Tag: home

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DIY Ombré Wall

We recently finished a huge makeover of our girls’ shared bedroom (all within a super busy 24-hour period) and one of the highlights of the room was the accent wall behind their beds. I decided to tackle a DIY painted ombré design on the accent wall and I love the way it turned out!

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Here’s a step by step of how I did it:

1. Pick Your Colors

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I already had an area rug and accent pillows that I needed the colors to tie into. So I used the rug and pillows to help me see how the colors all looked together. Get multiple paint swatches! Even if you think you like the way they look in the store, get extras. I ended up using a different swatch for the lightest green (instead of the one pictured above). It’s also best to look at the colors together in bright natural light. As bad as I wanted to decide on the colors the night I picked them out, I knew the yellow-tinted light in our room could skew the shades. So I waited until the following morning, turned off the yellow light and opened all the curtains so the natural white light could shine on the colors.

 

2. Measure and Mark Your Lines

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I decided on 4 colors for the ombré wall. You could do as little as 3 or maybe a couple more than 4 depending on the size of your wall and how busy you want it to be. The ceiling in this room is a few inches shy of 8 feet. So I measured 24 inch sections starting from the bottom (so the top section would be a few inches shy of 2 feet). You don’t have to worry about getting perfect lines here, just make sure you’re overall lines aren’t slanted. I individually measured both sides of the wall and 2 more spots near the middle and then just eyeballed it to “connect the dots” from each of the 4 spots across the wall to make each horizontal line. 

 

3. Paint Your Sections

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I did the cutting in first, then I just used 4 individual rollers and trays to paint the sections. Again, don’t stress about getting perfectly clean straight lines here, you’re going to blend everything together eventually. Don’t worry about blending yet, because odds are, you’ll have to paint a couple coats anyway. It’s best to let these sections (mostly) dry before you start blending. I learned that if you try to do it all when it’s still wet, you have a greater chance of uncovering the wall color underneath. 

 

4. Start Blending

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Once you’ve let your painted sections dry (at least mostly) then you’re ready to blend them. I painted and went down to eat dinner and came back to blend. This part is a little tricky (and a good arm workout). It’s obviously easier to blend wet paint than dry, BUT if you try to blend from your original painted sections before letting them dry, you’ll scrape the paint right off and see the color underneath. So my way around this was to keep all 4 rollers in their respective paint colors so I could easily paint over the dry sections with a little fresh paint for blending. Keeping 4 individual rollers and trays makes it easier to change back and forth. I chose to start blending from the top down. So I started with my lightest paint colored roller and quickly painted a small, rolled, line as close to the line where the colors meet. Then I switched over to my next lightest color, the second color from the top, and did the same thing. Then with a regular paint brush, I blended the colors is small, quick X marks all overlapping  and moving up and down between the 2 wet colors. This is the part that will give you a sore arm because you have to blend pretty fast and you have to paint pretty hard to really blend the colors. I tried a sponge here originally, but sponges are ideal for soaking up paint, not so much blending it. You have to eyeball the blending as you go. Try to make sure that the sections are blended up and down at around the same areas on the wall. Then repeat these same steps for all of your blended lines.

Tip: Wet paint looks different than dry paint! So don’t be alarmed if your newly blended wall looks a bit off before everything has a chance to dry. Mine didn’t look like full light to dark ombré as some of the wet paint was lighter than the dry versions of the same color. 

 

5. Let Dry and LOVE Your New Wall

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Enjoy the ombré! Hang some photos or prints or shelves and enjoy your newest successful DIY project. 

 

If you use this tutorial to paint your own ombré wall, make sure to tag us (@phillipsflips) in your instagram photos or share them to our hashtag, #mycultivatedhome I love seeing how you incorporate ombré into your home!

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The House you Shouldn’t Flip

Our home buying experience has taught us a lot. Flipping is a great way to work your way up to a home you otherwise couldn’t have afforded. If you make smart purchases and upgrades to your homes and always keep in mind the possibility of selling it for profit, not only are you being cautious for the unexpected possibility of needing to sell your house for any number of reasons, but you’re also giving yourself the freedom to be able to sell and “buy up”. We have learned that it’s good to buy under your budget. It’s hard to go for the outdated fixer upper that’s $50,000 less than what you’re pre-qualified for when you could pay $70,000 more for that immaculate move-in-ready home and stretch what you can afford- and of course everyone’s capacity for “fixing up” is different and depends on your stage in life, your resourcefulness, your time and your access to handymen/handywomen. But we have learned first-hand why buying under your budget can pay off if your goal is to flip your way up to your dream house without stretching your budget too much. Flipping is also a great way to make some extra money if you have the expendable income to invest in homes and the guts to take on the risk of a fixer upper.

And then every once in a while, you get lucky enough to find a home that you wouldn’t flip for anything and that’s kind of how we feel about our house now. A lot of things fell perfectly into place when we bought this house and we know that we can’t possibly take credit for all of this, because there was undoubtedly divine intervention. We are beyond thankful for the opportunity to live in our dream home and have the ability to house friends and family who need a roof over their heads.


This is the house our first daughter is growing up in and the only house she remembers (she was just barely 5 months old when we moved in).


