HOUSE TOUR | A Light & Airy Farmhouse-Style Home in Texas

Home decor blogger Michele Howell takes us inside her beautiful farmhouse-style home in Rockwall, Texas.

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From the ground up, Michele poured her heart and soul into every aspect of this stunning new-build, ensuring it exudes both architectural intrigue and the warmth of a cherished home that also accommodates her love for entertaining.

A treasure trove of timeless finds collected from estate sales over the years adorns every nook, infusing the space with a sense of history and nostalgia. As you wander through each room, you’ll find yourself enchanted by the stories whispered by each carefully curated piece. Michele’s design ethos shines through in her masterful use of a neutral palette, providing a versatile canvas for her ever-evolving decor. Against this backdrop, she artfully layers textures and accents, transforming her space with effortless grace and style.

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hi herw worthy I’m Michelle welcome to my home in Texas I can’t wait to show you around so come on [Music] in you’re watching homeworthy where we believe every home has a story before today’s episode click the join button below to support all of the storytelling we do on this channel our growing community of members help to directly fund more videos so we can capture these extraordinary homes from around the world so join today to receive early and exclusive access to new homeworthy videos Hello I’m Michelle Howell I’m owner and founder of vintage Helm designs I have um a Blog where I love to to share home decor ideas lifestyle entertaining ideas and we are at my home today in Rockwell Texas so we bought a lot about 10 years ago in this very quaint and Charming little neighborhood in Rockwall and we rented a home and for two years while we designed this home over those two years we searched for and bought architectural pieces and some vintage things and just lots of things we with detail to add to the home to give the home um some character to a newb build home so the outside of my home is basically a farmhouse style we have a white um Bard and batten home part of it is white brick but we painted it all white it has a metal roof so the outside of it very much is a farmhouse style the inside of the home I have some uh different styles inside I use a lot of um neutral Decor so I’m able to marry a few different styles and things together when you enter our home you come right into a large great room area that I have divided into two spaces our dining area and our living room so let’s go over and take a tour of the living room first so in our living room a couple of the things that are um details I wanted to point out um about add that we use to add character to home are these um one thing is these vintage corbels I wanted to create uh the fireplace mantle out of those I actually bought these at a resale shop in South Texas for $40 when we were building the home um this the mantle piece itself was built out of remnants of some 12in tongue and groove board that we used to create the vaated seiling in our bedroom and we had some remnants left so we created this Manel and also the beams on the the ceiling those are solid wood and they were part of um a barn tear down we actually found um in a town close to our home we went one day and purchased literally a side of a barn and went back and picked it up the next day we used the 12in tongin groove on the ceiling in our bedroom and then the posts that held up the walls of This Barn became beams for our ceiling so it added a lot of character to that so um brick fireplace we I opted to paint that white because I just wanted a very soothing subtle um palette in our home to cover the fireplace when it’s warm months and we’re not using the fireplace I created um or remade this fireplace screen I bought it many years ago when my colors were different and it was black and it was ornate and had a painting on it so I repainted it in neutral colors and used a really cool stencil on it to cover this black hole um of the fireplace when we’re not when it’s not in use so the bookcases on either side of the fireplace I love to display uh things that I collect um some of them being vintage books I have a thing for vintage books and for transfer wear especially Brown you can see my collection of some of my brown transfer wear here and also um a piece of the blue there’s just something classic to me about blue and white so I pull those uh little touches of blue and white out for spring and summer my mother is an artist and so she did some sculpture pieces of my daughter when she was young and so I love to display um here’s one of the pieces here so that is a definitely a treasure to me I have a collection of vintage wicker uh Demi Johns that are on the top shelf and more of the brown transfer wear family photo and this is just another one of those little fun um uh collections I like I don’t know why but I just I love these little vintage uh yarn balls thread balls so I have those um just stacked in a vintage basket which is another love that I have lots of baskets in the house so in the living room and in a lot of areas in my home I love to layer rugs I think layers add a coziness in character so I have a large very neutral rug on the floor that car that covers the whole space and then a smaller vintage Turkish rug which I love love buying those and using those all over the home it’s still a neutral pattern but it layers well with this and again it adds more texture it adds some character so I I love to do that and the trunk that I have that I use as a coffee table was my great-grandfather’s and it was a little beat up and it was a a darker wood and stained in some places so I did a bleaching process on that because I really prefer the lighter woods and I love having that it’s like a family treasure so I love using that