I'm sitting in the car right now right by our new house I actually went inside the new house
and I started filming this video in there however the contractor is there and he was
drilling and I got interrupted way too many times I think it's too loud for me to do this
in the house okay I left the city to come see our house and see the progress on all
the renovations and I was planning on filming it in the house but then I got there and a lot
of stuff was going on and now if I go back to the city Milo's there and Michael's there
working so honestly I feel like the car is just a good place good acoustics nice lighting I'm
parked in a nice quiet area I'm actually gonna take my seatbelt off because I'm not driving
I know that I gave you guys a little peek of our house in a vlog that I posted a few weeks ago I
basically just showed a few areas a few clips it was a little sneak preview what I haven't done yet
is given you guys an actual empty house tour it is in very good condition the bones of the house
are incredible and honestly a lot of the cosmetic design of the house like the way it looks right
now is beautiful good quality materials however it's just not a hundred percent aesthetically
to our taste it's not the way we would design a house if we did a new build for example but
when we bought this house and we selected this town and this particular neighborhood we fell
in love with the location of the house and we would stay in this exact house for at least the
next decade if not longer so in thinking about what renovation work we want to do Michael and
I initially thought you know maybe we'll just do a little bit now and in five to ten years
if we want to do more we'll do more but we had this realization that we're currently in a very
unique spot we own the house but we're not actually going to be leaving New York City
for another few months so we have like a three to four month period of owning the house but not
actually living in it yet which is prime time it seems to me to do work because once you move
into the house if you then want to do work on it depending on what work you want to do you probably
have to move out of the house go stay somewhere else it's a big imposition on your day-to-day
life and so we thought why don't we just do as much as we think we want to do right now while
the contractors and the builders have all the free will in the world to go in and use the space
while we're not living there just seems logical so because of that there's actually just so much work
happening and I just went to go look at it it blew my mind everything's looking phenomenal one thing
that I want you to immediately imagine as you're looking at this house is that we are planning on
keeping the hardwood floors that are currently in because they're in great condition but we are
planning on stripping them and sanding them down and lightening them if possible so my goal is to
have floors that look like matte light wood this house is very close to the beach so I'm calling it
a beach house and I want it to look as beachy as possible and as bright as possible another
thing is that we're having an electrician rewire the electricity in the house and change all the
recessed lighting to modernize it so the lighting on the ceiling will change and then lastly every
single wall of the house is being painted white right now it's kind of an off-white color some of
the rooms have a gray color the primary closet actually is yellow so if you can just imagine
as I'm showing you this house light floors white walls and new lights just keep that in mind it's
a contemporary style house so it's very open a lot of cutouts high ceilings places where you
can see through to different areas of the house it actually reminds me a lot of the childhood home
that I grew up in in that way but when you first walk into the house the first thing you see are
the scissor stairs I think it's called a scissor staircase because it kind of goes up one way and
then you turn around and go up the other way but they're open stairs there's actually cut out in
the stair area that looks down into the living room and so when you first walk in you can either
turn right and go into the living room you can go straight past the stairs and that'll
take you to the back of the house where the kitchen is or you can go left and that area
will become our mud room I think most people are going to walk in and turn right and that's
going to be our living room area this room has high ceilings it's very bright and airy you can
see as I mentioned the cutout that leads up the staircase there's also cutouts into the hallway
that runs upstairs with the bedrooms so it's just very open in this room we plan on likely putting
an L-shaped couch coffee table maybe an ottoman or an accent chair and then a media console and
a TV TBD on the design this this video is not really about how we plan on furnishing it but
that's our plan of how we're going to use this room then when you flow back from there you're
in the dining space the previous owners actually had this big brown wooden unit on this wall that I
think was probably holding some dishes and it was right next to their dining table and the moment I
saw this wall I I said this wall needs to be a window and I think in my like dream vision the
entire wall would have been a window like a full glass wall however because of approvals from the
town and just dontracting issues the biggest window that they can cut out is a six by six
window which in my mind is a big picture window that's just one pane of glass that just lets so
much light into the room right from that dining area we plan on putting our table right there
using it as a dining area and I'm just so excited to open up that window and just get so much extra
light into the room when you turn around from this space that is our kitchen and the kitchen
honestly is really beautiful as is actually the matte black hood was the first thing I saw that
I thought was really modern and interesting and cool we have decided to keep the structure of the
kitchen as is but just cosmetically update it so we plan on redoing the countertops all the
cabinetry just you know putting new colored wood there and kind of rearranging it a little bit
there's a bench in the kitchen that we actually plan on losing because we don't really feel it's
going to be that functional for us and actually just building some drawers in place of it and
then the hood is still a question I think at first I thought it was really modern and now
I think it just draws my attention right to it and I would actually rather the attention be elsewhere
in this house I don't know I have this vision of carrying our countertop quartz up the backsplash
and just making it seamless and actually wrapping the hood in the courts I've never seen this in
real life but I do have a photo of it so I'll pop it up here when you continue flowing you are now
entering a family room that has a fireplace and actually there's a wall that the previous owners
had built up to separate this room from the room behind it our first plan was to knock down that
wall and make this room one big room and actually this fireplace second living room is going to be
my office so we have a plan to put these closeted walls along the back of it that have my desk in
the closet don't know how to describe it but we have this vision of like a hidden desk in