Our second daughter was born in this house (literally born at home) but this is more than just a house for us. This house is huge– 3,500+ square feet not including the 350 square foot unfinished mother-in-law suite we have out back. We knew we always wanted a big house. It was one of our top priorities for our “dream home” for lots of reasons.

I’m a bit of a closet introvert and a homebody, so that combined with the fact that I work from home means I spend a lot of time in this house and I like to feel relaxed and recharged when I come home (or stay home all day). I believe that “our homes should inspire us to go out into the world to do great things & then welcome us back for refreshment.” -anonymous

I also love to host- I think I got this gene from my mama. While I am an introvert, there is something nice about being able to share my home with others, and maybe it’s because if I get overwhelmed by so many people, I can focus on refilling the food bowls or straightening up while my extroverted husband and toddler talk and entertain the people. We compliment each other nicely in that regard.

I also like having the extra space to offer a room to anyone who needs one. This big house has housed many friends and family- the people dropping by for a quick overnight stop before heading elsewhere and the people wanting to settle in and visit awhile. Our guest bedroom currently houses a family friend who’s finishing up college and I love being able to say without hesitation that we are happy for her to stay as long as she wants while she searches for jobs, and works on figuring out where she wants to go next. This house was home to a 10-year-old orphan from Latvia over the 2015 Winter holidays and we loved learning about the Latvian and Russian cultures and watching Markuss light up about the American skateboards and trampoline parks and our family dogs.

There is beauty in living small, but there’s also beauty in living big and the more space we have, the more we can grow our family and offer a piece of our home to others as well. We have big plans for our detached mother-in-law apartment and I’m thankful for every opportunity and blessing that has led us to where we are now. I know we call ourselves the Phillips Flips, but right now we’re just too flipping in love with our home and all the potential we’ve got. So hopefully you will love following along as we continue to flipping love and live in this home of ours.

When you find the house that holds your family with room to grow together, space to thrive independently and that extra something that reminds you that no walls or ceiling can hold back your potential, then you may have just found the house you shouldn’t flip- not because you can’t, but because who would want to? I know that it’s not the home you live in, but the people you share it with that really matter, but when you’re lucky enough to find the right space to share on top of it, each of those moments are infinitely more vibrant and you can live more peacefully with all the people (or animals) that make your house a home.

Photo Credit: Petal & Vine Photography -The good, high quality photos in this post set in our master bedroom were from my sweet friends over at Petal & Vine, but I added in a couple selfie’s and iPhone pictures too.

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Our Dream Home- The Best Flip we will (hopefully) Never Make

We have come along way since June 2015 when we purchased our 3rd home.

Our house stats when we purchased it were:
3,534 sqft
5 bedrooms
4 bathrooms
Purchase price: $160,000
Appraisal value at purchase: $180,000

When we bought this house, we knew it would require a good amount of work. We spent $40,000 in improvements just in the first year, and the majority of that went toward mandatory or practical improvements (not the fun cosmetic stuff), but after a year of work, we can finally rest easy knowing that we made a good investment.

When we moved in to this house, we had insane house bills for the entire first year. Not only were we paying to fix things that needed fixing, but we had added insurance costs because our home had previously been a foreclosure. We also paid a much higher rate for very little insurance coverage due to the fact that we had cloth wiring and extremely old galvanized plumbing. Our electric bill was sky high in the hot months (which in Florida is about 360 days per year) because of old single-pane windows and very little insulation. Additionally the PMI (private mortgage insurance) we had to pay for not being able to put down a 20% down-payment tacked on almost $200 per month.

So we were on a mission to lower those costs in every way possible. We focused on material updates that would increase our home’s value (to help us get rid of our PMI), and also anything to help us lower our insurance costs or save on utilities. The updates we did in the first year included:

  • Replacing all the windows- $5,000
  • Replacing one of the A/C units- $1,000
  • Purchasing and installing all kitchen appliances (there were NONE originally)- $5,000
  • Paid handymen to remove above ground pool built into part of the deck and the deck that surrounded it- $1,200
  • Replacing all galvanized plumbing- $5,000
  • Replacing and updating electrical (removing cloth wires)- $2,500
  • Drywall repair after redoing plumbing and electrical- $3,000
  • Installing a home security system complete with smart-home thermostats and smoke detectors- $100
  • Redoing the hall bathroom (the sub-floor under the tile was moldy from a small leak that was never fixed and when you walked on the tile floor it moved similar to that of a trampoline under your feet)- $2,000
  • Purchasing and installing doors (multiple rooms didn’t have any doors- thus the beauty of buying a foreclosure)- $600
  • Fixing leak in sports room ceiling/reworking lighting/drywall repair- $1,500
  • Replacing lights in kitchen with recessed can lighting- $500
  • DIY wall install in master bedroom to make a walk through closet- $300
  • Built in IKEA closets- $1,900
  • Reworking lighting in upstairs master bedroom and relocating some wall outlets in the nursery- $1,000
  • Drywall repair and painting for upstairs- $1,000
  • Replacing upstairs floors (including 2 bedrooms and stair landing) and stairs with hardwood floors- $5,200
  • Adding foam insulation in walls and attic throughout the house- $800
  • DIY painting interior walls, purchasing and installing light fixtures (where there were none) and other minor DIY fixes- $2,400
    Total first year costs: $40,000

After a year, we were hopeful that our updates combined with the housing market’s natural climb would get us an appraisal  of at least $200k to allow us to cancel our PMI payments. (In order to cancel PMI manually, you have to purchase and order an appraisal on your home and it has to come back at least 20% above your original home loan price).