for um for my coffee table and also it offers storage for blankets and things when we’re not using those in the warmer months again I love to use a neutral palette light colors whites cream so all of the furniture in this living room is actually slip covered and I chose the white because it was a great neutral background I changed the pillows out seasonally so regardless of what patterns or colors I’m using it works with the white it’s also so easy to bleach this I have two young granddaughters so I don’t have to worry about them climbing on the furniture with chocolate on their fingers um because it bleaches easily and the chair and ottoman that are Slip covered um I actually bought probably 30 years ago at a furniture store which it I think it’s probably the only piece in my home that I have left that was bought at a furniture store because I buy vintage I buy estate sale I just like one of a kind and it had a different fabric on it and I loved the feel of the chair so much so when we were moving into this home I had it recovered in the white slip cover and the back of the chair is covered in a French grain sack so when you come in my front door you can immediately see the back of that chair so it added some character to The Backs side of the chair some non-negotiables for for me were um hardwood floors in the home and I wanted some brick flooring to add a warmth and a character to the home in some areas I had that in my previous home and it was one thing I knew that I would really um Miss so um I wanted that I wanted to have a metal roof um and I just wanted to be sure and add lots of architectural things in detail again to make the house my own to make it comfortable and cozy and to add lots of character to a new new build home okay so let’s head into the dining room um another piece I wanted to point out is a side table here I have in this area that divides the living room from the dining room that was a piece of my great-grandmother’s it also was a little scratched and in disrepair so I did the bleaching process on that and achieve this beautiful Lightwood look and again I love having that piece and the trunk in my living room that were my great-grandparents so in the dining area you have you can see our staircase and one thing that my husband really did not want in this house was to walk in the front door and be looking at a staircase so we designed it where it would be on one side of the home and he also had this idea to keep the back of the stairs open and I wasn’t real sure about that because it was going a little bit more modern than I wanted but I’m so glad that we did it because it really keeps this space really open and it doesn’t look so closed in so that ended up to be a really great idea that he had with that my dining table is a huge round table it weighs a ton and there’s kind of a story with that many years ago 20 probably at least I was in a thrift store saw the table it was a light wood color kind of an early American and I didn’t love the color but I already knew that I wanted to paint it but when I went to purchase the table they told me it was part of display so every few weeks I would go back and one day I was in there and they told me they were going to be moving the store to a smaller space and so I asked the store manager if you’re moving to a spa Bas would you possibly be getting rid of that they agreed to do it they told me they would sell it for $120 and I painted the table and it has been through three moves with me now I don’t think I would ever part with this table because there’s just something really great uh and conversational about putting a lot of people around a round table I can easily seat eight here and we can squeeze in 10 if we need to so my back to my love for hosting and entertaining it just is a really cozy intimate um table for Gathering a lot of people here I love um hosting and entertaining friends and family and I traditionally host Easter Mother’s Day Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day New Year’s Day is a little more a smaller setting I have about five couples that are friends and years ago we started a tradition of gathering here for lunch on New Year’s Day I have a traditional menu everybody looks forward to it and we can all fit around this table and then for the other holidays I can sometimes have 20 I’ve even had 30 people here before so we will have people here in in different table in my home and I love um coming up with a theme for uh tablescapes and just making everybody feel really special and welcome so uh lay layered table settings and place cards and that sort of thing are really that just really brings me joy to get because I get to use my um creativity to do that and the end result is having um is hosting and Gathering my friends and family and everybody being here and really feeling like you went all out to make it really special for them so in this space to float the table in the center of the room I ended up with a lot of extra space over here and I found this great drop leaf table on Facebook Marketplace several years ago and it’s great for a narrow um table for a dayto day because you can walk around the table easily if I needed to I can pull this out out and either side will flip up but it’s great for um like a buffet table if I need to do that but I love to decorate it here for the season um two extra dining chairs those are the ones we can pull up for this table if I need to seat more people and I have this cool architectural window with the diamond shapes that I just stood in the window between myself and my neighbor um you can’t really see in or out that window from outside very much but I didn’t want to block it with window treatments and block this beautiful natural light so that the window um just gave a little bit of another barrier of privacy to some degree and it added a really cool architectural element with the diamond shapes of the window this lamp is one of