there and then maybe also a floating desk out in the room that can be a little bit more clean and
clutter free because all my actual stuff will be in the closet desk I'm basically going to work out
of this like living room office place I'm really excited because my work is very conducive to just
like being in main living spaces and I shoot a lot of stuff in the kitchen on the main floor
of the house so I'm happy to have my office be down here we plan on having some sort of a barn
sliding door to seal the room off in case I need to do work and other people are active and using
the kitchen and we actually have a plan to swap what is currently the door that goes out to the
porch with the window next to it so that that one will become the door and the current window we'll
switch over to where the door is now and that is just so that if I happen to be in my office
and I close the door people can still access the outside of the house without coming into my room
and it's kind of hard to describe but there is sort of this like entryway situation going
on right now that is their little mud room with a closet that has a laundry machine and dryer in it
as well as a door that enters into a bathroom room this area of the house is going to be completely
remodeled so we are building a mud room here when you walk in off the garage you're going to be in
one enclosed mud room that has a bench with some hooks closets the laundry machine will stay here
but it's going to be hidden behind some wooden paneling and then the door to the bathroom is
going to move around the corner and basically this whole main floor is going to look different as we
go upstairs keep in mind the stairs as well and all of the wood up here is going to be lightened
and stripped and will look the same as the main floor we come upstairs and we're at the primary
bedroom I just love this primary bedroom it's so bright and airy it has that peaked ceiling high
ceilings are always amazing for me but for someone like Michael who's six foot five to have a bedroom
that is this high is glorious the primary closet right now as I mentioned is yellow so that's going
to be painted but we also plan on re-outfitting it I feel like the way the previous owners had their
clothes stored in things like cubbies and bins is not really useful for us so we do plan on demoing
the closet and putting in a new closet system and then the primary bathroom is probably the
biggest change in the house because we are not only tearing out everything that's in there in
terms of all the tiling and everything but we're also reorganizing it and restructuring it we took
a floor plan and we actually drew up new plans I'm really proud of myself because I actually
did a decent amount of this reimagination of the bathroom our designer did send us a handful of
options but I for for days could not sleep because I was just envisioning in my head different ways
we could use this bathroom the previous owners had it so that when you walked into the bathroom
right in front of you on the longest wall was their tub they had their sinks and vanity to the
left and then they had their shower and toilet tucked around to the right we are changing the
layout so that the longest wall in the bathroom which had their tub is actually going to have our
sinks and our vanity and that just gives us a lot more space because the place where the
current owners had this sinks was a little tight we plan on using that little area for our toilet
instead and we actually are going to build a wall and make it a toilet room for extra privacy the
empty wall along the back is now where our tub is going to sit and then where they had their shower
hard to describe once again but we're actually bumping the wall back borrowing space from the
little closet entry behind it and moving the whole bathroom back to create more space and building
the shower back there lots of renovations in the bathroom and I actually just went in today that's
where I started filming this video and the whole thing is completely demoed what I will say about
this space is that when we first walked into this bathroom my opinion of the decor in there
was that it looked like a hotel it was very nice clearly the family before us put a lot of thought
into their tiling and you know they had a very specific taste that was executed with the bathroom
just to be honest Michael and I have a different aesthetic and so we want to go a different route
with the bathroom we're going in a much more minimal simple direction we still don't know
exactly what we're doing but we just know that we want to go in a simpler direction and so we
demoed the whole bathroom then when you come out the rest of the house has three bedrooms upstairs
and all three of those bedrooms share one bathroom that bathroom right now we're not changing but it
doesn't have a tub so actually our bathroom is going to be the tub for our children right now
and in the future we might redo that bathroom but we decided to just leave it it's pretty benign in
terms of design it's not exactly what I would have done with the bathroom but I think it's
fine to stay so the three bedrooms one will be Milo's room one will be our guest bedroom that
will flex into a future nursery when we have a second kid and the third one will be Michael's
office all three of them had wall-to-wall carpeting that we ripped out and so those
rooms are all getting wood floors throughout the house all of the doors have been taken off we are
replacing the doors with more modern paneled doors than were currently there also all of the new
doors will have matte black hardware so it will just be a lot more modernized and new from how it
looked before and then there's the basement which I am in love with it is I guess an above ground
basement it has windows so natural light comes in down there it had this wall-to-wall carpeting that
was pretty musty so our first step was to pull out all the carpeting and we are actually putting
vinyl plank flooring down there that is meant to look like wood but it's actually waterproof and
really great for basements so I'm sweating my face off that's our house also our designer has kind
of taken on more of the role of focusing on the architectural edits that are being made and it's
actually kind of become a project between me and my mom to do the interior design like furniture
style so my mom and I are deep in the trenches of choosing furniture we have some big ticket items
picked out already a couple couches my desk in the office we have some coffee tables but there's
still so much work to do and the next few months of my life are basically going to be engrossed
in this process I love it I am having the time of my life I'm gonna drive back to the city now
so obviously I'm gonna stop vlogging but I really hope that you enjoyed taking a look at our house
today if you have any design suggestions please drop them down below I'm open to all of your ideas
I'm beyond excited to watch this all come together and I'm just so grateful that you guys are here
watching my YouTube channel I hope you guys are as invested in this as I am although I'm sure you're
not as invested I hope you're at least getting some enjoyment and pleasure out of this I hope
everyone has a great week I will keep you posted as things progress and I will see you next time
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