@Nest.Out.West influencer Cait Pappas
“Having established somewhat of an Instagram presence in the DIY and Interior Decorating niche in our first home, we knew that moving to this house meant fully renovating and customizing the interior, and documenting every step along the way to share with our loyal followers.”
West + Main Home: Cait, thank you so much for letting us feature your beautiful home in this issue of West + Main Home! Tell us…what inspired your project?
Cait: I'm super frugal, so Jason and I learned early on to DIY projects that we didn't want to pay someone else to do for us. That frugality also meant not wanting to pay top-dollar for a turn-key home that might not have the finishes I would've chosen. We looked for something that hadn't been updated in at least a decade so we could save on the purchase of the home and not feel bad about pulling out dated (and sometimes damaged) finishes.
I design and renovate for clients, and the first two questions I always ask in order to figure out someone's style are 1) Can you describe your go-to wardrobe staples to me and why you love them? and 2) Can you send me your Pinterest boards? (I like to analyze them to see if I can spot recurring themes or materials that I can work into the client's new design.)
To figure out the style and finishes for our home's renovation (a nearly five-year-long ongoing project!), we took a long, hard look at our own wardrobe and realized that we are both into warm neutrals, earthy greens, caramel-toned leather, and brass accents. A casual pullover or pair of jeans in bold black was something we both frequently pulled out to wear, too. My Pinterest boards (Jason's not into Pinterest) contained recurring images of minimalist spaces with white-oak-clad walls and floors, marble stone accents with warm veining, creamy whites, statement light fixtures, and earth-toned furniture and rugs. It makes sense, then, that our home has a very neutral palette with some form of a black accent piece in each space, brass or wood light fixtures, and marble countertops and tile accents.
We wanted to make our home fit OUR style, while incorporating some of the design trends that we both loved and would be happy to live with for years to come. Our children (ages two and four) needed to be able to live freely here, too, especially with two years of being cooped-up during the pandemic. Nothing we chose for our home is too precious for sticky fingers and little toes, and they have space to run around and be kids from front to back across the main level (our home is a ranch) and throughout the basement.
W+M: Do you mind sharing a ballpark idea of how you have invested in your home?
Cait: I couldn't put a number on it if I tried! TIME. We invested many weeknights after putting the kids to bed, and more weekends spent working on projects than not working on projects. I am privileged that in my line of work, between my photography style and my social media reach, brands are happy to sponsor products for our projects so that I can help spread the word about them on my blog, Pinterest, and Instagram accounts. With that being said, sponsored designer wallpaper still comes at a cost, as we're either giving up a weekend skim-coating our knock-down-textured walls, priming them, and then installing the wallpaper ourselves, or we're spending a few hundred to around $1K to hire someone to do it if we can't make time before the content is due to be shared on social media.
Had it not been for sponsored products and a team of loyal friends and family helping us DIY the install, our kitchen renovation would have cost us roughly $50K in labor and $100K in materials. My parents always said, "You have to make your own luck," and I do feel that our dedication to saving money by doing most of our projects ourselves and making sacrifices (like choosing to work when we really wanted to be meeting people for dinner or heading up to the mountains, or putting myself out there on social media despite my introvertedness and hesitancy to open up my personal life to criticism by complete strangers) helped us bring a significant amount of equity to the value of our home.
W+M: Spill the tea…what are some of your fave resources?
Cait: My go-to for all things kitchen and bath is Signature Hardware. They're a one-stop shop for me, since their products are all great quality, they carry a vast selection, I don't have to worry about varying tones from finish to finish, and their products align with my taste. I also love shopping around for light fixtures, and will tell you that some of my favorite fixtures came from Wayfair, Serena and Lily, Signature Hardware, and Hudson Valley Lighting Group. For bedding, I had the opportunity to sample some sheets from Cozy Earth with no strings attached, but they've since become the only bedding company I can bring myself to tell people about now. They are buttery-soft, come in a variety of neutral (warm and cool) colors, wash well, are breathable/keep you cool, and while they are pricey, I have a discount code (NESTOUTWEST), so my followers can take 40% off—they are worth every penny!
Our home smells like my favorite candles from local maker The Sunday Candle (available at retailers across CO and the US, including Lottie Lane in Erie). There are too many great scents to ask me to choose a favorite, but I will say "Sunday" and "Alpine Haus" are up-there for me! Another scent you'll smell upon walking into our home is McGee & Co's "Palo Santo & Oakmoss" candle. I wait for it to go on sale and buy two whenever it does.
W+M: Did your home turn out the way you hoped/planned and was the final result what you had originally intended?
Cait: Overall, our home is exactly our style. It's warm, inviting, cozy, peaceful, and fit for a growing family. Jason and I are proud of all of our hard work, and we love hosting family and friends, as well as raising our little ones, here. There are small things here or there that really only bother us (other people have said even when pointing these things out, they hardly notice or are bugged by them), but the little scratches and blemishes are what make a house a home after all. There's a story behind every imperfection, and we'd welcome the opportunity to laugh over a cup of coffee with anyone who feels the need to point them out. In the end, we've customized every square inch of this home and turned it into a true haven for our family, and we're really proud of that.
W+M: What do you love most about it/what's your favorite thing?
Cait: I could sit here and tell you all of my favorite elements that went into customizing our home, but at the risk of sounding cheesy, I will honestly say that my favorite part is that creating this home took so much heart, patience, and teamwork. Am I obsessed with our kitchen renovation? Bathroom renovation? Mudroom expansion? What we've done with the small, but well-appointed yard space? The imagination that went into making the basement both fun and cozy? Yes—all of the above. More than that, though, I'm proud of my husband for coming home from his 9-5 job and turning descriptions from my mind and paper-towel sketches into beautiful spaces where our family finds and creates joy. We moved here with a ten-week-old baby in early 2019, not having any idea how hard it would be to demo and rebuild spaces while living in them, while taking turns finding rest, feeding the baby, holding the baby, entertaining the baby, taking the baby places to escape the noise and dust, painting during his one-hour naps, and so on. I look back on those long days, and while they were a blur, I remember them being hard. Knowing that we powered through them to create a home we love is something Jason and I are both incredibly grateful for.
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