Turning Your House Into A Home

What's the difference between a house and a home?

COMFORT. A house is a house. It has a lot of potential like any empty vessel, but a home is so much more than potential.  A home is a place where you and your family can leave the world at the door.  Home is a place where everyone's mellow and accepted, and life lessons are usually learned in the kitchen.

                                           COMFORT

That's a very important word. When I think of comfort, I think of fluffy pillows, flowers in little vases, country breakfasts in a country kitchen.  These things, these visions of a life where there's not much if any rushing around, unless of course, you're headed to the lake or the beach on a hot day.  But comfort is more than a feeling.  It's a state of mind.

Our home is a house is the worst possible sense. It's a white and oak nightmare of potential. It reminds me of an early 20th century sanitarium.  It is sterile and emotionless.  It is very impersonal. 

Part of what makes us fall in love with certain decorating styles is that they feel like the home space of a specific person. Whether it's a kitchen decorated all in cupcakes, or a garage with horizontal stripes painted on the floor.  Someone claimed that space and made it theirs.  This is what my house was missing.  It was missing me and my family.

I have seen a lot of houses where everything is clean and in clean lines.  I personally don't like it one bit.  When I walk into someone's home, I want to feel the comfort of what soothes and comforts them in a world-weary life.

But I couldn't decide where to begin, so I did what any Google-savvy mom would do: I scoured the internet for design boards and inspiration boards related to things that I love.  I found that I loved a lot of different styles.  So, I thought about it for a while, and decided that since the majority of my day is spent in the kitchen, cooking, cleaning, feeding and schooling, I should start there.  The next room I chose was the Master Bed and Bath. I work in the kitchen and retire to my Bedroom, so for my sanity and the sanity of my family, I thought those were the most important.  We decorate our cubicles and desks at work, why not do it at home, on a much grander scale?

First, the kitchen: Since I don't have a before, you'll just have to open your mind's eye and imagine a space about 14'x20', with a sliding glass door at the far end, one small window to the right,white vinyl flooring, white painted wood cabinets with honey oak unpainted doors, a standard stainless steel kitchen sink, white stove, white fridge, and an odd architectural ledge along the right wall. It kind of looked like this, but much less awesome:

(Thanks to The Helpful Housewife...Who is awesome and helpful doesn't even begin to describe what a blessing she's been to me!)



When we moved in, the first thing I thought was "WOW! This kitchen is HUGE!" but that was a trick of the eye. The length of the kitchen makes it seem really big, but it becomes very thin when you try to put in your furniture.  Our standard sized oak dining set was too large, so the leaf and two chairs were hauled off to the garage. But those cabinets needed to be worked on, and immediately.  Remember that the doors remained unpainted, and seemed very mix-n-match.

I decided that I wanted my kitchen to resemble the kitchen of my Grandparent's house in Perry Hall, Maryland.  My grandfather Ed built that house from the ground up and it was full of my grandparents, right down to the garage doors that had "His" & "Hers" in chrome painted letters on each garage door.  That's who my Grandparents were, and that was the place where I felt the most at home. 

My Grandma's Kitchen had white metal cabinets with red accents and this truly tacky red crackle Formica countertops, with the requisite aluminum edging. My Grandfather had designed and built a lazy-susan style corner cabinet before there was such a thing, and in one of the corners, he had written "I love you" to my Grandma.  Grandpa had made by hand each individual 4"x 4" stainless steel tile for the backsplash, with a 16"x 16" stainless tile over the stove, where he engraved a portrait of a smiling chef.  They even had a kitchen clock that looks like a cast iron skillet, with bacon and eggs instead of numbers.  My Grandparent's house was a kitchy, silly, fun place to be.  You felt like you were home, even if you were a perfect stranger. I want to capture that feeling. That obvious and pervasive, infectious and desired feeling of overflowing joy.  

Our family is so infinitely blessed, it seems ridiculous.  God has given us so much more than we ever dreamed possible as children, and then given us a family to share it with!  We want that same joy reflected in our house, and truly make this our home.

Here's my inspiration board for my hopeful kitchen, and I'll post more as I complete various projects.

Happy Homemaking! :D
Lynnie