What a joy it is to finally start sharing our first house with you all! We have spent the past two years doing extensive renovations and various projects (many ourselves) on this victorian home from 1897. It is my hope that my future posts will serve as resources and inspiration for you in your own home! ?
House Hunting & Finding “The One”
When we started to look for a home of our own, we weren’t entirely sure what we wanted. We considered SO many options that it was often overwhelming: apartments, town-homes, houses old and new, and even lots of land to custom build on. The only thing we knew for certain was the location! We focused our search on shore towns in New Jersey with close proximity to the beach and walkability around town.
Tree-lined Historic Street
One day we decided to go to see a couple of houses on a beautiful tree-lined street in the historic district of one of our favorite beach towns. We loved the character of all the homes and the street’s gorgeous 100+-year-old maple trees. The street was also walking distance to the downtown and a short bike-ride to the beach!
Finding “the One”!
This house was our last stop of the day, after just touring the house across the street. We made our way over, up the front walkway, and stopped at these beautiful original wooden front doors. The second we walked into the house, Ryan and I looked at each other knowing we were thinking the same thing. The house was missing a lot of our “wishlist” but there was something about it that we knew we had to make it our home. Fast forward a few weeks plus a little drama (post for another day), and the little blue victorian by the shore was ours!
Renovations & their Tumbleweed Effect
We originally planned to do minor updates (paint kitchen cabinets, refinish floors, etc.) but one project lead to another which eventually lead to a total renovation of the entire first floor of the house (I’ll detail this more in future posts).
Renovating such an old house had its challenges but was incredibly rewarding. I have developed such a deep admiration for older homes and made sure to preserve as much of the house’s original character as possible while updating it to work for the modern family. (Just wait until you see all our before and afters! Follow me on instagram to stay up-to-date)
What’s to Come
Homeownership has allowed me to focus on two of my passions: home design and green-living.
You can expect to see:
- Renovation before & afters
- Easy DIY tutorials
- Plant-based lifestyle recommendations
- Designers looks for less (I consider myself an expert in this lol!)
- Green home product reviews and recommendations
- and more!
I can’t wait to share more! Blogs have helped me tremendously during this process of turning our house into our home so I can only hope this blog will do the same for you! If you have any post requests, let me know in the comments section or send me a message through my contact page. Thanks for reading!
Be sure to follow along on Instagram for the most up to date content and for more design inspo!
xo Caitlyn