An Airy, Cozy Home

Welcome back, dear reader.

Over the last year, my wife and I have been working on being intentional with the space that we live in. Originally, I thought I was good at decorating, that is, until I met my wife.

Let me give some context.

I thought interior decorating was only about the looks. Honestly, I chalked the whole interior decorating realm up as an easy job that anyone could do.

It turned out I was really wrong.

The epiphany for me recently was that the biggest part of interior decorating is how it can make a space feel.

I know that this may not be world-shattering to many, but when I came to this realization, it was for me.

So, back to the interior design of the house.

We were lucky to have bought a house that had new wood floors, stylish white cabinets, and freshly painted walls. It gave us a fresh canvas to practice our interior decorating.

We heard somewhere that before you start decorating a space with your partner, you need to sit down and have a talk about the style that each person wants. So, we sat down and talked about it. It turned out I had no idea what I wanted. I thought we would just buy things we liked as we saw them. My wife wanted to decorate with a Scandinavian style in mind.

It turns out if you come to a conversation without a solid idea or plan, you will inevitably go with the plan that the other person presents. In all honesty, I was happy with the style she wanted to decorate with. Though, I did drag my feet on it for a while.

The Scandinavian style worked right in with the light wood floors and white walls. My wife built off of this by adding a mixture of white and gray wool and cotton rugs for our different rooms. Atop these we placed an off-white couch, a light wooden bed frame and a birch wood table. Our walnut-stained dining room table is surrounded by three black chairs and a black bench.

If this all sounds expensive, you are not wrong. Expensive is subjective, though. I built our birch coffee table with wood from Home Depot. I have a personal tie to the dining room table and chairs. This is because I then took hours to refinish them after they had been thrifted. This is a story for another time.

After almost a year of living in our house, we are finally starting to feel settled. Now that we have this beautifully decorated space, we need to make sure we maintain it by not upsetting the balance. The balance of this airy, cozy space brings peace to my wife and me.

I’ll see you on the next post, dear reader.

-Abe