Hello friends! I suggest you grab a cup of coffee or glass of wine and settle in for a bit because this is going to be a long post! Many of you have been asking for more pictures of our current home since we started remodeling it two years ago! I am super excited to share our house with you today (finally!). What could motivate me to get all of the finishing details complete and done? Selling it, of course! Yep, you heard right. The Stoegbauers are on the move again! We listed our house this past weekend and received several offers quickly. We are now under contract and will be moving in January after the holidays. I’m so thankful I get to decorate for Christmas one last time here before we move on! A super cute family bought our home, and the day we signed the contract, they also welcomed their third baby!

If you don’t know about our passion for real estate, let me give you a little background. Before I started this crazy TomKat blogging journey nearly eight years ago, I was a Realtor and owned a real estate company with my mom. For 8 years, we ran a highly successful residential resale brokerage and enjoyed the incredible market. During those years, my husband was working for the homebuilder, D.R. Horton Homes as a sales agent and then sales manager/broker. These were the days when builders held lotteries for home buyers to have the privilege of purchasing a home in their community (insane, right?). In those rapidly rising value years, we bought and sold 10+ homes ourselves, some that we lived in and some that we remodeled and flipped. We were moving every 4 months – a year. The market was so lucrative and silly us, we thought it would last forever. Fast forward to 2008, when the market completely crashed. We were stuck with two custom remodeled homes to sell that were valued at or below what we had paid for them before putting in the funds to remodel them. Ouch!

We were lucky to be able to sell them and not have to short sell or foreclose and keep our high credit rating. I know so many people who were in tough situations and finally now able to get back into the housing market. It was horrible for everyone. I quit real estate to stay home with my littles, which is when The TomKat Studio was born. For the past 8 years, while both my husband and I started our own new businesses (his still real estate, mine blogging!), we have also been back in the housing market, but at a slow and steady pace. We have been purchasing the best deals we can find, with the most potential, then remodeling them and staying for 2 years, to avoid capital gains taxes on the profit. So here we are, at two years, so it’s time to find the next house that needs our love!

I am super excited to share our home with you today because friends… this one is special. It is truly the first home that I feel is ME and represents the style that I truly love! It’s completely updated with attention to every little detail carefully selected by my husband and I. We sold our last home nearly fully furnished, which let me start from scratch with this gray, white and black color palette. Hooray! So here we go…

Formal Living Room
When you walk in the front door, you are greeted with soaring ceiling and a super tall fireplace. This room has the “wow” factor and we knew we could make it something spectacular. I found some fireplace inspiration online and our contractor took it from there. The flooring we used throughout the bottom floor and bathrooms is a wood-look tile that is a brown and gray mix. We adding a little fun by laying it in a herringbone pattern in the lower areas and then a regular lay in the rest of the house. The key to making wood-look tile look amazing is having it laid with as little grout lines as possible, so it appears more like real wood. This flooring is amazing and we would use it again for sure. For the fireplace surround, we used a small marble herringbone pattern to mimic the floor and then used white quartz (that matches the kitchen/bathrooms) on the the pop out of the fireplace. We painted the entire house in a light gray. It took me forever to decide on lighting for the formal areas, but ended up splurging on this gorgeous (HUGE) crystal chandelier, along with small versions for the entry and above the dining room table.

Dining Room
In the dining room, we added a focal wall of white wood paneling (which I later learned is called board + batten) and it’s gorgeous! We literally use this wall for shoots on a weekly basis. I was struggling with what to put on this giant wall, and the paneling makes it beautiful and functional. With the big window and west sun, shooting in the space is ideal.

Powder Room
This little bathroom got a big makeover! This powder room is located near the formal living and dining rooms in the front of the house. It looks even better in person. I would love to take credit for the idea of taking this tile pattern all the way up the wall, but my contractor suggested it and boy, was he right! The tile glimmers from the reflection of the lights in this space. I told my husband that we needed this new rectangular pedestal sink and matching toilet. He wasn’t convinced, but I won.

