The Evolution of Our Home: A Story of Trial and Error

As we walk up to our home, you might notice that the stairwell is quite tall. This was not originally planned by us, but rather it evolved over time as we built and renovated our house. We left the ceiling full height in order to make the most of natural light, which pours in through our large windows. In fact, the windows are so big that they become a feature in themselves, allowing us to see the mountains in the winter and just trees out there in the summer.

The stairwell itself was not always intended to be part of our home's design. When we first started building, it was simply an empty shaft with a ladder hanging from the ceiling. But as we progressed with the project, we realized that we needed a way to get upstairs safely and efficiently. So, I took matters into my own hands and welded up some handrails, which not only provided support but also became a feature of our home's design.

One of the things that sets our stairwell apart is its unique blend of old and new. We've incorporated vintage paintings and drawings into our design, alongside modern touches like stainless steel handrails. The result is a space that feels both timeless and contemporary.

Our bedroom is another area where we've put our own stamp on the design. Despite having a relatively small footprint, we wanted to create a sense of grandeur by raising the ceiling height to 11 feet. This makes the room feel much larger than it would have without the higher ceiling. We also added some big windows, which not only let in plenty of natural light but also offer stunning views of the surrounding landscape.

We chose a green color scheme for our bedroom because both my wife and I love the color. It's a soothing and calming shade that we find very cozy and relaxing. The room is filled with my favorite art pieces and artifacts, which add to its warm and welcoming atmosphere.

One of the interesting features of our home is the way the design has evolved over time. When we first started building, I was tempted to paint the ceiling a bold green color – but thankfully, my wife vetoed that idea! Instead, she opted for the olive drab green that now serves as the backdrop for many of our favorite art pieces.

The bathroom, too, is a space where we've incorporated some unique design elements. Lacy, my talented partner in crime, did an amazing job with the marble tile work – it's truly one of her specialties. The result is a small but sparkling clean space that feels like a tranquil oasis.

As I look around our home, I'm reminded that there are always opportunities to improve and refine our design choices. While we're happy with how things turned out, I often find myself thinking about what could have been done differently. Perhaps we should have added more storage or chosen different materials for the walls and floors. But overall, I think we did a great job given the constraints of time, budget, and schedule.

