor feel bigger than it actually was. The downside was that they did not match the natural colored mantle or woodwork at all. It was like clash of the titans and quite frankly, it was painful to look at. I couldn’t get to painting the woodwork and mantle fast enough. Every day after work I would rush home, get my paint clothes on and get to work priming and painting the woodwork. It took three solid weeks to get everything done and I’m quite positive that I have permanent calluses on my knees from it. But oh my, it was SO worth it!