The Kitchen
Ah! My kitchen. You’ve probably seen glimpses of it several times if you follow my blog or instagram, because we do a ton of shoots in this room. I have always dreamed about having a white kitchen and I’m so happy we finally did it! First, we started by extending and adding detail to the island, so the stools would tuck under the breakfast bar. We had the existing cabinets painted and added new chrome hardware (thanks, Martha). For the first time, we went with quartz countertops over granite. Quartz is super popular these days and I was aiming for something that looked as close to marble as possible, without the high maintenance. These have been amazing! We added a new stainless single tub sink and faucet. Lucky for us, the appliances and range hood were great, so we didn’t have to replace. We went with a white subway tile backsplash (my fave!) and took it all the way to the ceiling and around the kitchen window. I found the most gorgeous simple, glass pendant lights for above the island and we also added under and over cabinet lighting which looks beautiful at night.

Kitchen Breakfast Nook
We added white moulding around the windows in the kitchen and family room to give them a finished look. We also added my favorite kitchen light fixture, which I also used at our vacation home in Flagstaff.

Family Room/Bar Area
We did quite a bit of work to this area of the house. The fireplace was off to the side and had one of those awkward niches to the right of it for an old-school style television. So, we moved the fireplace to the middle and added a wood mantel and paneling around it, as well as the perfect framed spot for my husband’s large flat screen. We updated the bar area by removing the drywall header to open it up a bit. We added quartz countertops, a wine fridge and kegerator and pendant lights to match the kitchen. We also added crown moulding, window surrounds and wood paneling up half of the wall in the entire family room, which I love.

Upstairs Landing
Our floorplan is a two-story with a cool split second level. We kept the original railing, but painted the wood white. We added crown moulding, paint and carpet throughout the upstairs.

Master Bedroom
At first the master bedroom seemed small when the house was vacant, but once our furniture was in, it’s actually really spacious. We updated the paint, carpet, added can lights and a fan. Adding window panels made such a difference and added texture and softness to the room. The crown moulding really finished off this room.

Master Bathroom
This bathroom needed quite a bit of help. We painted the cabinets, added white quartz countertops, chrome hardware, white framed mirrors, a chandelier, and additional can lights. We replaced the sinks and added new chrome fixtures. We went crazy with the subway tile in here and it’s gorgeous! The light reflects it beautifully and gives a clean, bright white feel to this bathroom.

We reconfigured the shower and tub quite a bit. The shower was pretty small and the tub had the weird rounded steps. We made the shower much larger, and straightened out the tub surround. New crystal clear shower doors are perfect for the design. The glass shows off all of that subway tile just beautifully!

Kate’s Room
For our sweet Kate, we painted black and white stripes, which turned out so cute with her PB Teen bedding. Every princess should have a crystal light fixture in her room.

Kids’ Bathroom
We mimicked the master bathroom here with painted cabinets, new hardware, sinks and faucets, quartz countertops, new framed mirrors and subway tile in the bath/shower and for the backsplash.

Tommy’s Room
We just updated the basics here: carpet, paint and a new ceiling fan. His new soccer mural is pretty awesome!

Guest Room aka Party Room
So, this room was a total disaster until up about a week ago. It went from being my supply room (all my party samples + craft supplies) to an actual guest room! Don’t worry, all that stuff is now organized nicely in the closet! (and stuffed in all of those drawers!) Basics here: paint, carpet, fan.

Kids’ Loft
We did some construction in this room. There was a wall that essentially divided this big room into two spaces, so we knocked down that wall and opened it up to make the kids’ a lounge and study area.

My Office
Here’s my little office where I work everyday! It never looks this clean, I promise. I love that it is downstairs right in the middle of everything so I don’t miss anything going on with my family.

Exterior
We recently painted the exterior of the house with a new updated color scheme and replaced the old coach lights and added more trees and bushes.

Backyard
It was nice that the pool was already done, but we updated the decking with pavers in a herringbone pattern and added 3 giant palm trees and lots of new oleanders.

Fun! Fun!

Yes, it’s a lot of work… but we love renovating homes and giving them the love they deserve. I hope you enjoyed the home tour and will join us for our next house adventure!

xoxo, Kim

Design + Styling | Kim Stoegbauer, The TomKat Studio
Photography | Rennai Hoefer, Ten22 Studio