If you enjoy our home and would like to see more projects like this, be sure to like this video and subscribe to Handmade – where we share all sorts of creative and DIY projects that inspire us to create something beautiful.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enI personally think that the trends maybe are a little bit overrated and that you should just fill your house with things that you like I think a home filled with treasures that were intentionally picked because they bring you Joy if you like will find Bridges to connect together I'm Billy and I'm Lacey and this is our handmade home in Knoxville Tennessee Nevada so we're actually really far away we dated in high school and then we broke up and went to college really joined the Marine Corps we got married my senior year of college so we got married in 2011. randomly bought a house in Knoxville Tennessee in 2013. Lacey had never been to the state of Tennessee before we even owned a house here seven years I would say we lived in our our first house which is right down the hill from here and it's 130 years older in this house this is our living room and I love the windows are probably my favorite part because it's such a good view of the forest so we put the most windows in the Stream because it has one of the best views of in the fall when the leaves are gone you can see the Smoky Mountains which is kind of fun I'm in commercial construction I was real little um Pottery but a few years ago I opened a store called Whimsy in a dream and so we sell vintage things that we find we have 16 other local artists that sell their work there as well it's fun so the sconces I found in an estate sale and I remember thinking it was very odd the whole estate sale was just like jewelry and hundreds of pairs of shoes and randomly these wall sconces really was not incredibly thrilled at first I said we have overhead lights why do we need lights on the walls but I wired them in and there they are and we like them we use them often we actually bought this property it came with the other house that they're actually connected so when we sold that house we kept this lot to build on when we decided to move out of the other house it was it was tough because it was a passion project however we looked at the realization of time and money to put into that house while living in it and realize that maybe if we walk away from this one and start fresh someone else can have a vision in the pocketbook to go ahead and finish this house and we can build exactly what we want and move forward from there for the most part we did it built this house by herself I did a lot of help from my friends when they were available however the people that bought our old house had Crews come in and we beat them so we got the house done before they did the race was on chartreuse color not sure that's fine it makes sense in here so I have that and then uh kind of weird cabinet thing that's been four different colors but this is where we're at now it was actually this color until we found the couch and that it was too too much of a good thing foreign I would say for the most part her style is I'm not going to say loud but a little more artsy than I would be used to I am definitely a function over form person so finding the happy balance of how she wants it to look and be designed and how I want it to work is always there so for the most part I think when the end project is there and it's all done I think she's done a fantastic job with her colors and designs and that's why after 12 years I've decided to quit asking questions and just go ahead and all right I know this is going to look right you know I don't think so you can see the vision I can't and we'd move from there a pet house I have a cycled cardboard houses they're fun for for holidays like one pottery class in college and really liked it I just plan to take it for fun by the time I was studying film photography and drawing which is really what I thought I would do but after having babies I realized locking them in a dark room full of chemicals for 10 hours a day was not acceptable but I could wear a baby in a backpack and throw pottery and that was a good creative outlet with them see this is uh the Pantry's behind us we're in the technically the kitchen we built the house this wall was intentionally made for this piece of furniture which Lacey's father made when he was in high school I believe it kind of goes with us and it's so big that you have to plan for that ahead of time I don't believe in Decor that doesn't get used people ask about her Pottery oh can I put coffee in this and her big thing is yes it's real dishes it's just a piece of art also everything that we have is meant to be used it's not just sitting there all of our dishes get used and broken we have children they break things and what's nice when they break a mug Lacey can always make us a new one if we need to also just so Whimsical and fun and I do put them in Pottery a lot I think most people can relate to feeling Joy when they see animals and plants in nature so that's a lot of my inspiration when I make things I just love little funky knobs they've got like a little Beetle and owl and some fun things when I see a knob that's really cute I've collected them for years so none of my knobs ever match their weasel none of our dishes match uh none of our hand towels match and I kind of look ridiculous when I go to the store for Christmas or Lacey's birthday and I'll buy four different bowls not from the same collection gives you a little excitement throughout the day just little things like that when we sit down at dinner with our family or we have friends over nobody has the same plate sometimes they have the same forks I think it takes people feel a little Twitchy when things don't match and go together and if too many bath towels that are all the same it makes me feel a little Twitchy the best things come second hand so most of our things we've acquired from thrift stores and estate sales and just wanderings but yeah I like a good mix of used in old things I think it adds a lot of