Making A House A Home

Collaborative post

Regular readers will know that we’ve done a lot of renovation work over the last 12 years at 3 different houses. Each time we’ve knocked walls down, built new walls in different places and pretty much completed a makeover in every room we’ve ever set foot in! This was all done with the general aim of making a house a home. Although if that home then sold for a lot more than we bought it for and enabled us to buy something bigger then that was a definite added bonus!

We’re coming up to five years in our current house, which is the longest we’ve ever stayed in one place. When we bought it back in 2015 we decided it was going to be our forever home, so we’ve thrown the kitchen sink at this one, adding a side extension and doing a fair bit of structural work in quite a few of the rooms too.

We’re still not quite finished yet, but it’s definitely getting there…

Over the years we’ve found that it isn’t really the building work that turns a house into a home – it’s all about the decorations and the little finishing touches. But these little touches can often be the hardest part to get right!

Our general preference in all of our last 3 houses has been to have generally light-coloured plain walls in every room, but to pick out one feature wall in a different paint or wallpaper and to add some kind of complimentary wall art to pull it all together.

In some rooms we’ve made it personal by having some of our favourite photos made into canvas prints. I always like the idea of having something on the wall that I know no one else will have and decent photographs always look much better on the wall than they do on your tiny phone or digital camera screen! Making a house a home for me starts with those personal, unique touches that mean something special to me.

Fine Art America offer a wide variety of wall art, including canvas prints, posters, tapestries and they can even turn your photos into hand painted images for that special touch – something that I’m really keen to get done as a lovely family image for the future.

In each of our rooms we have a different colour theme, with accessories and curtains and wall art to go with the featured wall. Then if we get bored with it in a few years it’s just a matter of buying a new roll of wallpaper, some new curtains and a few new accessories and the whole room looks completely different.

Another option of course is to keep your rooms completely plain and to just add a pop of colour through your accessories and wall art – perhaps a few posters depending on the room you’re decorating. Then if you fancy something different in the future, just change your accessories and posters and you’ve got a whole new room – or at least a whole new vibe!

Joshua’s bedroom has already undergone a couple of transformations as his tastes have gradually developed. It started off with cute animal wallpaper and matching accessories, and has recently moved up to being Lego themed, full of his complex creations.

Now he’s really into his superheroes we are going to combine the theme into a mixture of Lego and Marvel, with a few Lego Marvel pictures on the wall to tie it all together.

How To Find Inspiration In Making A House A Home

We have looked around a lot of houses over the years, including over 40 we viewed when looking to buy our last house in 2011. We have even looked round lots of show homes at new developments we had no intention of buying just so we could get a few ideas for our own home.

Like most people, we’ve also been to visit a lot of friends and family over the years and even made a few suggestions on which walls they might want to consider knocking down too! It’s a hard habit to get out of…

From looking at how other people have decorated their homes you can get a wealth of great ideas for your own home and develop your own sense of what you like and what doesn’t appeal to you as much.

Personally I’m not a fan of the minimalist look in houses. For me a home should be somewhere you feel comfortable and welcome. A place that invites you in and makes you not want to leave again.

With the right ideas, the right accessories and the right wall art you can easily start making a house a home – maybe even your forever home!