Blue i Style

Creating an Organized & Pretty, Happy Home

Tour Our Home

Welcome!

If you love getting an opportunity to peek inside someones home as much as I do, then you’ve come to the right place, because I’m opening the doors and showing you around!

Before I show you around, let me give you a little background…

When we were first married, Scott and I lived in a loft-condo in downtown Denver, which suited us perfectly! We love the city and we loved living within walking distance of all our favorite things – art, theater, sports, and good restaurants. Our place was small, but we spent most of our free time making those 900 square feet perfect for us. But when the opportunity arose for us to move to our favorite Denver neighborhood {with room to grow}, we jumped at the chance.

It has been an interesting experience living in a very modern, new-build home in the middle of a historic neighborhood where not everyone is happy to see houses like ours continuing to pop up. But the neighborhood has over 100 years of different architectural styles, and I like to remember that once upon a time all those 1950’s bungalows were the new-builds among the 1890’s Victorians. And it’s that continued evolution that I believe has kept our neighborhood such a fun and happy place to be!

FLOOR PLANS

Our home is quite long and thin, making its layout a bit non-traditional. Our home is spread over four levels{yes, that is a LOT of stairs} – three above ground and a fully finished basement.

FRONT PORCH

I enjoy decorating the front porch for each holiday. Here’s our spring front porch from a couple of summers ago.

LIVING ROOM

When you walk through the front doors, the living room is to the left, just off of the entryway.
Make Ikea Billy Bookcases look built-in

We added floating shelves to make use of the shallow, awkward nook in the corner of the living room. Read all the details about the floating photo shelves. And a couple of years ago, we bought a piano so they boys could start learning to play. We rearranged the living room furniture to make room for the piano, and I need to take some new photos of the new layout because the walls are now light gray.

Now let’s head across the entry way toward the kitchen. Along the way, you’ll pass the narrow wall with our shoe cabinet {read about 20 other ways you can organize with an Ikea shoe cabinet}.

POWDER ROOM

As you round the corner, you get a look directly into the powder room.
This bathroom went from basic builder-beige to crisp and modern. The colors in the bathroom art were chosen to match the colors of the kitchen. {More details in the full powder room post.}

KITCHEN & DINING

Turning to the left from the powder room, you are now in the kitchen dining area. We recently updated this space in November of 2018. See the full, updated kitchen tour here.

Although our kitchen is not open to the living room, we have created a small sitting area in front of a double-sided fireplace, which makes it a very livable space where we spend much of our family time.
Adding a collection of black and white framed travel photos belong the high window made this wall of the dining area a focal point, where it had previously felt a bit awkward.
When we purchased the house, there was a large, unused space in the corner of the kitchen. After considering many options, we decided to create a mudroom-like space in that corner by adding a bench and hooks for hanging jackets and bags, as well as adding additional storage.
Read about the planning process and the details of the completed mini-mudroom space.

BACKYARD

The door next the “mudroom” leads to the backyard. We have undertaken two pretty major backyard renovation projects. The first was a number of years ago when we added a large patio between the house and the backyard.
Take the most recent backyard tour and see the backyard before photos.
And the most recent backyard project was the construction of a retaining wall to both improve our curb appeal and allow the grassy portion of the backyard to be leveled, creating room for the kids to play.

Read about this retaining wall project; and see the updated kids’ play space

When the sun goes down, the string lights create the perfect ambiance for evenings in the backyard. Read about how to install commercial grade string lights.

Now let’s head up to the SECOND FLOOR…

UPSTAIRS HALL

When you arrive at the top of the stairs, you find yourself in a big, open hallway. The railing looks down on the first floor, and the large windows are located directly above our front door. That cute black and white cabinet is pretty sneaky, because it actually provides extra storage for the adjacent bathroom.

BOYS’ BATHROOM

This small bathroom has two doors, one from the hall, and one that leads into the nursery. We recently gave this space a sophisticated superhero makeover that the boys love, and that coordinates great with the black and white decor in the upstairs hall.

BOYS’ SHARED BEDROOM

Near the top of the stairs, just off of the hallway sitting area is the boys’ bedroom {Take the full boys’ room tour.} The boy has separate rooms for years, but a couple of years ago they started begging for bunk beds and to share a room.

This is the smallest bedroom in the house, but we managed to come up with a space plan that still provides the boys lots of space to read and play, and to incorporate their love of color and animals.

