2- The Spanish Bungalow

Welcome to the little Spanish Bungalow–a little stucco oddball in traditional brick-and-siding Kansas. We lived in this home from September 2011 to September 2012.

First, the “after” of the exterior. Oh yeah, if you want to, you can read about our house-painting misadventures.

exterior

Okay! Let’s get started room by room. I’ll go ahead and give you the tour in the order you’d get it if I was doing this in real life. For more bonus “before/during” footage, you can check out the video tour I taped while we were in the middle of painting! It helps that the “befores” were taken at night with the old camera. Kind of like how on infomercials the women in the “before” pictures are always sporting a severe ponytail and not a stitch of makeup. Oh well… let the dramatic transformation commence!

Living Room

Dining Room

Kitchen

Hallway

Guest Room/ Office

For more detail on the guest room, check out this post. 

Bathroom

For more detail on the bathroom, check out this post. 

Bedroom

For more detail on the bedroom, check out this post. 

Hope you enjoyed it! Please, feel free to ask any questions! You can tweet @myfriendstaci or e-mail myfriendstaci[at]gmail.com if you need to know any sources! THANK YOU for checking out my labor of love!

22 thoughts on “2- The Spanish Bungalow”

  1. This looks fantastic! I had never seen the “before” pictures, just heard the awful stories. I can’t believe how much you and Doug have transformed in just the past few months! I am very impressed and I think this house is lucky to have found you.

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  2. I am SUPER impressed with the living room, of all places! (Not just because of the before shot, which practically looks like a different home!) Really well put together, like something straight out of a magazine. I love how the leaf patterned drapes really come together in color between the blue couch and green chair, and adore the overlapping rugs. I’m a little curious about what got put in the fireplace though–it looks like old records?

    The kitchen is probably the second most impressive–I love the choice of the hanging pots/pans. I think it goes really wonderfully with the space. I’m slightly curious about what happened to the microwave on the counter in the Before, which looks to have been replaced by a toaster oven and toaster in the After.

    All I can also say is that the shade of blue you picked out for the rooms is just gorgeous. It did absolute wonders for the bathroom, that’s for certain!

    Overall, I’ve seen some pretty interesting transformations you’ve pulled in the past in the spaces you’ve lived in, and it’s clear that your skills improve every time you use them. This is a wonderful job at converting an OK space into a wonderful space, where the planning and vision is clear and pleasing to the eyes.

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    1. Thanks for the wonderful remarks, Athena!

      My goal for the living room and dining room was to use the white paint to lighten up the space (the beige sucked just absorbed light making it dark and dreary even in full sunlight). Especially since my in-laws plan on renting it to others in the future, I wanted to go with a good neutral. Then, since I cannot live without being surrounded by color, I infused it with the bold curtains. The magic is that they work with the couch–I did not plan this, and in fact when we moved we didn’t know if we even wanted to keep the couch. I’m glad we did.

      The blue I picked for the kitchen & bath is actually a historically-accurate color from a famous Santa Fe hotel, so I thought it would be fitting in this slightly southwestern-feeling house. The microwave is long gone! Not only am I happy cooking and reheating things without using one, but it was there when we moved in and to be truthful, incredibly filthy and disgusting. It now resides in the big microwave graveyard in the sky!

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      1. I just also wanted to add that on a second review, I realized how many doors you took off completely. All of them are amazingly good calls, as well. The living room and kitchen look much, much better without the doors getting in the way. I don’t know that I’ve ever really thought about the ability to take off cupboard doors (like you did to the bathroom in a previous post) or doors inbetween rooms in a house. This has made me consider the ability to adapt a house in a whole new way, which is one of the best things that can happen from looking at what someone else did!

        And I agree with Anji that the pots and pans are in the best position to be framed by the pass-through. Whoever designed our apartment with it’s own little pass through did not think of the framing effect it can have whatsoever and it’s very obvious.

        I also think that it would have been funny if you could have gotten Mosey to be in all the After shots. Nothing makes a room look more cute than him!

  4. I’m late here, since I just saw this post but I wanted to say that I too love the colors you used for the bathroom, but my FAVORITE aspect of the house, is the fact that when one is “standing” in the living room, the window into the kitchen frames the hanging pots and pans perfectly! It looks like a mounted photograph! I hope I get to visit sometime this year.
    ~Angela

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  5. I also like the framed pots and pans! At first I thought the pass-through had been drywalled in and they were hanging right there, but now I see you are looking beyond! I absolutely love the kitchen paint color with that orange curtain. Beautiful use of the color wheel! And I’d like to echo the fact that your design skills look like they have fully developed and/or now have the space and monetary back-up to be displayed to the greatest extent! Your house looks so beautiful and now I feel like mine is boring and shabby. haha. Oh, and it looks like you have fully mastered the little design vignettes. I still can’t get any bookshelf or flat space to look attractive with decorative items. ugh. Maybe if I was rich and not quite so practical about items I own? Anyway, just wanted to say great job!

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    1. Thanks, Cheryl! It sounds like you guys are doing actual heavy-duty reno work. I am envious of that! Can’t wait till the day when I can actually get my hands dirty and tear some stuff apart!
      And the vignettes? Thanks for your complement! Don’t think that money has anything to do with it–TONS of my stuff is thrifted!

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  6. I’ve looked before but never commented. Your home is gorgeous! I love the kitchen colours and all of your vintage finds.

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  9. Hi Staci! I love your decorating style…lots of vintage! Could you tell me where do you get your curtains? I love them all! I hate mini blinds or anything like that. I also love the color blue in your kitchen and bathroom. I bet it is going to be hard to say goodbye to this house. :(

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    1. It surely is!! I love the layout, the space, the colors, the windows, but we are ready for a big change to a big city! The curtains in the living room (the green vines) are from IKEA as well as the white pair in the guest room. In the bedroom and dining room, they are both Chesapeake style curtains from Target (in two different colors, of course).

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      1. Haha, that last “of course” doesn’t really make sense here since there isn’t a single shot of the dining room curtains in the tour! Well, if you were wondering they are dark brown. :P

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