Our current home stats are:
3,534 sqft
5 bedrooms
4 bathrooms
Purchase price: $160,000
Appraisal value at purchase: $180,000
Appraisal value 1 year later: $275,000

After a year of hard work, staying focused on our budget and gritting our teeth while putting our hard earned money into many practical things that will possibly never be seen (i.e. plumbing and electrical), we are proud to say that our home appraised $115,000 more than we purchased it for and with an overall investment of $200,000 ($160,000 purchase price + $40,000 renovations), that gives us a net equity value of $75,000! Also, after cancelling our PMI and making the necessary updates per our insurance requirements, we were able to get solid home insurance coverage and reduce our monthly payments by almost $400.

We are in our dream house and we don’t have plans to flip this house anytime soon, but it’s comforting to know that we wouldn’t be underwater if we had to sell.  In the meantime, stick around, follow along as we work our way through our home updates and renovations. Now that we’re through the worst of the mandatory fixes, we can finally focus on the fun stuff.

Next up: Backyard makeover!

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How to Choose a Style and Color Scheme for your Home

When it comes to home decorating, most people have a style that they gravitate towards and most people decorate individual rooms with similar color schemes, but should you have a house-wide color scheme and style?

Maybe you should.

While there may be some legitimate reasons to have a room with a different color scheme or style (for example: kids rooms and nurseries or specialty rooms like a theater room or kid’s play room may have some different style/color needs that exclude them from following your house-wide color scheme), for the most part you should stick to a cohesive look. Having significant variations in decor/color/finishes can make your home seem choppy and feel smaller than it really is. Especially with the open-floor plan trending high on most priority lists, a house-wide color scheme and style is even more noticeable and needed.

When you’re looking into buying your decor/textiles/paint colors or considering bigger more permanent renovation projects like changing the floors, cabinets, light fixtures or other major renovations, having a color scheme and style in mind is key to making sure that the decisions you make for your home now will be good decisions for future buyers as well as your future self.

Coming up with an idea board and color scheme for your home is a great place to start.

First, consider your house. Does your house have a style already? Maybe you’ve settled into a 1920’s Victorian. Your mid-century modern pieces probably won’t be welcome there. Victorian houses typically look best with darker wood tones and rich colors like maroon, navy, and maybe some green with off-white accents. The fixtures usually have an antique style with black iron or brassy finishes. They are usually chock full of character and intricate woodworking details. Vintage rugs always pair nice with this style- although I may be a bit biased because I’m convinced that vintage rugs will go with any style.

Some houses may not have a distinct style in which case they are more of a shell to infuse with your own style. The good thing about those houses is you’ve got a clean slate to work with. The bad news (sometimes) is that the more generic houses that are flexible enough to work with any style usually lack the unique character that most people love, but you can always add character pieces in! Other houses may have a subtle style that can be changed by changing colors, finishes or fixtures.

Whether you’re looking to flip or just lovingly inhabit, you’ve got to have a style in mind. Once you’ve determined your style, start pulling together some ideas for an idea board. This is a great time to incorporate Pinterest. You can search on your specific style and/or colors that you’d like to incorporate and get a feel for the vibe you want in your own home. Here’s an idea board example of a modern beachy style perfect for houses near the coast- or landlocked ocean lovers. Someone with this idea board would be looking for most all neutrals (tans, grays, beige, greige – yes! that’s a thing). They would accent with lighter wood tones or vintage or weathered wood pieces, anything white (or white-washed), woven textiles, linen fabrics, and lighter blue tones or anything that pairs well with those. You could accent with a little bit of navy or coral or even bright red if you wanted a more bold look- but not all three.

Consider the more permanent/semi-permanent features of your home. Do your floors and cabinets go with the theme you’ve picked? If not, consider if you plan to change those or if you may need to change some of your ideas around to fit with your current fixtures.

Here’s a mid-century themed board. Mid-century houses are usually accented with medium wood tones, gold or brass fixtures, tapered legs and always the starburst lighting. This is usually a style relegated to houses built in the “mid-century”- think 1940’s to 1970’s occasionally the 1980’s and while this is a pretty distinct style, you can usually infuse this style into a more generic home with mid-century decor and maybe a few added character touch-ups. Commonly used mid-century colors include mustard yellow, dark orange and olive among others. A common trend these days is the mid-century modern style which combines the mid-century board (below) with more modern elements.

Once you’ve got your idea board, pull out some specific things to help define a template for your home theme. What type of wood tones will you have? What temperature will your neutrals be? For example, do you like the warmer tans, beige and cream colored or off-white neutrals like the farmhouse idea board below?