character and warmth to a space so I really wanted open shelves just because as a Potter I really love dishes it's a fun way to kind of showcase collections they're a little bit more of upkeep because you need to keep them dusted but it's fun to be able to change things out with the seasons and really change the feel of the room just based on what things you choose to put away and what things you bring out for some reason it both feels modern and traditional the same time I feel like really old kitchens oftentimes wear dark like Emerald games and navy blues and then I feel like in more recent times they've been White and so I wanted something a little darker just to feel a little more unique and a little more cozy so these wallpaper panels I was really drawn to because they're an artist rendering of a Victorian air tapestry design I really loved the color and the texture that they brought for me when it's in a large scale it felt a little bit too traditional so I broke it up into two pieces and I put one panel of it in the pantry and one in the entryway when you first walk in and when we brought the kids in after the drywall went up it was like the first time to them it looked like it may be a house someday and just watching their excitement running through the house having actual you know room that's what Lacey Rock Vision really starts coming together when she says that's why you know this wall will be here and this is how we're going to do this and when you get everything kind of smooth and flat and she can really start running through her head on colors she's got colors in her head and she's excited about how this is all going to go together so that was that was a big deal this is kind of where the dining room needed to go and that's kind of where it just fell but just like everything downstairs between the living room the kitchen and the dining room doesn't matter where anybody was or is in this space you can be together still and talk and it all kind of flows together and it makes it so you can be in the kitchen cooking and talking to people in the dining room or the living room and the whole open concept idea that made sense and this is a good spot for eating breakfast you got a couple good Windows here here and see the trees I like that this wall kind of divides it so you don't see it when you first walk in because we do a lot of crafts and things with the kids and this table is usually a disaster so it's nice but it's not the first thing you see when you walk into the house so when I was painting and I wanted to do the Navy in the kitchen and it kind of trailed into the dining room and I really didn't want to finish it on a corner because I felt like it seemed a little bit harsh so I did the curve to kind of do a nod to the circles and the medallions and the light fixtures to make it a little bit more organic I thought the arch was kind of odd at first but then she painted it and I think it looks great most the light fixtures around in some way shape or form but the overall structure of the house everything's Square so it's a rectangle of a house it's a single pitch roof so everything's straight lines which makes it easy for me to build and then she can add accents of curved things I found second hand some ceiling medallions and I really liked the Jack's position between the very traditional and ornate medallions with the kind of more streamlined modern light fixtures I think it's kind of quirky and it's kind of the whole style of the house in my opinion is trying to bring some warmth and history to a new and modern design probably my two favorite things are these paintings once an antique oil pastel that's kind of falling apart but it's I think it's really pretty and it's of the ocean which reminds me of when we first were married Billy was stationed in Oceanside California so that's kind of fun and then there's other oil paintings from the 1920s but it's of East Tennessee so it's kind of like both of our homes those are relays from the chickens we have our cat and our dog and our bunny rabbit who's kind of a shot bunny rabbit he travels he goes to work with Lacey every day and then we have a handful of chickens and a peacock more peacocks to come I think so it's kind of a farm inside the city but we we grew up on farms so and we like having fresh eggs and eggs that come from Happy chickens and that's a big deal to us the kids kiss the chickens to thank them for the eggs it's pretty cute this is our stairwell and oddly enough it's probably our favorite room in the house even though it's not really a room it gets the best sunlight we have kind of a break in the tree so it kind of closed during the day which is fun it just kind of brings both of our Styles together into one spot it's very tall when you're going up the stairs because we left the ceiling full height and a lot of light comes in there because we have a couple large Windows when we're building the house the stairwell didn't exist it was just kind of it looked like an empty shaft it had a ladder in there for a very long time until I built the stair treads and finally started getting stairs there was really no plan with the stairwell from the get-go it just we know we have to have a stairwell and we kind of rolled with it and we wanted to incorporate more steel into the house and the easiest way to do that was for me to weld up a handrail quite a few and an opportunity to kind of incorporate them all together and it's a lot of candid snapshots some drawings of mine and a couple vintage paintings and things as well well let's uh head upstairs and see what's going on up there um so this is our bedroom here and it's not a very large footprint of a bedroom however we decided lacey'd rather decided that she wanted a taller ceiling here to kind of match the downstairs tall ceilings so we have 11 foot ceilings in here and it makes it feel a lot larger than it is and we wanted to add some big windows so we have like this big window that window header is built where I can turn it into a door and possibly put a porch out there someday just like any project not always done