Painting the teal ombre stripes was a time consuming process, but so worth the impact it makes in the room!
 
This shared room used to be the nursery, with the same striped walls. Click here for the nursery tour.

LAUNDRY CLOSET

Down the hall, there are two sets of double doors. Behind one is our laundry closet, and behind the other is our linen closet. Having a laundry closet instead of a spacious laundry room is a bit of a bummer, but I’ve managed to make it both function and stylish by adding fun pops of Kelly green, a DIY wood plank countertop, and lots of storage and organization, including on the back of the doors.

LITTLE GENTLEMENS’ LOUNGE

Across from the laundry closet is the room that used to be our older son, Beckett’s bedroom. Now that the boys are sharing the room at the other end of the hall, this is the boys’ playroom. We refer to it as their “little gentlemen’s lounge.”
The room design began as a menswear toddler room, including the hand painted argyle wall, which was a true labor of love! {Take the full bedroom tour.} Since Beckett and Cooper share a room now, with just a few minor changes, we were able to transformed the room into a playroom / hangout room for the boys.
Our boys loves books, so this room gives them lots of book shelf space as well as hanging tent where they enjoy reading almost daily! A low table in the center of the room is perfect for playing games, and the table has two large drawers perfect for toy storage.

GUEST ROOM

At the end of the hall is a guest room with an en suite bathroom. The design of the guest room was inspired by our honeymoon travels in the Greek Islands. {See our recent updates to the guest room here.}
We recently added a little home gym in the corner of the guest room. Get all the mini-home gym details here.

GUEST BATHROOM

The guest bathroom was also inspired by our travels in Greece, right down to the giant quote on the wall. {Take the full guest bathroom tour, but keep in mind the photos are very old and terrible, and need to be updated ;).} The bathtub in this bathroom is where we bath the boys, so we hung a rail to keep bathtub toys organized on a daily basis, but it can quickly swaps out to display more sophisticated bath essentials when guests are in town. {Read more about the bathtub toy storage.}

Up another flight of stairs to the third floor…

MASTER BEDROOM

Our master suite, together with a large wrap-around deck, takes up the entire third floor of our home.
It only took six years, but last fall we finally made our bedroom a priority and gave it the makeover it deserved! {Take the full master bedroom tour.}

Boll and Branch Duvet

The new art above the bed is one of my favorite features of the room, and the trim molding frames that we built around them really make them pop! We recently received a new duvet from Boll & Branch that is the perfect addition to our room! It’s super soft and warm, and it’s the perfect shade of blue!
I’ve always wanted to have a comfortable place to read in my bedroom, so that was an important part of the bedroom redesign. The corner between the two sliders was a perfect spot because it gets great natural light. I found the perfect chair and gave a DIY treatment to an inexpensive ottoman for added reading comfort.

MASTER BATHROOM

A few years ago, we gave our master bathroom a major makeover without removing any of the existing tile or cabinets.

Check out the full master bathroom makeover post to see lots more photos of the cement tile, new barn door, giant photo mural, and more!

ROOFTOP DECK

The remainder of the third floor is a rooftop deck that wraps around the master bedroom and bathroom. This past summer, we turned the previously unused deck into an outdoor family room and movie theater for the whole family to enjoy!

Lastly, let’s head to the basement… that’s right, three flights of stairs down from the master bedroom.
 

BASEMENT FAMILY ROOM

I have never properly photographed the basement {bad blogger!}, but here’s a photo I snapped a few years ago. That big thing in the center is actually our pool table covered by the boys’ play tent.

And here’s a view looking the other direction – this end of the basement is primarily the boys’ play space.

UNDER STAIR PLAYROOM

Around the corner from the kids’ open play space, we created a special little hide out for them under the stairs. We fondly refer to the rock & roll themed under stair playroom as their “studio.” Take the full under stair playroom tour to see how we created a magnetic ping pong wall coaster and also added lots of storage hidden in plain sight.

OFFICE

The basement also has a bathroom and another bedroom that we use as a home office. The office is in need a major makeover, and I recently started working on my plans for the space. Here’s what I have in mind. See the full design plans for my home office here.

I realize that basement tour leave something to be desired, but I promise I’ll get better basement photos up soon as we complete all of our planned updates.
If you want to see the before and after photos and more details about each of these spaces, you’ll find a link to each to the Room Makeover page!

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