Our hometown renovation

After several years in the Houston area, we left the big city to return to my (Kennan's) hometown of Devine, Texas, with dreams of renovating a home and making it our own. We are so excited to share part of our hometown renovation journey.

Our style is inspired my mid century modern design, lots of Fixer Upper watching, with some Young House Love DIY twists. In this blog series, we will share some of our favorite before and afters.

Especially now that we work from home with the Marken Media Co. office just steps from the kitchen, it's important to us that our environment is part of our inspiration. We work well in a space that inspires us, feels light and airy, and let's face it, also lets us live (with all the laundry piles, toy piles, and random piles of unusually large size). 

the Kitchen & Dining

We took this smaller, old-school kitchen and turned it into my favorite room in the whole house. After taking down the uppers that blocked the view of the dining room, it totally opened up the space. We used New Generation Kitchen and Bath for the white shaker cabinets and the gray quartz countertops. I even got my farmhouse sink! 

In the dining room, we used a super fun wallpaper as a feature wall to contrast all the white in the kitchen. We installed it ourselves after the kiddos were in bed during the  time change!

That back yard!

Oh my stars! Look how little Caden was!

Shhh... the sink is hiding dishes from view!

No more upper cabinets. Now we can see!

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Say goodbye to carpet! We did a ceramic woodgrain tile throughout.

Can't believe J was still in a cast back then...

We've got room for a pack'n'play and a high chair. What I love: my great grandparents' dining table. We got the chairs, which are almost like the original set, from Target.

It's amazing what some wallpaper will do to a space! We love these bright colors.

the Kids Bath

Bye bye square tiles!

Go, Uncle Bren, go!

We kept the original tub and just cleaned it up.

(We're potty trained. Thank you, Elmo potty seat!)

The Master 

The gray curtains I'd originally picked out for the master made it feel too dark. I ended up swapping them for a cream color and moving the accent rug back to the living room where we'd used it at our old house.

We took out the bedroom vanity and someday I'll turn it into a window seat with storage. Right now, it's home to my favorite chair/laundry holder (seen on right).

Let's be real. Moving is a mess! Also - it's OK to change your mind. I ended up taking back those dark curtains.

With two age 2 and under we've got the crib daybed thing going on!

Papa added embellishments to the existing door to turn it into a barn door leading to the master bath. Saving space, and looking good!

The Master Bath

To get more space in the master bath, we took over one of the hall closets and also took away the in-bathroom linen shelving. Though we did lose some storage, we gained so much bathroom space - making it a great trade-off for us.

We knocked down some walls to make the shower bigger.

From green to gray...

We found a great selection of tile at Floor & Decor.

We lost a linen cabinet and hall closet but gained a huge shower!

The living

I've gone back and forth with how to arrange our living room furniture. During the Christmas season, I moved the couch from being perpendicular to the wall with the front door to being parallel against it. So far, I have really liked how the room is opened up with this new arrangement.  

We hope to do some built-ins on the main wall.

There's a massive pile of kids' toys to the left! Ha!

There used to be an old gas furnace in the wall, so when we took it out, Papa built us a shelf. We plan to fill it with succulents and the top shelf will eventually display Aunt Denise's special-made stained glass art.

Getting a new door (and the old arrangement of furniture).

A photo collage with wedding photos, our first "baby" Reba, and the boys.

Favorite walls

The collage in J's room featuring his monthly photos up to age 1, baby shadowboxes with Marcus and my baby photos, and a Jaxson train Uncle Bren made.

I love it when things come together. The cross-stitch Denise made, the Caden rocket Bren made, the rocket poster from Marcus' former intern Daniel, the light-up star from sis-in-law Michelle, and the moon frame from my old roommate displaying C's sonogram photo make a cute collage.

I love these B&W photos I took of the boys. I got the white matte frames from Walmart. I want to remember these boys as little babies! (Excuse the obviously crooked one! Gah! Got to fix that!)

​Renovations aren't easy. ​We had such great help along the way. We can't imagine it without you guys! Special thanks to DeeDee Ramirez (for helping us in the beginning dream phase and for hooking us up with great contractors), "Papa" David Unger (for having your hardworking hands available and touching just about every corner of this house), Uncle Bren Unger (for spending part of your summer break in the hot Texas weather doing demo), Bill Blalock (for climbing up in our attic to install the perfect living room lighting), Medina Glass (for a lovely shower wall in the master bath), Hererra Plumbing (for bringing your expertise to our bathroom plumbing problems),  Sharon & Lyndell Neuman (for letting our family live with you while we waited for this project to be complete and finishing our fence), and Jack and Judy Kelley (for allowing us to buy your family home. We can't imagine being anywhere else).