The Joshua Tree House Before & After

I have a lot to say about my sentiments of Joshua Tree… why we bought there, and how much we missed California after spending nine months away from it.

But we can get to all of that later. Right now, I just want to talk about how fun before and after photos are. When working on The Joshua Tree House, we didn’t knock down walls, renovate the kitchen, or do anything incredibly expensive. What we did do was paint, spend many hours drilling holes into concrete, build some custom shelving, install new lighting, decorate the space, paint some more… and yea mostly paint.

We were starting with some pretty incredible bones (hello shiplap ceilings!), so our goal was to highlight all of the character that the house already had. Something I hear a lot when talking about Interior Design is what a difference a fresh coat of paint can make. I can really see that here in the before and after photos of the living room. The room started off as a yellow tinted white, and definitely cast a yellow glow throughout the space. Though it was a light color, the room just didn’t feel as bright and spacious as it does now with a purer white.

Another significant addition here was adding overhead lighting. It amazed us that this living room has been in use since 1949 with no ceiling fixture… so the sun goes down and it’s off to bed? We said nope to that, and installed this beautiful Schoolhouse Electric light. Now not only can we use our living room a little longer each day, the light really acts as jewelry to the space.

My favorite room transformation is what we have dubbed ‘The Cement Tent’. While it may seem that we are obsessed with white paint at this point, you are absolutely right in that assumption. But hey, what a difference it makes!! Again, the space feels so much brighter now… and makes me much less anxious than all of that red did.

As we were painting the room one day, I was thinking about that textured ceiling. Though it’s not popcorn, it’s probably only one step up from it. The texture is just not for me, so I wanted to say bye to it. After some research… removing the texture wasn’t in our budget. Time or money wise.

Next thing you know, I’m thinking about how this room is separate from the rest of the house. You have to walk outside about 10ft to get back inside to use the bathroom, which is like the ultimate form of glamping. Sleep in a king sized bed, protected by the elements with concrete bricks… it all clicked at once and I realized this room is a Cement Tent! Then the room asked me to drape it with canvas so that it felt like a tent. I said ok.

Here’s another fun one (they’re all fun though). All we did to the Master Bedroom was: paint it a brighter white (including the ceiling!), gave the windows some room to breathe with curtains installed a littler higher and draping all the way down to the floor, installed new lighting, and added furniture and artwork!

As our budget dwindled, we found ourselves making frames for artwork towards the end. The cactus print is in one of them. It’s a really simple DIY that I’ll have to share in another post.

Ok, the kitchen! We didn’t have the budget to rip everything out and start over. The kitchen is actually a decent size, but the space is not being utilized well. All of that space between the sink and the stove is blank, but putting something there would block the functionality of the kitchen cabinets.

This room is really asking for wrap around countertops with lower cabinetry and open shelving up top. Though we would like to make these changes eventually, we are really happy with the few updates we were able to make for now. I love the new warm peach color (inspired by the sand just outside), and new lighting makes all the difference. We also installed new shelves in here which feel a bit more uniform.

To be honest, at points when we were working on the house we kind of thought we would leave this bathroom mostly as is. Unplanned, we started painting all of the doors in the house black. We loved the look so much, that we decided that it could be cool to bring into one of the rooms. I’ve always been a fan of black walls, and figured the smallest room in the house was a great place to experiment. I think the black with brass accents is beautiful. What wasn’t beautiful was the beige tiling of the shower next to the black paint… whoops.

So like any project, this room’s projects had a domino effect, and next thing you know we were painting the tiles white with a special epoxy paint. If you look in the mirror of the ‘after’ photo you can see the new bright white tiles! While it wasn’t something we originally planned on, I really love the simple updates we made to this bathroom.

This bathroom has the beige tiles I was talking about from the other bathroom. We didn’t make huge updates in here, but we did make the space a bit more functional with a custom shelf above the sink, and again added some fresh lighting.

We put a lot of passion into working on this, and hope that our guests enjoy the house as a place to reset, reflect, and create. We’re exhausted, but equally thrilled to finally be able to share the house with you – not just in photos but in real life! We can’t wait to hear what you think! 

+ The Joshua Tree House