my favorites I think it’s like a stone or concrete it weighs a ton I bought this I don’t know probably 20 plus years ago a pair of them at an antique store for like $40 there was no shade on it and somewhere along the way I found this cool one that is burlap and it says antiques which was perfect for me and it happened to fit the lamp most everything on this table in fact everything on this table except this candle was either thrifted or estate sale of this beautiful linen uh Michelangelo book I found at a resale place this um White Stone uh fruit bowl or topiary was thrifted book was thrifted um the Ironstone soup terine resale shop or um estate sale and again this was an antique story years ago so I love to find those deals but oneof aind Pieces by shopping flea markets and estate sales so I also have this very strange looking little um it’s like a deconstructed stool which serves absolutely purpose but I love the story that this tells I love the detail of these legs and so I bought it and just left it like this and I keep it just tucked under this table for just a little added character again it serves no purpose but it just it fits there and it gives another layer of detail so I find all of my frames again same placees estate sales garage sales I found one last week that was a huge ornate gold frame with a canvas in it I don’t know that I’ll keep the canvas painting but it was $5 at a garage sale so I pick those up occasionally because I even like to layer them in places and not even put anything in them it just creates its own interest when they have that chippy detail and layering several of them together um it just creates some beautiful Decor my table centerpiece I love to change up at least seasonally sometimes I keep this one fairly simple because when you walk into the home you can see past this table into the living room where I have all of these bookcases so a very busy centerpiece here can become very busy looking with this as a backdrop so I typically keep this fairly simple and this basket was an it’s a it’s a vintage basket it’s huge and it’s fabulous and I bought it for about $10 at a garage sale last summer and we are fortunate to have Privet and wild honeysuckle blooming behind our house so this time of year I just fill all the vases inside the house with this wonderful smell because it’s very shortlived so I just put a large base of water inside the basket and filled it and it’s it’s wild and it’s loose and it’s natural and I just love everything about that um I have a Cottage Garden cutting Garden outside and we have the greenery behind our home and I most of the year because we’re in Texas other than Maybe January and February we have a lot of things blooming and still green so I often in fact most of the time have those flowers in Greenery that I just go out and pick out of my yard to put in vases and things in the home and moving from the dining room back toward our front door I had mentioned the stairs before so the first level of the stairs obviously has the treads on the back and then the next two layers are the ones that are open and um they it’s a stained wood on the top of the stair stairs and a couple of years ago I decided I wanted a staircase Runner I mentioned I love the Vintage rugs so the man that I buy from online had this really beautiful neutral with all Browns and cream tones that would fit the width of our stairs and so my husband put it on the stairs literally stapled it down and just took it up to the wall on the first landing so it just gives a lot of warmth and character here and I mentioned I love baskets so I have this vintage artillery basket that I use at the entryway and another one of my collections is vintage wooden canes I just I just love them I don’t know what that attraction is but I see them often at thrift stores and estate sales very inexpensive I probably have never paid more than $5 for one and I have a collection here and I have one at my back door so um just adds a little detail and character here and I have a large uh basket at the first landing it is a vintage basket with straps on it I really don’t know what that is I wish I knew it story but it was just a great way to soften the corner of the first landing of my stairs and it’s just filled with dried um branches and dried hydrangeas okay so let’s go take a tour of the kitchen but on the way I want to point out these fabulous doors and probably my favorite architectural piece in the home these doors were off of a Carriage House Barn in Iowa they are six each door is six feet wide and 10 feet tall and they weigh a ton luckily I found them when we were first designing the home so we were able to put an extra header beam in the wall to be able to support these and a Long Long Barn railing system and the idea was that these doors can slide closed and close my kitchen area for my living room it ends up that we don’t really do that very often but it just adds such a wonderful focal point in this room and when you enter the home so I have always had a love for Design interior design fashion U my mother is a fine artist and so I grew up in a home with her painting and drawing and although that’s not my talent I was exposed to color and design so I’ve always loved um interior design so vintage home was started in 2001 and I actually had a partner at the time and for six or seven years we did some interior design work together and she opt phased out in 2008 so since then I have um had the business on my own I during that time I had a storefront it was so timec consuming and as much as I loved it it was mostly home decor gifts and that kind of thing as much as I loved that it was taking me away from being able to design for others because I couldn’t man the store and do a lot of design projects so in 2018 I decided to close the store and really focus more on doing some interior design for clients and focusing on my blog and Instagram and being able to share