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Design

March 13, 2020 By krystamacgray Leave a Comment

Designing a house from scratch can be daunting. When you can pick anything—literally anything within budget—it can be overwhelming. With limitless possibilities, how does one even start?

There’s really only one way. 

First, you look at anything and everything and drive yourself crazy with options. You look for shower tile and fireplace designs. You consider shiplap and hardwood floors. Dark or light? Grey hews or brown? Gold? No, not gold. Then there are the paint colors. The color palette. Of course the countertops must be considered. If you go with something busy, the cabinets and floors better be chill, you know? 

PS. Don’t go with something busy. It’s 2020 after all. 

Besides the look, you need to choose material. Are we going granite or cement? No wait, quartz! But hold on, because if I do cream quarts countertops with a lovely little grey vein in the kitchen, and then also pick white cabinets and a white/cream backsplash will everything look too white? Where do we add color exactly?

PSS. No. It won’t look too white once you put all your stuff in there. 

Then there is the cabinet hardware. If you go all white with everything else, should you go black or gold on the hardware so it pops? Yes, unless of course you like silver best, in which case always choose what you like best. 

But look at me, spending all this time on cabinet hardware when there are obviously much more interesting things to consider anyway, like light fixtures and sinks. 

Oh, the sinks. 

Do you want a bowl sink? Don’t do it in your master. For the master, only inset sinks will do. Don’t pick one that mounts over the countertop. You know, the sinks that sit on top of the countertop and have ornate edges? So messy. No, you want under mount so you can just wipe whatever is on the counter quickly and cleanly back into the sink. But then again, that’s just me. 

Then comes the worry. You have to worry whether it’s okay that you put silver faucets on your bathroom sinks but brass for you shower head (the answer is yes, it’s fine). And then you will worry about your doors. How will the doors open—in or out? Does my pantry need a door? Will it be a standard door or a barn door or a pocket door, or a dutch door or a paneled door or a white door or chalkboard door? A wood door? But wait—you have the wooden hutch that is going to go right by it and you are worried it will be too wood matchy. WILL IT BE TOO WOOD MATCHY? 

So you’ll look at everything a drive yourself crazy with worry and options. And then you’ll feel shame for being so worried about something like house design when people in the world are suffering. You’ll vow to be better the next day. You’ll fail. Repeat cycle.

Okay, so that happens first. Best to be prepared for it. 

If you do that long enough, here is what happens next: A path appears. 

In order for a path to appear you have to find one thing—a tile pattern, a rug, a landscape design for your outdoor entertaining space—I don’t care what it is—but whatever it is, it will be one thing you are absolutely sold on. Something that looks so much like you and your specific taste that when you look at it your insides jump. This is actually what all the searching and pinning and scrolling through Luxe magazine’s instagram feed is for. You are not actually looking for “ideas.” You are looking for one thing to fall completely, madly, 100% in love with. Because when you do, a path appears. 

Suddenly, you can sense what everything else in the room will feel like once this one thing is there. You instinctively know the color and tone. You can suddenly see it. You can pick a floor that will compliment without fuss.

That is the process. You look and look until you find one thing that you are absolutely sure about and smitten with, because when you do, it will inform the rest of the design and make it easier to pick everything else. And you won’t have to second guess yourself because all the decisions are being made around the thing you are certain about. So wait for the one thing you’re sure of.

This is how you start. 

And this, my friends, is where design becomes a metaphor for life. 

My one thing for my Park Place house was this gorgeous hand painted Tabarka Studio shower tile. It had me at “hello.”

Filed Under: Houses, Stories Tagged With: design, designing a house, finishes, home, house, house design, metaphor, shower tile, tile

I Did My Best

June 28, 2018 By krystamacgray Leave a Comment

So.

Everybody has been asking to see pictures of my house.

And by “everybody” I mean two people on Facebook, someone that works at my daughters school and like, another person I saw somewhere once.

Maybe a neighbor?

Anyway, the number of requests is not important. I know walking through a new home is exciting, but I’ve been sensitive about showing it off because I didn’t want you to be jealous of the Pinterest-worthy way we’ve been keeping it. But then I thought, oh what the hell, lets give the people what they want. Here. Welcome. Come on in.

At first glance, maybe you’d be smitten with our bookcase located off the entry. I was too, until I realized we only have room for like, 20 more books before we are cut off forever.

Next you’d turn the corner into our kitchen and notice the beautiful blue kitchen cabinets. You’d cock your head to the left and wonder what the lovely tag pull things are. Well, they are to open the drawers. This is because our hardware isn’t all here yet. We got half of it this last week but the rest we are still waiting for. Nothing but the best for us.