Or would you prefer cooler toned neutrals like pure white and shades of gray? Make a list of your top neutral colors as well as the accent colors or brighter colors you plan to have in your home (if you’re planning for any). And then use your idea board as a guide when you’re picking out new decor or paint colors. This bright bohemian board is almost enough to convert my style. I just love the fun and bright eclectic patterns mixed with the crocheted hammocks and Pom Pom decor. And of course bohemian style isn’t complete without house plants.

For our house theme, we’ve got a industrial modern meets mid-century modern vibe going on and I’m gravitating towards black and white and cool grey neutrals. We’ve got a giant camel colored leather sectional from Restoration Hardware that lives in our family room which is really the heart of our house so the camel color is part of our home decor board. In addition to our cool neutrals, we’ve accented with navy and an occasional pop of yellow- because yellow is just the best color ever! We have a mix of finishes from black industrial-style metal finishes to stainless steel finishes in our kitchen and then a handful of the more mid-century gold accents as well. We’ve installed some light hickory hardwood floors with lots of variation from light to medium tones and we plan to install more downstairs eventually. We also want to add in some polished grey concrete floors in our family room and some fun cement tile accents- probably black and white. So I use this idea board as a base for our home decor purchases and any new finishes. That doesn’t mean we don’t ever go outside of the box. For example, my daughter’s bedroom is a fun cotton-candy pink with grey and white accents. And since our sports/theater room houses our old dark brown and tan sofa and chairs, that room has more warm tones to coordinate with the furniture. Also, the sports room has actual football field turf on the floor which isn’t really part of our idea board, but it makes for a fun (and super cheap) floor covering for the (mostly) football-themed room. Remember when I mentioned those exceptions above? There will always be some. But for the most part, our open-spaced living downstairs, follows the rules for our intended style and color scheme.

Here’s our home idea board complete with pictures of our actual home and decor as well as a few “dream” items.


You’d be surprised at how much an idea board like this helps when you’re browsing the throw pillows at Target and trying to decide if they will go well with your decor or not.

How do you keep a cohesive look in your home?

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Our Exterior House Paint Color

After much thought and a few friendly Facebook and Instagram polls, we decided to go DARK on the outside of our house! Here’s the first coat on the front:

There is still work to be done: some touch ups in the paint, painting the sides and back of the house, cutting in the white trim, painting the front door (for now until we pick out a new one), adding some landscaping and trying to get some grass to grow on our front lawn! But all in, I’m super happy with our color choice.

We went with Sherwin Williams Iron Ore- SW 7069

A few days ago we polled our Facebook and Instagram friends on which of these two colors they liked best:

The response was overwhelmingly in favor of the bottom (and lighter) gray which is Sherwin Williams Peppercorn (SW 7674).

Our original plan was to paint the house black (yes, I said BLACK). These were some of my favorite inspirations for going black.

So with those ideas in mind, you can maybe imagine my slight disappointment that literally everyone I know (with the exception of maybe 5 people) voted to go light on the paint. Anyone who knows me personally likely knows that I am anything but the type of person who follows the crowd. On the contrary, I’m a bit of a skeptic and if everyone else is doing it, I’m probably googling it for more information and asking myself if there’s a better alternative.

Surprisingly, my husband and both agreed on the darker color being our preference and even with all the votes against us, we weren’t wavering on our opinions. So we did what I imagine anyone in this situation would do: we painted bigger swatches on the house!

After we painted this and saw it with the white trim up top, we were set on the dark. And a few of our friends changed their vote too!

Although the whole house isn’t finished being painted, we have at least tackled most of the front and I’m super happy with how it’s turning out!

Stay tuned for more of our home renovation adventures!

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Our First House (Flip)

In honor of our recent closing day anniversary, I thought it would be fitting to share the before and after photos from our first ever house which later became our first house flip! Technically speaking, I guess we bought and flipped our second house, then bought our 3rd house and flipped our first house. It was a crazy 3 years! More on our Phillips Flips (home flipping stories) here.

On March 21, 2013 we bought our very first house. It was dreamy… and I mean “dreamy” in the sense that you had to dream about what it would look like one day and not what it looked like right when we bought it.

Here’s what it looked like when we bought it:

And the inside:

Check out those floors! The floors on the right of the picture above are linoleum tiles. There was 2 full layers of ceramic tile where you see the tile up there at the top and the carpet to the left was dark green. And about 8 feet inside the front door was a nice little 3-way junction where all 3 of the mixed floors met up for no real reason.

All the bedrooms had that same dark green carpet.

The kitchen was pretty small and awkwardly closed off to the rest of the house. So the first thing we did was grab a sledge-hammer and bust through some walls:

We removed the wall shown above which opened the kitchen to the entryway and a little more to the dining room over to the left.

We removed the upper cabinets that were hanging above the island which opened the headroom up a bit and made the kitchen completely open to the family/TV room.

We ripped up all of the floors to make way for light-colored hardwoods.

And then we got to work! We painted the kitchen cabinets white!

It was much more open with the overhead cabinets out of the way.

We painted the front door this fun minty color and I DIY Frosted the front windows with a little hand cut monogram in the center.

I replaced the fan in the dining room with this Maskros Pendant Lamp from IKEA and we painted the fun accent stripe wall on the side wall over there. That was SO “in” back in 2013!