um ideas for making your house a home for some diy things for creating tablescapes and sharing with others how I do that how I find those things that are budget friendly to be able to for anyone to be able to do that so we’re in my kitchen now and I wanted to point out this Hutch this piece of furniture so this backs those fabulous doors that are in the dining room and like I said we kind of designed that space and that opening around those doors which created a certain uh size in here and I wanted to be sure address the whole wall I wanted a hutch here in open front and I wanted to be sure and address the whole wall with it and not lose Space by just putting a small piece and I had found those doors at the Roundtop Antiques Festival in South Texas which I’m sure a lot of you know and I also found this piece so it worked wonderfully all of this this is so old and all of the shelves in here it’s actually three tongue and groof pieces of wood that create the Shelf shelves and they shipped this piece to me and they had taken all of these pieces out to um ship them and they were not marked so it was like a jigsaw puzzle to get in here to put those pieces back together but I’m so glad I did it and so GL I didn’t touch the paint or anything it’s an original paint and finish and it’s been a great place to store my collectibles I collect Iron Stone I have a favorite um dishes that collect these are an Emma Bridgewater pottery from England and I started collecting these many years ago so over the course of years of Christmas and birthday my family would gift pieces to me and so I have quite a collection now and it really is one of my favorite things and again I the soup terrains Ironstone pieces uh these are vintage pudding moles that I just think have the coolest detail and shape all this beautiful crazy with those that add so much character so the idea with keeping a um open front hutch in here is that I found in my other home I when I didn’t have that that I all the beautiful pieces and the platters and the bowls were in a cabinet and I didn’t think about using them as much they weren’t bringing me a whole lot of Joy being in the cabinet where I couldn’t see them so I decided with doing the open front I could display them enjoy them every day and we actually use everything in here there’s nothing off limits and so that was the idea between this big open piece here and I love to decorate and change the um the top of it seasonally um at least four times a year with the um spring summer fall Christmas all of that gets changed and I really enjoy coming up with a different way to um design it every year I’ve been collecting those vintage Botanicals for years with the idea of doing a gallery wall I never really thought about putting them there but when I was thinking of what I would do this year for spring and summer I remembered those and so they landed there and um I really enjoyed having those out okay so in the kitchen again this truly is the heart of my home this is where I love to be to um to cook and entertain the family and friends this Center Island is 4T wide by 10 ft wide and it’s a great uh place for me to just prep and cook and also I can clear all of these decorative things off and do a huge Buffet down both sides of this island which is what we do when I host the large holidays like Easter and Thanksgiving when I can have 25 to 30 people here it’s perfect for that this is a wood top I went to a wood salvage yard and I chose a wood that I liked and they made the top for me it actually was a dark wood which is the underneath side and a few years ago I decided I wanted to change it up so we flipped it over and just sanded it down and I kind of did a process to create a lighter wood look on this and then my countertops are concrete um so they literally poured those offsite and brought them in here and set them so they were you know massive heavy but I wanted kind of a just a casual industrial look in this kitchen and this was kind of the first thing that came to mind U my farmhouse sink which goes along with the farmhouse style of the you know the outside and some of the elements inside my home and then I have this great bay window and it actually has Windows that can crank out so I can open those um weather permitting so I have my plants I love plants and gardening so my plants love the space because it gets so much natural light here and the plants add a you know a a green living character to the home um another set of vintage corales similar to the ones that I have on the fireplace mantle in the living room um another um flea market find uh and this was a couple years after we moved into the home I found those and really wanted to use them to add that other another detail of architectural um elements to the home so I had my husband Mount those on either side of my kitchen sink in a large um this to frame in this large area around these um the spay window I created the two glass doors on either side of the sink because I feel like it created kind of an openness instead of all of the cabinets being closed in and I did want to display some of my white dishes and my pretty glass wear so obviously those cabinets stay fairly neat but that’s why I kept it to just the two sets of cabinets because obviously I didn’t want glass front everywhere or then you know they have to be neat and tidy all the time time so I just like the openness that it creates when you’re looking at um the sink end of my kitchen on the island when we’re not entertaining and using it for food prep I just I keep a bowl of fruits and vegetables out here that we do use daily and I have this really cool large um it’s a wine opener that I found years ago at the Pottery Barn Outlet I really really wanted this and it was a lot more than I wanted to pay and I was in their outlet store one day and I saw one and it was half price so I grabbed it and it’s just we use it it does work um and it’s just a really