House Tour (8 videos): Four Custom & Affordable Design Upgrades
Let me show you around our house in Charleston, from where you can steal custom design glow-ups for your own pad.
8 minute read / 8 short videos
Our house, in a neighborhood of Mount Pleasant called the Old Village, was built in 2012, and we purchased it in early 2020. The height of “two weeks to flatten the curve” (LOL). Still working as the senior law clerk to a District Judge, I refused to leave my post in the federal courthouse while everyone else “worked from home.” With keys to the historic building and access to the U.S. Marshals Service’s basement gym when every other fitness studio in town was closed, it was ideal. Phil would join me with his laptop, posting up at his former desk in the adjacent office, just like when we first met as co-clerks, since his law office had shifted into remote work like everyone else. It was heavenly!
Including because it gave us latitude to oversee renovations on the house we’d just bought—nothing major like moving plumbing—but we did:
Take down walls
Install Sonos
Security indoor, plus outdoor cameras
Replace upstairs and downstairs HVAC (part then, and part more recently)
Landscaping and lights
Wallpaper and wall paint
Custom window treatments (and pillows and upholstery)
Put every single light (every single one, you guys) on a dimmer
Build the kitchen island and pantry
Replace the master bath marble vanity tops and sinks
Paint the upstairs wood floors (they were a disgusting sea foam green so I had them painted a dark grey to match the tile floor in an abutting upstairs bathroom)
Herringbone pavers on the patio outside the shed (which been a mulch pile) and on the front walkway (which had been a splintering wood plank path)
The list goes on and on and on. And do not get me started on the behind-the-walls we’ve had to do this past year.
It took about three months, and we got it dialed-in to move in and be thrilled.
Then, after Cosima was born, I did that thing you’re not supposed to do: I found myself slowly tucking away anything delicate or hard edge or just visually annoying to me. The things I’d once treasured were not “clutter,” which is part of that shift from being a working lawyer out of the house for 12 hours a day to being a “stay at home” mom—suddenly you hate your house because your eyeballs are on it all. day. long.
But it backfired because soon everything looked so boring. So bland. Not bright and happy. I hate a “pop of color,” but I’d gone too far in the other direction and we were in a “puddle of drab.”
Then, with her now at 2 1/2 years old, I had more time and inclination to upgrade and adjust the design. (I also think I hit my stride in the “mom routine” and it felt easier and more natural to make our living space reflect that.) Especially over the past several months, when I felt like the walls were collapsing in and I had a correcting urge to bolt from our neighborhood. (More on that experience was shared in “How to Be Happy.”) Since then, we decided to stay in our house (although every morning I suppress the need to flee), so I’ve been tackling things one by one: design projects that make more the rooms beautiful, aligned with our taste, and suited to our daily life… with custom, but entirely affordable, work.
Let me show you with these 8 short videos of the spaces, sharing exactly what I had made, the vendors I used, and the hiccups I problem-solved along the way.
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