OFFICIALLY First Time Home Buyers & How to Pick Paint Colors

Finally..........We are home owners! We closed on our town home today, after much stress and constant document fetching. We had a complicated scenario with 3 different mortgages (one primary and two down payment assistance loans), so it took quite a while to figure everything out. But, all of that is in the past now, and we can focus on the fun stuff.

So what is the first thing you should after closing on your first home? Go to the paint store! That's exactly what we did. We like Sherwin Williams, because no one else can compare with their customer service and knowledge. We went and picked up three colors of wall paint, and our base board paint for touch ups. The colors we picked were a gray screen (SW7071) for the living room and dining room, recycled glass (SW7747), and echelon ecru (SW7574). We aren't sure yet where the echelon ecru and recycled glass are going, but one will be the kitchen color and the other will be the half bathroom. Go to the Sherwin Williams website and look at their color visualizer, it's pretty cool and you can see the colors.

Coming to these colors was not easy. We knew what we wanted from our various "inspirations" and pictures, but it was much harder to make the decisions than we thought (especially for Maggie ;)). For instance, we wanted the living room to be gray from the beginning, but a gray that was almost blue and almost gray at the same time. The first color sample we got ended up being way too light, almost a sky blue to me. We painted the samples on pieces of white carboard paper, because the man at the paint store told us that this would give you the best idea of how the paint would transfer to the wall. What we found out after some quick Googling is that paint will dry darker than it looks on the color wheel. So don't be afraid to go after that color that you really want, even if it looks a little bolder on the sample.

We wanted to pick colors that were neutral enough to sell the home with, but also that gave us enough color to be comfortable. We also believe that it's cheapest to go neutral on the walls and use accents (pillows, fabric, etc.) to give the rooms color. A pillow is cheaper to replace than a wall of paint. Write that down.

Here are some of our inspiration pictures:







Oh yeah, all of this "advice" is taking place prior to us actually putting any of the paint on the walls. So take it for what you will.

Next stop is Lowes to get supplies. Moving starts after July 4th and then the painting party with delivery pizzas and dinner on the floor begins!

Thanks for joining us on our crazy ride...

-Grayson (& Maggie)

Finding your "Couple Style"

Let's begin by saying that Grayson and I had no idea we would be homeowners so early in life. We thought we would get married, rent an apartment for several years, then eventually get ourselves a nice little "starter home." Well the married part is happening, and the town-home is happening (tomorrow), it's just all at the same time. Once it finally sunk in that we were about to be homeowners we realized we had to figure out how in the world we were going to combine our two very different styles.

The first thing we did was assume we knew what the other one liked (which was wrong!) and realized we needed to find some inspiration/things we liked. And that is exactly what we did. We got magazines, looked on websites, and lucky for us I (Maggie) have a friend who is an interior designer and we were able to look at some very glamorous fabrics too (our favorite mag's and websites are listed below this entry, if your interested).

The best thing to do as you find your inspiration pieces online is to put them in a folder on your desktop and after a few weeks of searching you will have lots of inspiration pieces. After you have exhausted your search online, begin printing them out. As you find rooms or pieces in magazines RIP EM' OUT! (this is my favorite part!)

Once you have a good sized folder of inspiration pictures, go through them together and with a sharpie write out what you liked about each picture. You will begin to find similarities in all your pictures and eventually you will be able to identify your style, find color pallets you like, and even identify furniture pieces you both agree on.

Not only did we go through the ol' magazine and internet routine as I suggested above, but we also walked around home decor stores and pointed out things we both liked. We eventually realized our style was somewhat Modern meets Beach Cottage (aka, Pottery Barn meets IKEA). Some of our inspirational pieces are in the picture to the left...

This was an exciting time for us because as I mentioned earlier, we both just assumed we knew the other one's style. I can admit that I was the one who did most of the assuming and thought Grayson would be the typical male and only like dark, dreary color pallets. Boy was I wrong! (see Grayson, I can admit when I'm wrong, it just doesn't happen much, ha)

We promise, finding your couple style can be done, don't become dramatic and feel like you two will never agree on anything. Just follow our advice: 1- find inspiration 2- review your findings together 3- walk around home decor stores, and most of all - DO IT TOGETHER! Think about it, would you want to live in a house where someone else picked it all out, would it feel like home to you? Sure, you will have disagreements, but just remember to keep it fun, be able to compromise, and stay reasonable (aka - ladies, no pink and gents, no lazy-boys).

Our (constantly changing) Favorite Magazines/Websites:
Ikea
Pottery Barn
Better Homes and Gardens
My Home Ideas (combines lots of magazines into one site, our favorites are Coastal Living, Real Simple, Southern Accents, Southern Living)
Various Blogs, our favorite one is Young House Love
HGTV (we obsessively watch "HG", as it is called in our family, and there will surely be some posts about our fav's in the near future!)

Thanks for joining us on our crazy ride...

-Maggie (& Grayson)

Get to know the (almost) Pope's

With our house closing in 2 days and our wedding in 33 days, we have a lot going on. We are picking out paint colors and making moving arrangements while searching for wedding songs and making last minute wedding arrangements - things are crazy! Not only do we have all of that going on but Grayson just had a promotion at work (yay! - so proud of him!) and I am spending hours each day searching for an elementary teaching position (yeah, they aren't hiring teachers anymore, who would have thought!).

Our house is a two bedroom, two bathroom town-home in Davidson, NC. Believe it or not, we are buying the place from my sister (we like to keep it in the family - haha). It has been awesome purchasing a place when we know the previous owners because we have no nerves about finding any "hidden problems." Another perk is that whenever we head over to babysit my beautiful niece and handsome nephew we have been able to measure and map out our decorating strategies early. The downside to this is that we have lots of ideas but none of it can be purchased until after the wedding (gift $, oh yeah!).

Which brings us to our wedding :)
Grayson and I have been dating for 5 years. We met back in high school (insert "aww" here) and both went to NC State in Raleigh, NC (yay to any Wolfpack fans!). Grayson "popped the question" over Christmas on one of our date nights (we try to do this weekly, you should too!) and I have been on cloud nine ever since. I'll say this now, because Grayson is not with me as I write this entry, but he is the most amazing man a girl could wish for, I am so blessed we found one another :) Enough mushy gushy - While we are excited to begin our lives together, as husband and wife, we have also been spending lots of time planning our beach wedding. The wedding will take place on the beach in Emerald Isle, NC and the reception will be in Swansboro, NC at my families beach house that my grandfather built in the 80s. We are so excited for the week, our families have done an amazing job making our dreams of a casual beach wedding come true! If your interested, our wedding website is (www.popekindredwedding.com) and eventually we will post pictures from the wedding and if your interested we can let you know where and how we did our decorations (a lot of them stolen from other blogs we love.)

Grayson and I were first introduced to "blogging" as we were planning our wedding and researching decorating ideas for our house. We used numerous blogs to get our inspiration and realized we should share our ideas with others too (in the words of my professor, "I'm just a giver"..). We hope to gradually document our adventures of house decorating and newlywed bliss through this blog. While I (Maggie) have done the initial planning of our blog, Grayson is the artistic one and will most likely be the one who makes it all worth while :)

Thanks for joining us on our crazy ride...

-Maggie (& Grayson)