cool um Conversation Piece in the kitchen and I love candles so I always have my candles displayed here and um I have a tower that I have plants on and then things we use every day like our napkins our salt and pepper our I use vintage silverware use vintage silverware every day so I keep that there and I also love lamps I rarely use overhead lighting I have lamps everywhere and I wanted one on this island but I didn’t want a cord running so since this is wood uh my husband cut the plug off of the end of the lamp and drilled a hole just small enough to thread the electrical cord through and then when he got it through he attached the plug back and there is a wine refrigerator underneath this that was already it already had um a power source so it’s plugged in so you can see the little bit of the cord here but I just tuck my little flowers in there and it camouflages that and then I have my candle uh my lamp on and this stays on most of the time in the kitchen I wanted a really different detail on the ceiling and my idea was to buy planks of vintage beadboard chippy paint and that sort of thing and I quickly found it was going to take forever to find enough because this area kitchen sitting area area breakfast area and all the way down out the the hallway to my back door is so big it was going to take so much and as I started finding it it was going to be very pricey and take too long so I opted for the panels the 4 by8 sheets from just Home Depot or Lowe’s and they plac those up there and then just put thin strips of wood in between to hide the seams and we painted it all white so I kind of achieved the same look but definitely much more on a budget and then the lights over the island when we first moved in I had more of a farmhouse industrial Light that was up until probably a year or maybe two ago and I just my taste was changing a little bit with wanting to get away with the traditional farmouse look and I love baskets and woven things so I found those at our house and uh we changed those out so I’m really loving the texture that that adds over the island so One Last Detail that I want to point out in the kitchen that’s another one of my favorite elements is this cool um arched door this goes to my pantry I have five or six um vintage doors in the house that I bought before and had the carpenter um frame those doors in to be able to use um different doors this door I found when we were designing the house behind a friend’s antique store literally just leaning against the wall the paint was peeling off and structurally it was in good shape but the paint was in disrepair and I left I went back and forth two or three times because I couldn’t really decide if I wanted an arched door but that’s one of those things when it keeps coming back to you and you wish you bought it I went back and I bought it and I’m so glad that we did I stripped the paint off and they just had had it painted um repainted white the one regret I have is that in hindsight when I stripped the paint down to the natural wood I really wish I had left it because it lost a lot of the chippy detail when it was painted white like the trim um but anyway I love it either way I did leave that this vintage door knob the black enamel door knob in this back plate was original so that stayed um so I really really love this door and the character that it adds to this space my favorite area in the home is probably it’s um it’s a culmination of several rooms because my previous home was a ranch style and all of the homes all of the rooms were really closed off from one another I love to entertain and I love to H and so we would have people over and as you probably know everyone wents to gather to the kitchen well my kitchen was small so we would all be stacked on top of each other so when we designed this home we wanted an open floor plan and where it would overflow from the kitchen to the living and so we did that so I have a large kitchen that opens to a sitting area that also opens to the back patio which is where we are and I frenched doors along the whole back of the house from the kitchen through the living room and we can open all of those French doors and extend that hosting and living area and it’s also enclosed with clear garage doors on the very back of the house so even in the winter months if it gets cold we’re in Texas it doesn’t get super cold we can close those garage doors light the fire back here and open the French doors and within about 30 minutes we can heat this area so that was a big deal to me to be able to host a large group and have space for everyone [Music] so from the kitchen area we have the sitting area and um funny story about this when we designed the house this was actually where that dining table was in the front and I had a very small sitting area over um on this side of the room but it could only accommodate two chairs because it had to remain a a walk through so one night several years ago my husband and I are sitting here realizing we had this massive dining table in here and it’s just us so we never used it so we kind of did fruit basket turnover that night with the furniture and my dining table landed in the entryway and my sitting area landed here and The Breakfast Table that was in the front room where the big table is landed there and we were able to buy a sofa and create a full almost living room in here for a lot of people to sit we use this every day my husband and I sit in these chairs every morning morning and have coffee and discuss our day and when we have people over like I had mentioned before they can sit here and be a part I can be a part when I’m cooking entertaining setting up the buffet or whatever that may be for to get ready for hosting I can still be part of the conversation and everybody has a comfortable place to sit here and the French doors open to an extended living area on the patio so if we have a lot of people here we can even open that as well