How to Make Your New Blended House a Home

That Everyone Feels Comfortable Living In, While Staying on a Budget!

* Note Some links found within this website may be affiliate links which means if you purchase a product or service through my link, I may receive a commission based fee off of it! This is at NO COST to you EVER! So thanks for the support, I truly appreciate it!

When I first started dating my husband, I never imagined I would ever move into the house he lived in. You must be wondering, why?

Well, because that was the house that he lived in with his ex wife, my step child’s Bio mom. I HATED that house and to be honest even HATE was not a strong enough word. All of her possessions were gone, but the presence lingered on.

I was straight forward with him about my feelings for moving in and he gave me a QUICK reality check!! I was being extremely immature about the entire situation and I can see that now, but then I couldn’t even begin too.

He explained that as newlyweds, which we would be when we moved in with one another, newlyweds both having a Bio child of our own and very dramatic ex’s, minimum wage jobs and so on, we would NEVER last if we were to go out and purchase or even rent another home at that point in time of our lives.

Inside I knew the truth, but I couldn’t face reality! Why? It made me feel insecure, it made me feel jealous, it made me feel vulnerable and that scared the daylights out of me!

With this house being paid off and the taxes not very much, we could actually be able to SAVE for the dreams we had for our future! My husbands divorce and custody case costs him nearly all his savings, and I only worked a part time job at that point. So I didn’t like it in the least bit, but I LOVED my husband and I couldn’t let this tear us apart, so reluctantly I moved in.

He was very patient with my feelings and told me to move stuff and re-decorate, throw out, replace, paint, etc whatever I had to do to make this OUR home! He said its your personal masterpiece!

I felt excited but for some reason I was so subconsciously against doing anything to the house at ALL. I still despised it! I would tinker with things here and there but nothing I did felt right with the redecorating. That is, until I became pregnant with my husbands and myself’s child together. Call it nesting or whatever you’d like but I saw it as my breakthrough. 

I finally could channel a want, a desire, to change the house we now call home, and once I started, I didn’t stop!

Turning our new blended families house into our home.

Since my two girls would share a room, I opted in (more than eagerly) to swap mine and my husbands room to the smaller room and the shared girls room would relocate to the bigger room so they could each have their own space. My stepsons room was perfect for him and he loved it thankfully. We took a wall down in the small room and made the room a tad bigger, ripped up the carpet and put down hardwood floors.

I spent HOURS sanding the hardwood and staining the wood walls to the perfect color how we had agreed on. Then, I continued on to paint the kids rooms. To save money on painting cost, I went searching in my husbands gigantic barn.

Here were my findings: TONS of white paint, a very bright red, a super dark blue, a very small container of dull yellow and a mint green.

I knew I could come up with something for a (then) 5 year old girl, newborn girl,  and 4 year old boy’s rooms. So I began experimented. I  started on my daughters room, since it’s the biggest, I painted all 4 walls white.  Then, I took the bright red and white and made a very pretty pale pink color.

I painted the two opposite facing walls with the pink and let it dry. Then, I mixed the red with the white again but not as much this time and it came out a brighter pink, so for the second layer, I used the brighter color. For the remaining two walls, I took the mint green and yellow mixed and made a pastel green that my daughter LOVED. It turned out so pretty and girly.

Moving on to the boy room, remember the dark blue I found? I mixed it with white and did a sponge type painting effect, in the end you could see the white that was under the blue but barely, and it looked awesome put all together. So Painting which dramatically changed the look of the rooms and the cost being a whopping $0 bucks!

How to make your new blended families house a home.

After the bedrooms were painted, we took down the bar that never got used and that separated the kitchen and dining room which COMPLETELY opened the entire house up!

Next up was the accent pieces: curtains, pillows, hanging pictures, accent rugs, shelves etc.

I had no particular plan or order to this madness, I just knew I was in a groove. I found this awesome triangle shelf at a thrift store for $2, bought some blue/turquoise spray paint and started painting away. I had several small wooden shelves as well and I painted those turquoise too.

Now, since my husband and I, had swapped to the small bedroom we didn’t have a big closet and worse it had no door. I had tons  of curtains but none that I liked, so I came across a turquoise pattern shower curtain, the fabric kind.  I hung a curtain rod over my 3 “closet opening” and windows.

