Beach House Before and Afters

This post is long overdue. Finally, some before and afters of the beach house. 

When we purchased the home, I was so happy that it not only had good bones but the main finishes of the house were neutral enough that I could do anything. Wood floors and ceilings, white walls and counter tops, made selecting my own colors and furniture so easy.

So, when you purchase a house knowing you're going to redo some of it, where do you start? Normally, if you need to do any construction, you would have to demo. anything you don't want and replace it. We were lucky because the rooms were well laid out and the main finishes like floors, counter tops and tile where all neutral and did not need to be replaced.  So, that meant that space planning was the next thing on my list. 

I started with the main living spaces. The living room, kitchen and dining were all open to each other. In the before, there wasn't a dining room table. I wanted one even though there was already seating at the island. I thought it would be nice to have the extra table for playing games or an extra eating space. My first design challenge was to find some extra room for a dining table. I did this, in part, by shifting the seating up against the far wall. Using a sectional allowed more seating using less space. In addition, to make this work, I had to purchase a table that was the correct width and buy benches instead of chairs so that  they could slide under the table when not in use.

After figuring out the layout, I needed to decide what furniture I was keeping and what I needed to purchase from there. The red sofa obviously had to go.

Speaking of getting rid of things...the fan. It was just too dark and too big for the odd placement of it in the room. We needed the air flow but also needed a fan that would blend in a little more. 

Once I had the large furniture items decided on, I had to look at the accessory situation. You can see that there was a lot of shelving that needed to be filled up. I tend to like things less cluttered so this was a challenge. I wanted one big statement piece. When I found the marlin, I knew that would be it!

The main thing in the kitchen was the pot rack. In another house, I would have loved it but it was just too much here. I decided on the light fixture instead for a more clean look. 

There was a little bit of controversy about the purple cabinets, but in the end, I decided that it was the beach and if you can't do it there, where can you do it? So, why not?

You can see from these two photos that not much changed in the kitchen. We were very lucky to have good tile and counter tops!

In the main bedroom, on the same floor as the living areas, I wanted to continue with the same color scheme, so I painted the walls, changed the bedding and added a shutter headboard.

I decided to go with a bright teal on the walls in the bathroom for some contrast from the bedroom walls.

This bedroom had the biggest transformation because we needed bunk beds for the kids.

At the beach, you need a lot of extra sleeping space for guests so we added an extra bed for sleepovers!

The entryway even got a little tweak with added hooks for towels and beach bags.

The final thing the house needed...a name. There was a perfect spot right by the door.

Bottle Cap Art

I needed some cheap art for all of the wall space in the beach house so it was time to put all of the beer drinking to good use. I have been saving up bottle caps for years. I turned these Heineken caps upside down because I really liked the green color.

I found the letters in a little store in Gruene, Texas for about $1 a piece and I bought the window at Vintage Market Days in Kerville for $20.00. So, this project only cost around $25. (If you don't count the beer, that is.)

 I found plywood cutouts in the shape of a mermaid at Michael's for about $3 and thought that they would be cool on the sign for the house that I was making. I already had them made when I realized that I didn't like the way they looked on that sign so this project was created. Sometimes failure leads to something even better anyway. The boards are from Michael's and cost about $3. They were originally a stained color so I lightly brushed some white over the top to make it look more "beachy".

They aren't very large, only about 10" square but I figured that they would work somewhere. The funny thing is, my original plan was to make crabs because I had seen some on Pinterest, but they evolved in to these two projects. Sometimes you just need some inspiration to get yourself started.