A Colorful Life: Snapshots of Summer Blog Hop

Sharing is Caring

I don’t know about you, but this summer is flying by!

Which is a little ironic, considered the months that we all spent in lock down felt like it dragged on for years.

Because we’ve been spending so much (unanticipated) time in our home this year, I’ve been far more tuned into of all the little things around our home that I’ve wanted to change, but just never had the time to do so.

Isn’t it funny how when you spend every waking moment inside the four walls of your home, that paint job or the new living furniture you’d considered but then shoved to the bottom of the to-do list all of a sudden becomes your top priority?

That’s definitely what happened around our house.

And so since March, we’ve been chipping away at those projects that have been bothering us for years.

We finally had the time — or maybe we just finally found the motivation — to do something about them.

This post contains affiliate links. If you click on a link below and make a purchase, I’ll receive a small commission at no additional cost to you. Thanks so much for supporting the brands that make Kate Decorates possible.

Colorful snapshots of summer: A house tour

I’m excited to join so many of my fabulous, color-loving blogging friends for today’s It’s a Colorful Life Home Tour: Summer Snap Shots, hosted by Jennifer Griffin of Dimples and Tangles and Jewel Marlowe of Jeweled Interiors.

The tour kicks off today, but it contains four whole days of beautiful home decorating inspo — all from ladies who love decorating with fun, fresh, happy color.

To check out all the other home tours, be sure to read all the way to the bottom of this post.

I’ve linked to every blogger who’s participating … and trust me, you don’t want to miss these amazing, colorful homes!

I’m so thrilled that this blog hop gave me a wonderful excuse to take you on a mini house tour and show you what we’ve been up to!

The best news of all is that so many of the projects we tackled aren’t complicated and are really budget friendly.

And they’ll make your home feel lighter and brighter all year round.

Ready?

Let’s take a stroll through our home and I’ll show you what we’ve accomplished this spring and summer … aside from baking too many cookies and watching every Disney movie known to man. #quarantinelife

Our bright and airy family room

Of the spaces that we haven’t fully renovated, I think our family room is the space that’s changed the most since we moved into this house nearly six years ago.

We’ve painted, switched up the furniture, and then switched up the furniture again over the years. 

If you want to take a trip down memory lane and see just how much progress we’ve made in this room, then you won’t want to pass up this peek at our old school family room.

Yikes! Honestly, those photos are embarrassing. But it’s nice to see how far we’ve come, that’s for sure.

The biggest change we made this spring was lime washing our stone fireplace — and it COMPLETELY changed the room in the best way possible.

Here’s the fireplace in its original state, plus our family room in one of its past lives:

And here’s what the fireplace looks like today, thanks to a quick and easy lime wash job.

We used lime wash from ROMABIO Paints and loved the product! I promise I’ll write a full post all about our experience with the lime wash very soon.

You can buy ROMABIO Paints lime wash right here.

Here’s a closer look at the lime washed fireplace, featuring a four-year old who wanted absolutely nothing to do with my photo shoot:

Doesn’t the lime wash make such a difference?!

While the lime wash project was a show stopper, there’s one more change I made to the room that I want to show you.

Any guesses?

I’ll give you a hint: Look to the left of the fireplace:

If you guessed that I dressed up our media cabinets, then you win the prize!

The prize is, well, another photo of our living room and our wallpapered cabinets.

Wallpapering these cabinets was insanely easy. Here’s the peel-and-stick wallpaper that I used.

The wallpaper was so affordable, and I love the poplin-style texture of it.

It gives our media cabinets a more expensive feel — all for less than $30.

A more welcoming entryway

Don’t ask me why, but for years I pretty much ignored our foyer.

I chock it up to the fact that we generally enter and exit our home through our garage — rarely does anyone actually walk through our front door and into our home.

But after six years, it needed some love.

Like, really badly.

I wrote an entire post about our colorful, pattern-filled entryway makeover right here, featuring a very sad “before” photo.

There was absolutely nothing that said, “Welcome!” about our previous foyer situation.

So one weekend, I decided to do something about it.

And here’s the result, along with photographic evidence that I wore jeans at least once during quarantine:

Like most of the makeovers I do, this one was easy on the wallet. I bought a new mirror, a new rug, and more peel-and-stick wallpaper.

You can see exactly what I purchased and how much I spent on this project right over here.

A colorful $300 deck makeover

Last but not least, another big project we tackled recently was turning our back deck into a spot that we, well, didn’t feel like a wasteland.

Back in the good old days when everyone went to school and work and our evenings were spent carting kids to sports practices and dance classes, we rarely used our deck.

But after spending the past few months at home — all day, every day — we started using our backyard all the time.

And if I was going to sit outside all day chaperoning my kids on the trampoline, then we needed a nicer spot to hang out.

While my husband and I dream of replacing our deck entirely someday and putting a stone patio with a fire pit and outdoor kitchen in its place, we aren’t interested in tackling that renovation until the kids are older and we’d have more time to actually enjoy that kind of a space as a family.

So for our recent deck makeover, we took the “work with what you’ve got” approach.

Here’s where we started:

For just under $300, we painted our deck, bought some new outdoor accessories and lined the built-in benches with a handful of tropical plants and spray-painted planters.

And here’s that same view of our deck now:

Who knew that making a few changes would make our patio feel brand new?

I can’t wait until we can entertain again — we finally have a fun outdoor space for hosting our friends!

You can see more photos of our deck makeover and get all the info about what I purchased for the makeover right here in this post.

More colorful decorating ideas coming your way

What did you think of the projects we’ve tackled in the past few months?

If you want even more fun and colorful decorating ideas and clever DIYs, then be sure to check out all the other fantastic bloggers who are opening their doors to all of us this week!

Here’s where you can find more colorful decor goodness:

Sharing is Caring