We gave all the other walls a fresh coat of paint (either white or light gray).

And replaced the dark green carpet with a neutral “greige” color that we found on crazy sale at one of our local carpet/flooring warehouse places. We found just enough carpet to put in our sunken den area and all 3 of our bedrooms. It was meant to be!

I didn’t get a ton of great shots of it, but originally we had vaulted ceilings that were covered in dark wood paneling. We painted over that with white paint and it looked kind of like vaulted shiplap covered ceilings!

With the wall knocked out, the upper cabinets gone and the white paint, the kitchen looked much more open and bright!

And finally, we got around to painting the outside of the house and redoing the roof with light metal panels.

On our first ever house flip, we spent about $10K in renovations:
Flooring: $4,000 (purchased whole sale and installed by a friend of a friend)
New roof: $5,000 (we pulled our own permits and had a friend do the work for us)
Paint: $1,000 (we used a lot of leftover paint that we had sitting around in storage and we may have used plain old white primer on some interior walls- you got to save wherever you can!)

We ended up selling this house for $16K more than we paid for it which was a $6K profit on the sale alone. We also rented it out for several months during some of the transition time while we were in between houses and we made a total of $11,700 in rental income. So all-in-all we made $16,700 on our first flip.

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8 Low Maintenance House Plants – From Someone with a Black Thumb

I recently got a question about what type of house plants I have in my home. So I thought I would go into detail about what I’ve had that’s lasted. I’m no horticulturist, so this post will not be delving into the ideal living situations or advice on achieving maximum growth, but rather sharing the plants I have had that are able to survive with very little work.

These are the most low maintenance plants you can get, so if you have a black thumb (like me) but still want to green-up your home, these are the plants for you!
Note: Succulents are not on this list, because I have had my share of succulents and killed them all.

1. Sansevieria (AKA Mother-in-law’s tongue or Snake Plant)

We have 2 of these in our home. The one pictured here has been sitting in this same spot for over a year (and it’s still alive!). I picked up this plant about the size that it is now from my local garden store and literally just transferred it into this empty pot. I didn’t add dirt or fertilizer. This pot doesn’t drain (since it resides indoors) and I usually think to water it once every week or two. It doesn’t sit in front of a window and I haven’t taken it outside at all, but you can see in the picture that it’s in a room with some indirect sunlight that comes from the window in the opposite corner. It hasn’t grown much, but it’s survived and I haven’t had to pull off any brown leaves. It also doesn’t wilt at all. So I’m happy to say this one wins the award for the number 1, easiest plant to care for.

2. Aloe Vera Plant

We have a small aloe plant in our kitchen that has survived 3 moves and is now happily living in our landlocked, windowless kitchen with no direct or indirect sunlight. I have moved it to a window sill for a couple days at a time, maybe 3 times in the 1 1/2 years that we have lived in our current home. This is an easy one to keep alive and there are so many good uses for aloe too. The only thing I learned (the hard way) is that too much water will make the leaves brown on this one. Ironically, the only plant I think to water regularly is the one that does better with the least amount of water. This one sits right behind the faucet on our kitchen sink, so it’s the easiest to keep watered, but I learned to keep watering to a minimum with my aloe.
Pineapple planter from CB2.

3. Pothos Plant

Can I just say that these vine-y plants are my absolute favorite right now? They are cheap to buy and because of the ever-growing vine, they add a lot of green to the room with relatively no work. We’ve had this one sitting on our piano for over a year now. It has done well with being watered once every couple weeks. It’s taken a couple longer stints with no water and I noticed some browning around the leaves and vines and I just watered it a couple days in a row after that and it greened back up. Overall this is a pretty easy indoor plant to take care of.

Disclaimer: As I was googling the official names of these plants for reference, I read that this one is actually poisonous to cats/dogs/small children if its eaten. We have all 3 of those living in our home. The article I read did say that a small amount ingested is not fatal, but just tends to make pets/babies sick, but I think it’s worth mentioning. The good thing about this plant is that it looks best sitting up high on a self with the ivy trailing across or down and you can also hang it to avoid any possible mishaps with your pets or babies.

4. Philodendron

These are very similar to the pothos plants. I think this is technically called a “golden philodendron”. They also have them in a darker green color which makes it even harder to tell them apart. These tend to be a little bigger than pothos plants though. I bought this golden philodendron at the same time that I bought the previous pothos plant. They were almost exactly the same size when I bought them and this one has grown much faster and much bigger. I water this one even less than most of the other plants I mentioned above because this one sits in the back corner of our family room so it gets forgotten often when I am watering the other plants in the entryway. This one hangs in front of a window, but because the window faces out to our covered back porch and shaded backyard, this one probably doesn’t get much more sun than the ones in my entryway. This one has definitely grown and stayed alive with very little work. I have had to trim some brown leaves every now and then probably just because I don’t water it as much as I should, but overall this one is very black-thumb friendly.