um in this space I also used the layered rugs that I mentioned in the living room I love to do a large neutral textured rug that encompasses the whole space and then a vintage Turkish rug laid on a diagonal in this space and I just got this rug recently and I actually took the Vintage rug away to see if I like that and it just it just really took away something that something about the layering just adds a neat detail and the character so that landed back there um and I use a narrow um wooden bench that I repainted it’s been with me through several moves as the coffee table because a large coffee table here didn’t work because this is a pass through to go to outside and I wanted to have a place for somebody to have a drink I also like to decorate it with stacks of coffee table books so that um enabled me to have a coffee table and not impede this walkway so the furniture pieces in this space um I started out here with just an Ikea left seat that was a slip coverboard which I really loved but it was exactly like the sectional that’s behind it in my living area and I have this thing I really have this thing for um cane and I found this beautiful antique cane sofa in a resale shop for about $60 it was covered in awful burgundy velvet these cushions so I found just a white duck cloth took it to an upholster upholsterer and he recovered the um cushions for me and they can be removed and washed as well so again I went with the white so it could be bleached it gives me a great neutral background to be able to change out the pillows here seasonally and I just really love this piece and then the other seating areas in here are um a kind of a club chair it’s very comfortable my husband usually sits in this chair it’s covered with just a drop cloth I bought it in an antique store very inexpensively a few years ago and then my chair is a woven that I bought at on Facebook Marketplace several years ago and then I just have an ottoman that a friend made a slip cover for me and I love the texture that the woven um chair adds in here and it kind of plays off of the woven lampshades over my Island and then some baskets and things I have scattered along um the house uh the side table is that beautiful light wood that’s a very much a European look um that was being refinished in the back of an antique store I was at and I asked them if they would sell it as is and they did and I’ve had it for years and that’s probably my favorite table outside of my large um dining table so the light fixture in this space was the original fixture that I bought for the space but it did not have the lamp shades and I was really wanting to change it up recently I started looking at other light fixtures but I really still liked this one so I had the idea to buy um a fabric covered lamp shades the problem was I couldn’t find any that was a neutral pattern that I liked and they were all so pricey and I had to have six so I ordered drum shades on Amazon found a set of clear pillows at HomeGoods that I loved the fabric took them apart and covered those lamp shades myself very inexpensive fix did it in an afternoon so it really changed up the fixture without me going to buy a new fixture and one other thing I wanted to point out in the space is I like to sit here and read and there is no floor plug here since this was the dining area we didn’t add a floor plug and I really wanted to have a lamp so this lamp actually doesn’t plug in it has one of the chargeable light bulbs that you use and then it has a remote so it doesn’t produce a lot of light but it’s enough that we can use it here for reading so that’s just a good quick fix if you need a place for a lamp and you don’t have an outlet I think to um create um an inviting and welcoming home um to me is first of all surrounding yourself in your home with things that you love that bring you Joy because I think then that you’re going going to naturally portray that to others um like I said I love to host and entertain love creating um getting creative and thinking out of the box with ways to create tablescapes and hosting friends and family I host a lot of the big holidays here and we’ll have family extended family so um I think just um curating your own look and your own space despite what the trends say despite what despite what the color of the year is or what other think you need to do because I think at the end of the day you’ll end up finding that the trends will fade it’s not you it’s not your space and so I think that that’s important is just stay true to yourself and create a space that you love and others will feel welcome in your home as well so my tips and tricks for adding character to a new buil home are um like I mentioned before I love to shop for things that have detail archit textural in uh pieces like for example we I bought a um fireplace surround from a home tear down in a city nearby to put around our fireplace it has a lot of architectural detail um we bought some wide boarding Batten siding that we covered the ceiling of our bedroom a vaulted ceiling so things like that added warmth added character and just made it a little bit different um I use a neutral palette in my home because I like different styles I like the cottage style I like the chippy and vintage but I also have some elements of traditional and I love some things that um English and French um cottage style have European antique so because I like those different styles I’ve kept my palette neutral because I’m able to marry some of those things and it not look busy or hodge podge if I had a lot of styles going on and a lot of color go going on it might might be a little crazy looking and not make sense okay so off of the kitchen in the sitting area is my breakfast area so this is a a table that will seat four to six and it’s just a great size if just um my daughter and son-in-law are here or we have friends over it’s a great place like to play a game or play cards I just