House Update #2: New Floors, Lights & Mirrors (+ VIDEO)

As of yesterday, we’ve been living in our house for a week now and we’ve done quite a few updates! It has all felt like a total dream, and making improvements and seeing things progress has been so fun. Keep reading for all the house renovations we’ve checked off our list this week with some insight on why we chose to do the things that we did, + a video showing the process!

If you missed it, check out my first post/video sharing the empty house tour and some initial projects we worked on, as well as all of my previous house-related posts (house hunting, decor inspiration, etc.).

Watch our second house video below!

FLOORING

We chose to go with vinyl plank flooring for our house for a few reasons, it’s:

• 100% water resistant
• low maintenance and easy to clean
• can be applied over a variety of flat subfloors
• relatively budget friendly

There’s a huge price range for this type of flooring, so we did a lot of shopping around before we settled on our final choice. We checked out places like Home Depot, Lowe’s, Menards and Floors-to-Go in person and online, but ended up loving Floor & Decor the most, which I’ll get into in a second.

Our issue with a lot of the flooring stores is that the samples were small, so getting an idea of what the floors would look like on a larger scale wasn’t easy. I had been warned through other bloggers and vloggers I follow that the samples can be misleading, so I was super wary about this. I would see a sample and love it, then look at it straight out of the box or online and it looked completely different. The lighting in the stores isn’t always great either, so that potentially distorted how the flooring looked as well.

I don’t remember why we ended up deciding to check out Floor & Decor Castleton, IN, but I’m so glad we did. I instantly fell in love with the store because their samples are HUGE — like the size of a standard door (or maybe bigger), huge. This gave us such a better representation of what each floor color would look like in our home, so I knew it was the place! I had looked at some of their colors online before going and thought I knew exactly the one I wanted, but ended up not liking it when I saw it in person.With that being said, I highly recommend checking out the flooring in person before purchasing so you know exactly what you’re getting. As a rule of thumb, I’ve found that flooring typically looks lighter in person than it does online.

We selected the NuCore vinyl plank (a brand exclusive to Floor & Decor) in the shade Gray Blonde. I always knew I wanted a light wood, but often found a lot of the colors were too yellow-y (like a gym floor), or too warm/cool toned than I wanted. It was more difficult to find the right shade than I thought it would be, considering I’ve always known exactly what I was looking for. Keep in mind that it may take some time to find the right one, so don’t feel discouraged!

Another thing I wanted to mention is that you truly can’t get a real feel for what the flooring is going to look like in your space until you start putting your stuff in the house. Seeing how it contrasts with all of your belongings is the real deal, and that’s when you’ll know that you picked the right one!

LIGHTING

Our house didn’t come with the best lighting, so we knew that’s something we’d want to change early on. We had large fluorescent lights in the kitchen removed and filled with drywall, then can lights and pendant lights put in. Good lighting really does so much for a room! We had five can lights and two pendant lights put in the kitchen, two can lights in the living room, one in the entry, three in the hallway and one light/fan combo in the master bathroom.

As I explained in the video, we’re torn on whether we want to use daylight bulbs (a bright white) or soft white bulbs (a softer yellow tone). I do get migraines, so I think that’s what’s scaring me away from the daylight bulbs. However, I do like that the daylight bulbs don’t distort any colors in your home, but the soft white ones are more gentle on the eyes. Let me know what you think, especially those of you who are sensitive to light!

The remaining light fixtures to be replaced are the ones in the dining room, master bedroom, office, spare bedroom and both bathrooms. Justin is wanting fans in the living room and master bedroom, whereas I would prefer more of a smaller decorative fixture to avoid the fan taking up most of the ceiling and potentially making the room feel smaller. I’d be more willing to have a fan in the bedroom rather than in the living room, but we’ll see!

MIRRORS

We picked up a couple different mirror styles for our bathrooms from Target. I decided to replace the standard rectangular mirrors that came with the house with round ones for more of a stylized vibe. We chose to hang two wooden frame ones side by side above the long countertop in the master bathroom. Though there is only sink, the countertop is the length of one that would typically have two sinks, so we thought two mirrors would be a fun way to spice it up and also allow us to have our own space. The brass mirror will go in our guest bathroom and it happens to be the perfect size. As I talked about in the video, I need to paint the wall were the  previous mirror hung since it isn’t white.

TO-DO LIST

• Paint kitchen cabinets
• Paint two bathroom vanities
• Paint behind mirror in guest bathroom
• Change interior doors
• Switch out old light switches and outlets for white ones
• Apply quarter round on all trim
• Buy and install new light fixtures
• Swap out any remaining door knobs and hinges

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That’s all for now! I hope you are enjoying these videos & updates because it’s been so fun for us to document the process. Subscribe to my YouTube channel to catch all of my videos as soon as they go up and follow along on all things house related on my Home Instagram Story highlight. Thanks so much for visiting my blog today & have the best day!