5. Peace Lily Plant

This is a picture of my peace lily (above). When I bought it, it had a few of these pretty white flowers (pictured below)

This plant is a natural air purifier! I’ve heard that the more light your peace lily has, the more it will bloom with the white flowers. Since I’ve been keeping mine inside with minimal indirect sunlight through the window in our entryway, it hasn’t bloomed at all, but it is still alive and growing. Every now and then a leaf will turn brown. So I just pluck it off and water it some more. This plant has proved to need a little more watering than the others I have shared thus far. The good news is that this one lets you know when it needs water by wilting. So whenever I notice it looking wilted, I water it and it perks right back up. It’s been very hardy in that sense. Even though this one does take a little extra watering, I’m including it on the list because it’s a hard one to kill. As long as you don’t lock it in a room where you’ll never see it and if you keep a reasonably good eye on when it starts looking wilted, this one will pull through.

6. Air Plant

I’m including these on the list because they are generally easy enough to keep alive, although as a disclaimer to cat owners, I’m convinced that cats have the magic touch to kill these puppies. Perhaps its the fact that they slightly resemble spiders, but our cat has killed 2 out of 3 of them. When I first got this plant, I bought 3 identical ones and not only has my cat managed to knock over 2 out of 3 of them causing the concrete planter to literally disappear (I’ve pulled every piece of furniture out of the entryway to paint the walls and the mini concrete planter still didn’t turn up), but she ripped one apart and the other I saved, but it died outside of its little personal planter. So i’m not quite sure what the trick is to these, but I’d say you’re probably better off if you don’t have a crazy cat in your house. The lone air plant has done well. I’ve had this one for about 9 months. When I think to water the plants in the entryway, I just pull this guy out of the concrete planter and submerge it in the water for about 10 seconds, then I take it out and let it air-dry. Barring any CATastrophes (pun intended) these make good indoor house plants.
I bought these plants with the concrete planters from Frae and Co’s Etsy shop.

7.  Plastic Succulents

I know I said I wasn’t including succulents in this post, but these are plastic succulents. And no, that isn’t a species of succulent, it’s just the material they are made out of – as in, non-living, “fake” houseplants. They aren’t air-purifying, but they are hypoallergenic (as long as you keep them dusted). I wasn’t planning to include any fake plants in this post, but then I stopped by Target yesterday to pick up a few things and I found these babies in the discount section – you know, that little area right off to the side with tons of $1, $3, and $5 items that tricks you into spending $30 on small trinkets/decor/kids toys because everything is such a steal? It gets me every time. But $3 a piece for these?!? I was very close to buying 10 of them right there! I’m proud to announce that I only bought 3 of them and I haven’t gone back to buy more… yet. I seriously love succulents, but I just don’t understand all these people saying that they are easy to take care of. I have had probably 15 different types of succulents in my home just in the last year and a half and not one of them remains. So for now, I’m giving up hope on succulents and enjoying these maintenance-free $3 beauties.

8. Fiddle Leaf Fig

To be fair, I don’t technically have one of these inside my home yet, although I have heard good things about these making nice houseplants. I absolutely love the look of these and seriously want one in just about every room. Buying a mature one gets pretty pricey – I’ve seen prices ranging from $50 – $150 for one about the size pictured above. Fortunately for me, our backyard has 3 giant ones growing in it right now. Now I know it’s a bit different, but the trees we have in our backyard have not been touched/trimmed/watered/dusted since we moved in and although they have had the natural elements to help them along, they seem to be easy enough to keep alive judging on how much they’ve grown outside in just 1 1/2 years. To give you an idea here’s a before and after picture of them:

Before: This picture was taken in July 2015.

After: This picture was taken in January 2017

It’s a little hard to tell, but you can see that they have grown immensely if you check out the height in reference to the deck railing on the left. I’m currently attempting to propagate a couple clippings from these – pictured below:

I clipped off a decent sized chunk of leaves and it’s currently sitting in this pot of water. I’m hoping to encourage some root growth from this and then planning on transferring it to a pot with soil. I’ll keep you posted on how it goes, but if these grow even half as well as they have outside, then I’ll be happy I included them on the list. Also, I’m looking forward to possibly multiplying my fiddle leaf figs without dropping $50+ on ones from a garden store. I’m saving this post from Balcony Garden Web as a reference for caring for my fiddle leaf figs once they get potted.

What other indoor house plants have you had success with? I’d love suggestions on ones that I can add to my low maintenance indoor collection!

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A Bold Entryway Makeover

When we first moved into this house, every single wall was painted in this flat beige color.

I am definitely a fan of neutrals (although I usually prefer cooler tones like crisp white and light grey) but this bland entryway was a little too neutral for me. After tackling all the must-have projects on our fixer-upper (i.e. furnishing it with appliances, new AC, new windows, updated electrical and plumbing) we were finally able to work on the fun stuff – PAINTING and DECORATING!

I’m naturally drawn to light colors. I like when rooms feel bright and open, but with this small semi-sequestered entryway room that led into the rest of our bright and open house, I really wanted to go for a bold entrance. I toyed with a bright color. I also considered neutral walls and painting our antique piano yellow (or another fun eye-popping color like that), but I was worried I might regret painting the original wood on our piano, so I decided to go bold with dark walls instead.