To make the shower curtain fit length wise, I had to cut it and then for it to hang on the curtain rod, I took the top and folded it over about 1 1/2 in and hot glued it into place, leaving just enough room for the curtain rod to slide in and hang in place.

.

I found a soft almost silky feeling turquoise piece of fabric among my craft supplies so i decided to make this my next curtain. It was very plain though. So I whipped my hot glue gun back out, took some extra fabric from the shower curtain one, and glued fabric into flower shapes about mid way. It looks so pretty!

I hung the triangle turquoise shelf I painted earlier behind my kitchen sink but higher, and used a small picture frame and placed a gold piece of scrapbook paper that had the saying ” Do What You Love” printed on it, into the frame.  Added some “fake” and pretty flowers, and a picture my dad hand painted. Its very inspiring to look at while cleaning the unpleasant dishes.

I hung the other small shelves around in various places around our home, mostly adding pictures to them. Below my kitchen sink eventually will hold the custom cabinets my husband is making us, but for now I hung the remainder of the turquoise pattern fabric and painted the top two drawers turquoise and it all blends beautifully.

I’ve made several other small changes here and there. I absolutely LOVE flowers and boutiques, and I have added them everywhere I can, even framed pictures of flowers. The kids and I made several different DIY decor items mostly painting and fixing up older items, framing fabric patterns and various pictures/ quotes, we even set up a mini family board “center” with a calendar that hangs above my desk, 3 cubby’s (one for each kid) that has a small chalkboard square patch on the front of each cubby.

On the desk there are containers with pencils and erasers, paper for the kids homework, an old school pencil sharpener hanging on the wall beside the desk, in the side drawer I have stocked it up with rewards stickers, good job certificates, stapler/stables, and other odd and end craft/school items.

We (my husband and I) found two school house desks the kind we actually used in middle school. One has a orange seat and one has a blue seat and wooden table tops. They use these for homework, and they work perfectly because the bottom has a rack where they can store their papers  projects, crafts and all from the day.

In my daughters room I hung up floating shelves added small hanging containers which I filled with her nail polishes, placed a necklace hanger and hung all of her jewelry  up and set up my old makeup mirror on the lowest shelf for her to have her own little makeup studio.

In my sons I painted a wooden stand up shelf that has two shelves separating it, on top I placed an unused aquarium and placed semi big rocks around it, keep in mind it has trees painted onto the glass, after placing all the rocks just right,  I added his dinosaur collection into the aquarium, some facing each other, some standing side by side and some fighting.

Experiencing our house finally being a home for our blended family that we all love!

Needless to say, the kids were ecstatic about their new “cool” rooms as they call them, I was proud and so happy to have a home with my blended family, and my husband was so relieved that our new blended house had finally been made into a home! A home we all loved, we all felt comfortable in, and a home we could all grow together and spend our futures together happily.

I think the best part of it all was redecorating to this extreme (our house literally looks like a different place) for practically NOTHING!! Almost everything I utilized for the home makeover was refurbished, re purposed, or found super cheap at yard sales or thrift stores.

If I would of relied on going out and buying all brand new items, I would of put our new blended family in debt, which ultimately would of caused us to have some type of turmoil in one way or another, and we didn’t need ANY of that! Plus, honestly I don’t think I would be as happy with all new stuff as I am with the new look and feel of our home using the items we did!

Have you ever tried any of the techniques I mentioned? Maybe you have used different DIY tricks or have other ways to save money on a house makeover, please feel free to share them below! I would love to hear them!

Love this post? Check these other posts out I think you’ll love as well.

My Disastrous Labeling Mayhem!

Are your Kids Constantly Bored and Never Utilizing their Imaginations? Check this Out!

Ways to Use DIY to Save on Kids Birthday Parties

I wanted to share: Swap.com has all your favorite brands at huge discounts.  Swap is the LARGEST Online Consignment Shop & Thrift Store! Because I referred you, you can get 20% off your first purchase of $20 or more! Use this link here to redeem your rewards—->  https://refer.swap.com/s/ablendedmomma

Read more..