just need a couple more days to get something done and a couple more days to get something done so that's just kind of how it is in here and we love that we can see the mountains in the winter and in the summer it's nothing but trees out there well I grew up on a farm so being able to fix things and build things was a necessary evil from a very young age you learned that if it's broken you got to be able to fix it where we grew up we were very far from a hardware store or a lumber yard so you would make do with what you had you become very innovative and here it's a lot easier because we're four miles from the lumber yard we chose to do this green in here because both of our favorite color lies somewhere in the greens family so it feels most kind of at home and cozy to us and just wanted it to really feel comfortable and like a place of rest so the dark color is kind of cocoon kind of feels cozy and filled it with my favorite found art pieces so happy we're happy place and I originally was gonna paint the ceiling green also and actually that was one of the things that you said no we don't need a green ceiling in our bedroom so the color of our bedroom is pretty much my favorite color olive drab green that was one that she gave me two choices the First Choice was what color is the couch baby poop green what's the real color of the couch like a chartreuse chartreuse I don't know what that color is but when she shows me a paint chip of chartreuse I say no and then she gave me the option of the color that is our bedroom and I said I can deal with that and she wanted to paint the ceiling and that color also but I figured we'd just be in a big green box so we decided against that and it worked out all right is this art wall my favorite paintings I think this this lady here is probably my oldest original painting and they're just special so when we decided to use the attic space to make the ceilings tall I really also wanted it to continue into our bathroom which really I thought was kind of ridiculous I still kind of do but overall it's just it's kind of neat when you go into a small bathroom and it's crazy tall I'm taking a shower and you feel like you're almost outside because the ceilings are so tall so it's kind of a neat thing and it's lacy did all the marble uh tile in there and she did all the tile in the house pretty much so she did a great job on the tile in the bathroom why thank you one other chance at building another house because there's certain things in here like I think we did a great job with what we had and the time frame we had in the budget we had but there's things once you live in a place you realize oh that we could have done that differently or we should have added this or we didn't need that so doing it again would be kind of neat also now that we're finished it kind of feels like it'd be fun to do it again I don't know what it's like not to have a major project taxing my brain and my schedule so we can only settle in for so long I think if you like this video give it a thumbs up and subscribe to handmade for more just like it foreignI personally think that the trends maybe are a little bit overrated and that you should just fill your house with things that you like I think a home filled with treasures that were intentionally picked because they bring you Joy if you like will find Bridges to connect together I'm Billy and I'm Lacey and this is our handmade home in Knoxville Tennessee Nevada so we're actually really far away we dated in high school and then we broke up and went to college really joined the Marine Corps we got married my senior year of college so we got married in 2011. randomly bought a house in Knoxville Tennessee in 2013. Lacey had never been to the state of Tennessee before we even owned a house here seven years I would say we lived in our our first house which is right down the hill from here and it's 130 years older in this house this is our living room and I love the windows are probably my favorite part because it's such a good view of the forest so we put the most windows in the Stream because it has one of the best views of in the fall when the leaves are gone you can see the Smoky Mountains which is kind of fun I'm in commercial construction I was real little um Pottery but a few years ago I opened a store called Whimsy in a dream and so we sell vintage things that we find we have 16 other local artists that sell their work there as well it's fun so the sconces I found in an estate sale and I remember thinking it was very odd the whole estate sale was just like jewelry and hundreds of pairs of shoes and randomly these wall sconces really was not incredibly thrilled at first I said we have overhead lights why do we need lights on the walls but I wired them in and there they are and we like them we use them often we actually bought this property it came with the other house that they're actually connected so when we sold that house we kept this lot to build on when we decided to move out of the other house it was it was tough because it was a passion project however we looked at the realization of time and money to put into that house while living in it and realize that maybe if we walk away from this one and start fresh someone else can have a vision in the pocketbook to go ahead and finish this house and we can build exactly what we want and move forward from there for the most part we did it built this house by herself I did a lot of help from my friends when they were available however the people that bought our old house had Crews come in and we beat them so we got the house done before they did the race was on chartreuse color not sure that's fine it makes sense in here so I have that and then uh kind of weird cabinet thing that's been four different colors but this is where we're at now it was actually this color until we found the couch and that it was too too much of a good thing foreign I would say for the most part her style is I'm not going to say loud but a little more artsy than I would be used to I am definitely a function over form person so finding the happy balance