Welcome to my bedroom! Sure, I could show you the view and the bed but your eye would end up falling exactly right here. See, I started clearing out my closet when we moved in almost five weeks ago now, and got really serious about it. For the past five years I’ve been holding onto hoards of clothes I don’t even like and would say to myself “when I get into our “final” house, I will get rid of it all.” This resulted in copious piles all over my room that were well intentioned, but in the end, just served to confuse and burn me out. It was so hard. I would look around an be all “I don’t know what these piles even MEAN!” But I did my best and worked through them slowly until I had one pile left. The giveaway pile. After everyone came and took the clothes that fit them, it left me with one small pile that I had no idea what to do with so I shoved it in the corner with random things and ignored it and it’s still sitting here one month later.

Here is our fancy master shower. You’ll notice we have no shower glass yet and that those are bottles of caulk NOT shampoo on the ledge. Plus a bucket and a gallon bottle of acetone for good measure. I guess tile or glass door people use acetone? Truth be told, I’ve never noticed what was in there until I took this picture to show you but now feel some responsibility to explain why it may be in there. But I have no answers. I am sorry.

We bathe in the bath tub currently, which Jeremy looks especially emasculated by when he’s in there.

Doesn’t everybody have a ladder and tool bags in the dining room? Everyday, eclectic and understated luxury is kind of my thing.

We haven’t even touched the office.

Pray for us.

Here is something that is on point though. My kids’ room.

We told Jeremiah and Ellie that they needed to make their beds when they got up in the morning, and ever since then, they’ve made them.

One time, we asked.

Every day I pass by and see their made beds without nagging or reminding I’m like:

I’m not used to such compliance from children.

And that completes the tour for today! Again, please try to suppress any feelings of envy that may come up just because we live like kings. You too can live like kings. I think they just give away those cabinet pull-y stickers for FREE, even. Lots of piles. Ladders. Tell people it’s avant-garde. You get the idea. Maybe even pack one downstair room of your house with boxes and packing trash and just yeah, fill that baby up real good. Not that I know anything about THAT.

I know something about that.

One day we will be living in a fully functional, beautiful house and I can’t wait for that day. Construction will end but there will always be piles of clothes and paper to remind us of our humble roots. Of this much, we can be certain.

Filed Under: Houses Tagged With: design, house

Simplify + Organize: A few ideas

January 4, 2018 By krystamacgray 1 Comment

Happy 2018, everyone!

I was listening to a podcast yesterday about simplifying and organizing. In it, the host asked the guest what would be a simple thing that everyone could do right now to help their home function with more simplicity. The guest said to donate or throw away all of our towels. Explaining that in any given household we have all different kinds of towels, some are one color, others are another color, some are short, some are long, some go in only the kids bathroom, others only in the guest bedroom, while others are only reserved for the master bedroom. So the idea is to buy a stack of twelve, non-expensive towels from Target, all the same size and color, and then you never have to delegate where certain towels go again. Plus, she said the cheaper, scratchier towels dry faster and better. You know it’s true….

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Filed Under: Books, Houses, Stories Tagged With: declutter, organization, organize, simplify

Farm House

January 5, 2017 By krystamacgray Leave a Comment

In late 2014 we bought a farm house on ten acres. It was known as “The Bartholomew Ranch” around town, named after the original owners, but an old newspaper article referenced the property as “Cloverdale.” It wasn’t clear why until the family discovered their grandfather was born in Cloverdale, Kansas. We love history.

The house was 1300 sq ft and built in 1902. There were two bedrooms upstairs and one bathroom downstairs which couldn’t have made an easy job of getting to the bathroom in the middle of the night. The stairs were were narrow, steep, and definitely not to code, so you risked injury should you fall, a definite negative. The property itself was idyllic though. Only five miles outside of town with a pond, a historic white barn and the most beautiful old cottonwood tree you ever did see. It was clear to us that if our family of six wanted to live here, we’d need to add on. We would buy it, gut it, and expand the house to 2000 sq ft with two extra bedrooms…and live in it forever.

Ha. Ha. Haaaaaaaa.

I’ve moved 12 times in 12 years of marriage and should have known better. What actually happened was we lived it in for one year, absolutely loved it, then sold it to awesome people, and moved onto the next thing.

Before

 

…

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Filed Under: Houses Tagged With: design, farm house, home

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Krysta MacGray

Wife of one, mother of four, lover of books, seeker of growth, hunter of beauty, gatherer of inspiration, student of wisdom, maker of art, spreader of wildly inappropriate humor, and writer of longer than necessary texts.
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