Just a Touch of Gray...Guest Blogger Day Two

Hello wine tasters! I'm Rachel from {Just a Touch of Gray} I'm excited to be here today on Shannon's fun blog! I'm always checking over here to keep up with all the latest Nashville stores and other good finds! But I'll leave the fashion up to her because today I'm going to talk to you about decorating! You see my husband and I are in the process of renovating and decorating our first home. We are the proud second owners of a 1960 ranch. Yup, it was pretty "original" when we got our hands on those keys, but we've been trying to change that for the last year and a half or so. As my tag line reads, we've been dedicated to fixing things up "one room at a time".

See! Already in our work clothes as soon as we signed the mountain of papers... ready or not! 

This was our first chance to really put our stamp on a place. After renting place after place it was great to finally settle in a home of our very own where it didn't matter what color we painted the walls or if we wanted to knock one down!

First let me show you what we were working with... 

After the fundamentals were changed to our liking...

Newly refinished floors stained a darker color... 

Freshly white washed wood paneling...



Up close...



And all new window trim, baseboards, interior doors and casings were added...

It was finally on to the fun part... decorating. This was the first time hubs and I got to furnish and decorate a room from start to finish (no hand me down furniture here). We had such a great time making this room 100% us. So without further adieu....

the AFTER

I'd have to say that what really makes our home special to me is the personal touches scattered throughout. When decorating each room I try to incorporate items that have some sort of meaning, history, or story. Here are a few of my favorite things around our home... 

Wedding photos as well as family and friends are pretty much a given.

In our master I have framed an index card that one of my bridesmaids hand wrote the Bible verses she read from during our wedding.

Our dining room houses one of my favorite pieces in our entire house - the table my husband built from the trim and door jams we tore out of this house. (Yep, straight out of that wood pile you saw above).

To add interest to our hallway I created an eclectic gallery wall complete with everything from photo booth photos, art my husband painted in high school, an antique mirror, and a lion door knocker.

I'll admit that some of these things (below) don't always "live" in the guest room but I wanted to show you the little silver birdie tea light holder. This was given to family members that went to my parents house for brunch the day after our wedding. I'm glad to have one too and it's fun to know others have the same thing in their home to remind them of our wedding weekend.

I love this iron horse head I scored at a Homewood antique store while visiting friends in Birmingham. I grew up riding horses and loved every minute of it. Also the silver boxes shown here were wedding gifts and the silver scalloped bowl is Julia Knight - a bridesmaid gift from my bestie.

I hope this post has sparked an idea of how you can add your own extra personal touch in your home - conventional or not! I mean I even have a crystal door knob from the house my grandparents owned for over 60 years. My mom grew up there, and I will cherish that pretty little knob!

Hope you all have a fabulous rest of the week and weekend!

If your curious to see more of our before and afters you can visit my House Tour tab {here}.

Have fun in the Keys, Shannon! Hope to see you soon!