I settled on a dark Navy with an eggshell finish. We used Sherwin Williams “Pitch Cobalt” which is kind of a grey-ish Navy. I almost always opt for a Satin finish with paints, with an occasional semi-gloss or high-gloss if I’m going white because it brightens the room up more and is easier to keep clean. But since I was going so dark in here, I thought it would be nice to keep the shine down and let the color speak for itself – so eggshell it is!

I added some greenery to our piano (plus a couple floor plants) because you can never have too many house plants! More on our house plants here.
(Note: in the previous picture, you can see more greenery than usual on the piano. I’m in the process of attempting to propagate some clippings from our fiddle leaf fig trees and I forgot to move them off the piano before snapping the “after” shot. They don’t normally sit there though. I’ll share more on how that goes later!)


Chair: All Modern

We framed the window with these sweet white curtains from All Modern and they are the perfect contrast to the dark navy walls.

We used gold/brass accents on everything and kept some of our costs down by getting our curtain rods from Target. They weren’t exactly the style I wanted, but they were about $100 less than the ones I loved from West Elm, so I was happy enough with these. We picked the “brushed nickel” finish which doesn’t match the gold exactly, but it’s close enough that you can’t tell without closely studying it – and we don’t know anyone who is 10 feet tall, so I feel confident that no one will be putting their face up to our curtain rods anytime soon.

We replaced a silver, outdated wall sconce with this one from All Modern. In the “honey gold” finish.

I painted this thrift store entry table with some light grey paint that was leftover from our master bedroom renovation.

That white umbrella holder we snagged on sale from All Modern.

As well as this round mirror.

And my favorite spot in the room is the corner that houses these framed photos of our girls. It’s the first thing you see when you walk in the door, and there’s just nothing better than being welcomed by squishy little sleeping babies am I right?

Photos by Petal & Vine Photography.
Gold frames from Hobby Lobby.

We still have a few more things on our dream board for this room including: recovering the old chair in the corner, buying a new entryway rug and getting a new front door, but we’ll take that one day at a time.

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5 Reasons we are NOT Using a General Contractor

When this process started, I thought that a “general contractor” was just the fancy term for a person who was licensed to build things with permits and stuff. That just goes to show how much we actually knew about construction! We originally planned to have someone do our entire backyard transformation for us, and of course we first went to some general contractors to get quotes. It didn’t take long for me to realize that a “general contractor” is actually someone who charges you to get quotes and juggle all the people that have to come together to build something. The “official” definition of a general contractor is,

“[Someone who] is responsible for the day-to-day oversight of a construction site, management of vendors and trades, and the communication of information to all involved parties throughout the course of a building project.”

Don’t get me wrong, I am certainly not undermining the value of this position and I can only imagine how important it would be to have a general contractor for any major build. However, for a backyard deck demo and rebuild, it seems a bit excessive and after our first quote of $50,000, downright crazy.

Here’s why we chose not to use a general contractor on our backyard transformation.

1. Steep Price Tag – We are just literally not able to spend $50K on a backyard makeover. So we have already started cutting and shaving items off our “dream list” and one of the first things to go was the general contractor.

One thing that we will not be cutting from our “dream list” is how we plan to incorporate one of our backyard live oaks into the deck plans! 1. I can’t bear the thought of taking down the tree with all the little bird nests nestled up there. And 2. Live trees worked into the architectural design of outdoor spaces are seriously one of my top 5 favorite things. How can you not love this?


– And this beauty designed by Dana Pacific Landscape in California. Hats off to you Dana.


2. No Time Crunch – I can see the value in having a project manager overseeing the building, scheduling the workers and making sure that each piece of the puzzle fits in right where it belongs. I know the process would be quicker and more efficient if we had a general contractor running the show, but frankly we aren’t in a time crunch. We don’t have deadlines, we’re not rushing to get our backyard ready, and I would rather take my time and live in a construction zone for a little bit longer if it means saving big bucks on this transformation.

3. I Know a Guy – I get that one of the benefits of having a general contractor is being able to use their connections to get the best prices/quality work, but we already know a guy- we know a handyman who’s offered to help us with some of the big demo pieces for a steal of a price. We know the best concrete guy in the city shout out to No Boring Concrete in Lakeland, FL. We have a couple builder friends, and when all else fails, social media is the best avenue for getting some solid recommendations for local businesses. So even though it might take us a little longer to weed through the quotes/reviews/options, we’re already halfway there and willing to put in the work.

Check out some inspiration from our concrete guy’s previous projects!

Aren’t these concrete countertops dreamy? Check out the built in herb planters – makes me wish we had a wall of windows in our kitchen!


And just try not to drool over this modern wood accent on these concrete counter tops! No Boring Concrete did these for one of Lakeland’s new coffee shops (Concord Coffee).


4. I Know What I Want – The more I talk to contractors/architects/pool guys/handymen/painters etc. about my vision for our home, the more I realize that what I like and what I want is not the “norm” around here. I don’t know if it’s the modern, mid-century vibe that throws people or if they just don’t understand implementing something with clean straight lines and a minimalist approach, but I just can’t rely on a GC to be able to get quotes and carry out my vision on this whole project. I know what I want, but no one else seems to! And let’s be real, some things are bound to get lost in translation right? It will feel good to know that I can control who does what and I can take each person step by step to see my vision and make sure expectations are clear (plus possibly save money by doing some things ourselves!)

