Home Tour: The Great Room

Hello MTV, and welcome to my crib!! Whenever I open my front door, I have to stifle my desire to say that because my friends and I used to say it as a joke…and somehow this is MY home?! It feels like a dream. I am so incredibly grateful to have the opportunity to share our new home with y’all, and that is something I pray over and remind myself of daily…if not multiple times a day. It’s hard not to feel all the warm fuzzies in this great room, and it’s been one of the most requested rooms in my Home Tour Series – so now I’m ready to break it all down for YOU!

I love that when you first walk through our front door (shoutout to Dallas Millwork who did all of our custom exterior doors and Doorworks for our incredible custom interior doors, they are chunky, heavy, beautiful and super sound-proof. I LOVE them!) you’ll notice this cozy little corner off to the side; we don’t have a “foyer,” necessarily, but we have this instead. I think it makes it feel super welcoming and warm, which is exactly what look we were going for in the rest of the house.

If you ask me to summarize my decor style, I would say Neutral/Farmhouse/Cowboy – that’s a real thing right?! I love a good distressed floor mirror, like the one above, and the Eva & Co. Cowhide Rug brings that Western vibe that I’m all about lately!

The reclaimed mantel came from Appalachian Antique Hardwoods in the mountains of North Carolina. The mantel itself is 9′ wide and 9″ tall/deep and I LOVE LOVE LOVE it. All of the white paint throughout the interior and exterior of our home is the color “Alabaster” by Sherwin-Williams, and the “painting” that’s hanging beside our fireplace is actually a TV! It’s the Frame TV from LG that looks like a picture frame when it’s not turned on so it’s not an eye-sore beside the beautiful stone fireplace.

Our vaulted ceilings make this room feel a lot bigger than its footprint, and I love the grandness it gives it. They are 23′ to the top of the vault, and we used white shiplap from Metrie for the entire great room ceiling! We actually painted the shiplap Alabaster as well and added stained wood beams, so it feels SO open, airy, and bright in here. Swoooooon!!

Another one of my favorite parts of our home is the fact that our GINORMOUS Pella Windows provide so much gorgeous and natural light, and it’s just another way that we wanted to design our home with as much of an outdoorsy feel as possible. Despite having all of this incredible natural light, I added the beauty of a chandelier pictured above. Circa Lighting was our dream light fixture destination (we used Circa fixtures throughout our entire home), and we used two of the Roark 50″ Modular Ring Chandeliers in Aged Iron in the Great Room. We also got our ceiling fan from Circa, and it’s the 60″ Maverick in Aged Pewter.

Now, onto our FURNITURE! Swoon. My Aunt Cindy Shockey is a design mastermind and created most of the pieces around the living room. She designs for Simply Amish, and we mixed and matched their couch styles and used Norwalk for upholstery. I was dead-set on using light-ish color fabrics but I also needed it to withstand the wear and tear of young kids and pets (and a husband–ha!), so we found the perfect solution! Cindy found “performance fabrics” (think: Sunbrella for outdoor furniture) that look and feel beautiful BUT can get spilled on and easily cleaned up. You can literally spray bleach right onto them if needed: it’s my dream situation.

We actually got nearly all of our major furniture around the house from Simply Amish (dining room table and chairs, bar stools, outdoor farm table, master bedroom set, etc. etc.) and it’s a dream to have such high quality, beautiful furniture throughout our home. All of their pieces are handcrafted in the Heartland of America, which I LOVE! And it makes me feel like SUCH a grownup to have these unique touches and I appreciate it all SO much more because of all of the love and attention that went into helping us make this our dream home – thank you Cindy and the team at Simply Amish! Cindy puts it perfectly when she says that a house isn’t a home until you add a little piece of yourself, and there is no “one size fits all” approach to home and furniture design. Amen!

The great room feels like the headquarters for everything else in our home–it’s where we come together as a family, where we had our first Christmas with both of our families, and where our babies will grow up playing with their friends. It’s where we look into nature and think of our blessings, and where the sunlight hits juuuust right in the morning as we drink our coffees. Needless to say, I am in love with this space and beyond grateful to call it our home.

Do you have any more questions?! I tried to share as many of the details as I could, but if I missed something, let me know in the comments below, and SUBSCRIBE TO MY NEWSLETTER for insider info, special access to things coming up, and more if you haven’t already!!