5 Ways to Make a House Feel Like Home
At Home with the Hastys - 5 Ways to Make a House Feel Like Home
The Backstory
New to Hasty Book List? Read about the fire that prompted this home renovation, here.
The Inspiration
As we get closer and closer to move-in date (which is currently estimated to be mid-January) little worries have started creeping into my thoughts. I wonder how I’ll feel returning to the source of so much pain, fear, anxiety, stress, and heartbreak. I have two days of memories filled with joy and a year and half of memories filled with stress and anxiety. Will I ever be able to see this condo as my home and not the fire-renovation project? I also worry that everything will feel too new. I love getting new things as much as anyone, but I’m a historian at my core. I like things with a past, with character, with a story. I liked that our old wooden floors creaked quietly under my feet. Imagine all the other feet that have walked on those floors over the years, floors original to the early 1900s building. Now everything is brand-new, including most of our personal possessions. So in an attempt to make our condo feel more like home, I started reading articles about how to make a home feel homey. Most of these articles centered around Hygge, the Danish idea that coziness is a mood. The English word “hug” is related to this term, and that is exactly the thing I’m looking for. I want my home to hug me as I walk through the door, much like my neighbor hugged me the first time we met…standing outside our home watching as the firefighters did their work. That hug meant the world to me in that moment. After reading countless articles, these are the (first) five things I’m focusing on as I make a cozy home.
Candles
At Home with the Hastys - 5 Ways to Make a House Feel Like Home
I must have instinctively known that candles would help make our condo feel more welcoming. Several weeks ago, I started a project to find a new signature scent for our home. My old favorite scents now trigger memories of the fire, so I had to start from scratch. You can read about my search for a new signature fragrance in this post, as well as my top candle choices. You’d think that someone who lost her home to a fire might be wary of lighting candles, but they really haven’t bothered me. Am I anxious every time I turn the oven on? Yes!
Layers of Lighting
At Home with the Hastys - 5 Ways to Make a House Feel Like Home
The right lighting is so important. Have you ever noticed that some light bulbs put off a harsh blue light and others cast a really yellow, almost greenish, tone? I can’t stand either one - I think this harkens back to the days when I taught visual merchandising and I’d spend a week talking about lighting then my students and I would visit different retailers and critique their lighting scheme. I’ve spent so many hours of my life critiquing others’ lighting that I want to get it right in my home. The idea for layering lighting is that you can turn on different combinations of lights depending on the mood you want to set.
We started by adding more recessed lights in the ceiling and putting them in more strategic locations. My husband chose these in particular so that we could adjust the temperature of the light (warmer or cooler) depending on the room or time of day. They were also less expensive than your typical canned lights.
The second layer of lighting consists of ceiling light fixtures. I’ve had my mind set on the chandelier pictured above for the dining room since before the fire. I love the moody black accents and the brass that complements the warm wood tones. From there, we selected a similar chandelier for the sun room and coordinating flushmount fixtures for the front and back door and pendant lights for over the kitchen island. Stay tuned for more posts on our specific selections for each room.
The final layer of lighting is the lamp layer. We selected a variety of floor and table lamps for the living room, a desk lamp for the sunroom, and two touch-on/off lamps for the bedroom nightstands (because the last thing I want to do after I’ve been reading at night is stretch to reach the lamp to turn it off (or even worse, have to half get up out of bed to reach the switch!) I’ll be posting more on lighting in later posts.
Books and a Nook
At Home with the Hastys - 5 Ways to Make a House Feel Like Home
One things that I was surprised to learn (but shouldn’t have been) is that books create that cozy feeling. And I have no shortage of those! I want to take a moment here to roll my eyes at this new interior design trend that turns all of the books so that the spine is facing the back of the bookshelf and the pages are facing front. What is that about? Clearly those books are never being touched, much less read. No, I need my book spines facing outward so I can easily find the book I want to read, or reflect on an old favorite when my eyes catch the title.
Although I have no shortage of books, I have been missing a good nook for reading. The rental apartment is very open, it lacks intimacy and coziness. Eric and I have thought a lot about our “nook.” One of the few surviving pieces of furniture is a chair from West Elm (a model that was discontinued) and matching ottoman. It will be placed in a corner of our living room, with a floor lamp next to it, a magazine rack for Eric’s copies of the Economist, our record player, and a credenza to set my mug of coffee and current novel on. I can’t wait to share pictures once we are all moved in and unpacked!
Natural Materials
At Home with the Hastys - 5 Ways to Make a House Feel Like Home
There are a number of ways to incorporate natural materials into the design and decor of your home. If you are building a new home, or completely remodeling an existing building, you can start with major elements like wood flooring or natural stone countertops instead of formica. If you’re just doing a quick refresh, there are smaller and easier ways to bring nature indoors.
One of my favorites, which will come as no surprise to my regular readers, is to add house plants. See my post on all of the house plants I currently own, here. You don’t need a ton! Start with a small plant on your desk or wherever you spend the most time. Maybe that little touch of green will be enough, or maybe, like me, you’ll add a plant here and there until you’ve run out of space in your condo.
Another way to incorporate natural materials is through natural textiles. Choose a crisp white linen for your curtains or bed sheets instead of a polyester-blend. Eugenia Errázuriz, a Chilean patron of the arts known for her exquisite taste, consistently used cotton, stone, wood and linen in her home decorating, all simple and beautiful natural materials. I tried to channel her ideals when designing the interior of our condo.
A Touch of Nostalgia
At Home with the Hastys - 5 Ways to Make a House Feel Like Home
This suggestion really gets at my worry that everything will feel too new. Several articles I read said that you should surround yourself with memories, choose items that evoke nostalgia, and accessorize with pieces that have history. We lost quite a few sentimental items in the fire, so we brainstormed ways to bring in a vintage touch through new-to-us items.
We started by turning a painful event into a cherished treasure. This year (as if the year wasn’t hard enough) the current owners of my Grandpa’s general store, affectionately known as The Steffes Store which was in our family for over a hundred years, tore down the building without warning. I saw the news on Facebook and it felt like a punch in the gut (read more about it in this Instagram post.) I called my parents, crying, asking if they knew it was going to happen and begging them to reach out for a brick or some memento from the building that meant so much to my family. Not only did they get a brick for me, they were able to find a piece of the old tin ceiling. I haven’t decided where this is going to go just yet, but it is just the sort of thing to bring in a touch of the past filled with fond memories.
My husband and I both had Grandmothers who made quilts. When I was little, my Grandma used to sit me down and tell me which Grandmother (great, great-great) made which quilt. I can’t remember anything that she taught me, but I cherish those memories with my Grandma and those quilts remind me of weekends spent at my Grandparents home with my cousins. Eric and I reached out to our families and asked if we could take three from each collection for our home and our families agreed.
Finally, over the course of several weeks, I asked Eric to brainstorm some of his fondest memories - moments when we felt happiest - and then we looked for pictures from those times to scatter throughout the condo. Most of these aren’t posed, formal pictures, but snapshots of everyday moments or from family vacations. They remind us of times when we were worry-free (comparatively….), relaxed, and having a good time. I hope those images will evoke the same feeling when we move back into our condo.
