Pondering Layout Ideas Meant for A New House

Since a bunch of you folks have requested more details on what layout changes we are pondering and what paint colors we are right now leaning towards, we thought we’d share a giant brain dump about what is flying around in our heads at the moments (which will change as we go I am sure!). You all ready for this? Plenty o’ words. Plenty o’ diagrams. Plenty o’ links. Please fasten your journal-reading seatbelts and be sure that your desk chair is in its upright and locked position.

This is what the first floor looked like when we picked up our house (we have since took out the three sets of the double doors off of the kitchen).

But here is what we are thinking we’d enjoy to do over time with the first floor.

• Widen the doorway between the kitchen and the dining room for easier flow
• Create a wide centered doorway between the kitchen and living room with built-ins around it (sort of like the opening between the office and dining room in our last house)
• Change kitchen layout from U-shaped with a peninsula to an L-shaped area with an island (and add french doors to the eat-in area that lead to the deck)
• You cannot see this change in the floor plan, but we’d eventually enjoy to convert the sunroom to an open covered porch with new columns and no more sliders (many of the sliders are bad and the posts are rotten) – we are envisioning something like this

As for the second floor, this is what it looks like now.

And we have thought about changing things up like this.

• The most major layout change will be opening up the sink nook and the bathroom area in our bedroom to create one big bathroom instead of having two single sinks separated by a wall
• In the hallway between the nursery and our bedroom there is a double doored linen closet that we’d enjoy to open up to make a built-in nook in the hallway, sort of like this (but with concealed cabinetry on the bottom and pleasant built-in shelves on top)
• You will notice there is a door brought in to the end of the hallway where the laundry nook is. We briefly considered adding that to make it a legit room, but we in fact think it’ll close things off more (and it will be weird to have to walk through a room to get to another room when we finish the unfinished storage area) so for now we are unsold and plan to keep it open.
• And of course eventually we want to drywall the unfinished storage space to create a bunkroom/movie room that we think could come in handy for older children and their friends.

As for color scheme ideas, here are a few swatches (they are all Benjamin Moore) that we have been loving lately. They would not all be wall colors, so some might be the color of a bathroom vanity or a piece of furniture or even the color of a ceiling or another “accent” spot (like the back wall of Clara’s play-closet). *This is a first-thought paint palette (meaning there will be accessories, art, fabric with many other tones in it – and it’ll most likely evolve as we go).

We think colors like Knoxville Gray or Black Pepper could be awesomely dramatic in the dining room with crisp white trim and built-ins, while many of the lighter neutrals will go in living and bathroom spaces and some of the deeper mid-tones might end up in bedrooms (we like the idea of Sea Star or Sparrow in our bedroom with plenty of white furniture and linens). The brighter pops of color like Moroccan Spice, Milano Red, and Spotswood Teal are simply for accents (like a piece of furniture, a bathroom vanity, or even a mirror or frame – most likely in a white or neutral painted room).

It is lively to see how the new swatches compare to our first house’s palette (which was nearly entirely tan, cream, and soft blue-gray)…

… and our second house’s color scheme (which had a bit more boldness like deep teal walls along with softer gray, pink, and taupe ones).

We feel like this palette will be a pleasant blend of our previous homes (more traditional and warmer than our last house’s palette with a lot of the neutral and classic feeling that our first house had, but with more glad hits of color). We are excited that among the soft neutrals and rich moody hues there are also some warm accent colors like red and coral. We think we will like the mix of the warm colors (tan, coral, red, brown) with the cool tones that we have consistently been known to enjoy (like blue, green, and gray). It is also pleasant to have classic white trim and doors, mocha hardwoods, and gray slate flooring to temper things and keep things classy (Stay Classy San Diego!) as we go.

And now I will end this brain dump with some inspiration images that I have been pinning like crazy when it comes to the “vibe” of this house:

• a dark tailored bedroom like this might be pleasant
• we cannot wait to whitewash the brick in the living room like this
• we’d enjoy an airy and open kitchen vibe like this (especially once we add our future french doors and built-ins)
• a dark dining room with bright white built-ins like this (perhaps more navy like our swatches?) could be lively
• some chic wallpaper like this somewhere (perhaps in the half bath downstairs) would be excellent
• this office feeling would be cool (enjoy the wall of built-ins and the floating table for meetings/laptops)
• we’d like to make a pleasant cozy TV room and bunk-room like this in the unfinished storage space a while down the road
• this might be a pipe dream, but how boss would a closet full of built-ins like this be?
• this could be a lively look (wallpaper + wainscoating) in the foyer or the upstairs hallway someday

*update: here is why we do not post these photos on our journal instead of linking to them

We are still working on simply getting things back to a non-blue-trim-and-wallpapered state, so nearly all of those more major room transformations are likely a ways down the pipeline (big builds and furniture/fabric purchases will mean saving our pennies each time, so they’ll certainly be spaced out between cheaper and easier things over the next few years). But It should be lively to see where we in fact end up down the line. And to have this post to look back on so we can see how close – or how incredibly off – these early predictions of ours are.

Oh and I thought it might assist to say that since these are all half-formed first-thoughts, if you have specific questions about what will go where or how we will accomplish a certain future project, chances are we have not thought it through yet… but when we do we will simply mumble about it to our beanie babies. Simply kidding, you know we will journal all about it!