recently put this check tablecloth on it I love check fabric because that kind of um is a a detail you’ll see a lot in English country or French country design and I really love both um typically I don’t have a tablecloth on that and it’s just this really beautiful light wood color table I just thought this was a fun change for the season and more of this honeysuckle that I cut from the backyard in a thrifted um Swan vase and I recently acquired these beautiful um cane chairs Facebook Marketplace it was a set of eight and I am having new slip covered um cushions made for those in white of course and uh my China hutch that also changes out seasonally with a lot of my collections right now I have a lot of my white Ironstone soup Terin in there I just that’s something I love to collect so I have a lot of those in there now so on the wall in the breakfast area I Chang this out seasonally too usually I have a collection of white plates that I hang here but I found this really cute canvas um it’s kind of a wall organizer back last fall and I ordered it um it’s part of the lismarie Galvin collection on QVC and I thought it would be so cute to do it Christmas like um an advent calendar well my life was crazy at Christmas and I barely got my house decorated so that didn’t happen so I pulled it out for the spring and just the gardening them came to mind so I have some vintage garden tools a straw hat seed packets gloves so I just kind of staged it to go with the spring and summer Decor so I may keep it up for fall and change it or that may come down and the plates or something may go up but I just thought it was a fun touch for uh for the gardening season and then I just have these two um wicker basket trunks that um I have stacked here I’m actually looking for another one to make it a little bit taller and I’m going to use it in another place um so this is a a vintage um child’s uh high chair and I have one of my plants here it gets great natural light and then another fun feature and it’s a little unusual for me because it’s this turquoisey green this is a sliding door that closes off my laundry room I bought this also at the round tops Antiques Festival and the plant was to of course paint it white and when I got it home I just thought I’m going to lose a lot of that character and detail like I ended up doing with the arch store in the kitchen so I completely left it it has original Hardware even has the hole here where the knob used to be I didn’t even replace that has the hinges still on it and I just left it because I love the character and even though it’s turquoise and I don’t ever use color in the house it’s just a fun but subtle pop of color um as you’re going out the back of my house this door is on the a barn slider sliding door and this goes into my laundry room and I did some fun elements in here because I figure if I have to do laundry I might as well enjoy the space so this sink is actually a European animal trough I bought in South Texas in an antique store and I had the plumber put this in in place of a sink so I thought that was really fun and different and then on the ceiling in here I collected vintage ceiling tins they came in panels of two and luckily I found enough some of them were discolored in different colors but I loved it and it just added a really fun detail to the ceiling in here and this shutter is an old vintage shutter and I loved the detail on that and I hung that there because when they put the um where your washer and dryer uh attaches and plugs in it is like right here and I couldn’t stand walking in and seeing that so my husband mounted this shutter for me and it would lift right off if we had to get to those to those attachments I have some of my plants in here because it’s beautiful natural light and um this is this in my bathroom are the only places that I did the Cabinetry a different color I just decided to go with something a little different and darker so this is a gray color in here and then we just used a simple butcher block for um for the coun top here and then I have a Butler’s Pantry off of my laundry room that just holds my extra dishes and linens and all the things that I love to entertain with that didn’t fit in the hutch in the kitchen when we were building this home like I said we wanted to make sure we had a large open area and I was a little concerned about that because in my former home that we also built that’s one of the reasons I wanted small cozy rooms that were not an open floor plan because in my mind I thought it was going to be really hard to create cozy spaces if it was a large open area but when we moved here and we decided we wanted that open area to be able to host and entertain I was a little concerned about how am I going to make this cozy spaces but it really just all came together um creating a sitting area off my kitchen and that probably is my favorite space in the house um because people can gather there while I’m cooking in the kitchen and have a morning coffee or a GL glass of wine in the afternoon and still be I can still be part of the conversation and the experience with that so um I think that that was um a fear that I had in the beginning was making my home cozy because of Open Spaces but again I I I did Gathering spaces created each space its own but them all flowing together and it it ended up working with um it being a cozy space and again all of those rooms having their architectural detail um and and it ended up working out so I’m glad that we decided to go with that so welcome to my patio this is another one of the favorite spaces in my house because we love to entertain out here and um just sit out here just my husband and I so one side is um it’s divided in two spaces dining area and a sitting area so this is the sitting area and I have um a sofa out here that is it’s not outdoor furniture it is a downfill sofa that is slip covered which is great because it gets really dusty out here