Speaking of DIY, we’re thinking about DIY-ing our own privacy fence once we get things cleared out. Check out this chalkboard privacy fence some friends of ours found at The Bearded Pig in Jacksonville, FL! I love the clean, modern style plus the bonus of a lifetime of family chalk drawings. It could also double as a handy scoreboard for outdoor games, seasonal murals, birthday decorations, practicing ABC’s… the possibilities are endless!


5. We Learn More – We are admittedly not experienced in construction work, building things, cutting things or any other number of home projects. I’ve learned a few things from watching my dad over the years and JP knows even less than I do. So we’re really learning as we go. Not having a GC will require us to be involved in every aspect of our backyard transformation, and we are bound to learn a few things. We will be more hands-on and by default able to take some notes and get some good tips for more DIY projects in the future – which will all be thoroughly documented right here of course!

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The Phillips Flips- 3 houses in 2 years

Yes. We DID buy 3 houses in 2 years. We started small, tried our hand at renovating, got familiar with the real estate market and ended up in our 5 bedroom, 4 bathroom, 3,500+ sqft (fixer upper) dream home. It needs work, but we see lots of potential.

Here’s how we did it!

We closed on our first home (the Pinellas House) in March 2013.

The Pinellas House- BEFORE

Pinellas Stats:
Bedrooms: 3
Bathrooms: 2
House size: 1,600 sqft
Lot Size: 1/4 acre

We shopped for about 6 months before we landed on this beauty. To be clear- we were looking for a fixer-upper. This was still our first home though and we weren’t ready to delve into major plumbing/electrical/construction. So we set out to find a nice house with good bones that was preferably outdated and therefore on the market for a “steal” of a price. One thing we could have done better with our first home was pay more attention to the location. We weren’t in a terrible neighborhood, but we were located right in front of a 3-way-stop intersection which we learned quickly meant having headlights shine through our front windows at all hours of the night. We were also within 1/3 of a mile of several commercial businesses- which isn’t really the greatest for up-sale later. Also, Walmart is great to have nearby, but if you live TOO close to one, there is a good possibility of having shopping carts left in your front yard- not great for curb-appeal. All in, we spent about $10K in renovations and ended up selling this house for $16K more than we paid for it which was a $6K profit on the sale alone. We also rented it out for several months during the time that we owned 2 houses at once and we made a total of $11,700 in rental income. So all-in-all we made $16,700 on our first flip.

The Pinellas House- AFTER

It didn’t take long to learn that although we were in a good school district and not far from other really nice neighborhoods, the exact location of the Pinellas house wasn’t really a great location. We knew this wouldn’t be our forever home. We knew we wanted to be closer to the historic district and in a bigger house- big enough to house ALL of the kids we wanted (about 5 kids give or take). So we kept our eyes peeled. Even as we fixed up the Pinellas house, we were constantly checking out other for-sale signs and browsing the online listings.

Then we found Kensington.

Kensington Stats:
Bedrooms: 2
Bathrooms: 1
House size: 1,300 sqft
Lot Size: 1/3 acre

Kensington was a smaller house on a bigger lot, in the perfect location- a dreamy oak-tree lined, brick-paved street less than a mile away from some of the best (and most expensive) historic houses in the city. We got Kensington for a crazy deal and acted fast. It actually didn’t need much work. We spent about $80 renting a sander to sand down and re-finish the original hardwood floors ourselves and didn’t change anything else in the whole house (not even paint colors). We sold this puppy 9 months later for $19K more than we bought it for- making ourselves a profit of $18,920.

Our original plan was to either add on to Kensington or demo it and build from scratch our dream-house. When we lived here, we spent most of our evenings on Pinterest, pinning all of our ideas and drawing floor plans that we hoped to bring to life one day.

Then we stumbled across the Sagamore House.

Sagamore Stats:
Bedrooms: 5
Bathrooms: 4.5
House size: 3,500 sqft
Lot Size: 1/2 acre

When I say we stumbled across this house, I do mean that literally. We were out walking our dogs one night and just one street over from us, we saw this house with signs all over the window. JP (who had gotten his real estate license) looked up the code to the lock-box and we went in right then and there to check it out. It was enormous inside. It was a bank owned foreclosure and it was listed just $10K more than what we had sold our first house for, but it was more than double the size and in a better location. The house needed LOTS of work, including but not limited to: new windows, new A/C unit, updated electrical, completely redone plumbing, paint, fixtures, doors, a demo of the existing run-down moldy above-ground pool, removal of a giant rotten wood deck in the back- and the list went on. So of course, we decided we had to have it. We put a bid in the running $10K above list price and won our dream-home auction style. One year after we purchased this house, we got a new appraisal done. In one year we had spent about $30,000 in renovations and our home appraised for $115K more than what we bought it for. And that folks, is why we love flipping! Buy the fixer-uppers, fix the fixer-uppers and one day you’ll be able to fix-up the dream house you could never have afforded otherwise. Read on to hear more about all the fun projects we’re doing on Sagamore these days.