but um as you’ll see in a minute this space is enclosed by clear glass garage doors so we can keep those closed it doesn’t really get that dirty out here and it doesn’t get rained on or anything so I’m able to have a real sofa out here which is great if we want to lay down and watch TV watch a movie and then I have this um just Ikea oversized um club chair with an ottoman for someone who wants to my husband May sit here I lay on the sofa vice versa and then just in a little extra chair tucked in the corner if we have friends out here and the fireplace hearth is a bench seat so we can actually seat a lot of people out of here although it’s not a huge space and then we have the outdoor fireplace which actually is a wood burning fireplace so we use that a lot when it’s the weather is chil but I don’t like having just that big black hole when we’re not using it’s already warming up here in Texas so we won’t be using the fire anymore so I recently just put a lot of my collection of terracotta pots and just filled the fireplace with those to it just kind of says gardening and spring and summer and it camouflages the big black box and then I have this this is where I was talking earlier about having um architectural detail out here and I bought this fireplace surround that just has this beautiful um carving and detail and all this wonderful chippy paint I bought this when we were building the house um at a at a tear down in a in a town that was close by so this added a really great frame to this outdoor um fireplace and then we do have a TV out here I hate really having the TV show but but we do use it but I had this odd gap between here so for now I put a collection of my vintage books here just to fill the space A lot of times I just cut if I’m doing an event um or get together I may just go in the back and just cut tree branches with and just fill this with Greenery where you can still see the TV but it just adds a natural live element obviously that doesn’t last but a few days but again for if I’m just hosting something and I want to do it for a day or two it’s a really great filler here so this is fun to decorate for Christmas and different seasons but I just thought it was fun to use my vintage books um because it’s another collection and something that I love so um uh there’s three sets of French doors out here all of those both sides will open they open up to my living room and my kitchen and my breakfast area so we can open all of this close these doors Heat this space in no time if we need to have this as an extended living area during cold weather so this side of the patio is the dining area and again I I don’t have to use outdoor furniture out here because it can be protected from the weather um I bought this table fairly recently well I guess last year sometime at a thrift store for $25 it’s massive heavy it was super super dark it took forever to strip it and I thought I wasn’t going to finish it but anyway I’m so glad that I did it’s actually a drop leaf on all sides so every side of this table can drop and it makes a long narrow so sometimes I have it down all the way sometimes I leave it up but I can easily sit six people here we entertain out here a lot this is where my husband and I like to eat um before it gets too hot here in the summertime this is another fun place I just like to play with a table centerpiece so this I just have a collection of my terra cotta pots the glass closes I collect with just kind of some a bird’s nest and some seed packets and things to kind of carry out this spring and summer theme and I have a sink here that’s a prep area if we’re going to cook or entertain out here and then I hung some straw hats up again to finish out the summer theme I’ll take those down later and change something out there I do keep the window up most of the time and I wanted a lamp out here back to my love for lamps but having one with fabric I thought it’s just going to say so dirty all the time and unlike the slip covered Furniture I can’t wash that so I took this old lamp uh basically the form or the spine took the fabric off and so I can have a lamp out here and then I don’t have to worry about it getting the fabric getting dirty okay so I’ve mentioned several times throughout the home tour that I have all these gardening elements the cloches the terracotta pots here on the table in the fireplace and the straw gardening hats and then then my little canvas um wall hanging I love to garden and I just find great joy in growing flowers and things and in cutting Gard that I can bring into the home and that I can share with friends and neighbors so let me show you my cutting Garden that’s one of my favorite places outside so this is my perennial Cottage Garden that was one of the things I really wanted in front of my home was just a very unstructured unmanicured um flower bed I didn’t want shrubs that had to be uh really uh trimmed a lot I just wanted it loose and Airy and so I picked out when I was designing it with the the landscaper the flowers and things I knew that I wanted and he placed them and we just kind of went from there so most of these things Bloom and so I’m able to just come out here and clip blooms to um to create U bouquets for my house and for friends and family everything here is perennial so it all comes back some of it dies off in the winter but most of of it doesn’t a lot of it stays Evergreen so it doesn’t look bare out here so um anyway this is it’s just a really fun place for me I think it adds a charm to the front of my home home to me is all about hosting entertaining and Gathering I um again I love having people here I love when people feel welcome here and that is I think is just the most important thing to me and that’s when it makes my house feel like a home when I can gather others here and they feel at home as well thanks for watching be sure to go to homeworthy dcom for exclusive content shopping guides and so much more