of how she wants it to look and be designed and how I want it to work is always there so for the most part I think when the end project is there and it's all done I think she's done a fantastic job with her colors and designs and that's why after 12 years I've decided to quit asking questions and just go ahead and all right I know this is going to look right you know I don't think so you can see the vision I can't and we'd move from there a pet house I have a cycled cardboard houses they're fun for for holidays like one pottery class in college and really liked it I just plan to take it for fun by the time I was studying film photography and drawing which is really what I thought I would do but after having babies I realized locking them in a dark room full of chemicals for 10 hours a day was not acceptable but I could wear a baby in a backpack and throw pottery and that was a good creative outlet with them see this is uh the Pantry's behind us we're in the technically the kitchen we built the house this wall was intentionally made for this piece of furniture which Lacey's father made when he was in high school I believe it kind of goes with us and it's so big that you have to plan for that ahead of time I don't believe in Decor that doesn't get used people ask about her Pottery oh can I put coffee in this and her big thing is yes it's real dishes it's just a piece of art also everything that we have is meant to be used it's not just sitting there all of our dishes get used and broken we have children they break things and what's nice when they break a mug Lacey can always make us a new one if we need to also just so Whimsical and fun and I do put them in Pottery a lot I think most people can relate to feeling Joy when they see animals and plants in nature so that's a lot of my inspiration when I make things I just love little funky knobs they've got like a little Beetle and owl and some fun things when I see a knob that's really cute I've collected them for years so none of my knobs ever match their weasel none of our dishes match uh none of our hand towels match and I kind of look ridiculous when I go to the store for Christmas or Lacey's birthday and I'll buy four different bowls not from the same collection gives you a little excitement throughout the day just little things like that when we sit down at dinner with our family or we have friends over nobody has the same plate sometimes they have the same forks I think it takes people feel a little Twitchy when things don't match and go together and if too many bath towels that are all the same it makes me feel a little Twitchy the best things come second hand so most of our things we've acquired from thrift stores and estate sales and just wanderings but yeah I like a good mix of used in old things I think it adds a lot of character and warmth to a space so I really wanted open shelves just because as a Potter I really love dishes it's a fun way to kind of showcase collections they're a little bit more of upkeep because you need to keep them dusted but it's fun to be able to change things out with the seasons and really change the feel of the room just based on what things you choose to put away and what things you bring out for some reason it both feels modern and traditional the same time I feel like really old kitchens oftentimes wear dark like Emerald games and navy blues and then I feel like in more recent times they've been White and so I wanted something a little darker just to feel a little more unique and a little more cozy so these wallpaper panels I was really drawn to because they're an artist rendering of a Victorian air tapestry design I really loved the color and the texture that they brought for me when it's in a large scale it felt a little bit too traditional so I broke it up into two pieces and I put one panel of it in the pantry and one in the entryway when you first walk in and when we brought the kids in after the drywall went up it was like the first time to them it looked like it may be a house someday and just watching their excitement running through the house having actual you know room that's what Lacey Rock Vision really starts coming together when she says that's why you know this wall will be here and this is how we're going to do this and when you get everything kind of smooth and flat and she can really start running through her head on colors she's got colors in her head and she's excited about how this is all going to go together so that was that was a big deal this is kind of where the dining room needed to go and that's kind of where it just fell but just like everything downstairs between the living room the kitchen and the dining room doesn't matter where anybody was or is in this space you can be together still and talk and it all kind of flows together and it makes it so you can be in the kitchen cooking and talking to people in the dining room or the living room and the whole open concept idea that made sense and this is a good spot for eating breakfast you got a couple good Windows here here and see the trees I like that this wall kind of divides it so you don't see it when you first walk in because we do a lot of crafts and things with the kids and this table is usually a disaster so it's nice but it's not the first thing you see when you walk into the house so when I was painting and I wanted to do the Navy in the kitchen and it kind of trailed into the dining room and I really didn't want to finish it on a corner because I felt like it seemed a little bit harsh so I did the curve to kind of do a nod to the circles and the medallions and the light fixtures to make it a little bit more organic I thought the arch was kind of odd at first but then she painted it and I think it looks great most the light fixtures around in some way shape or form but the overall structure of the house everything's Square so it's a rectangle of a house it's a single pitch roof so everything's straight lines which makes it easy for me to build and then she can add accents of curved things I found second hand some ceiling medallions and I really liked the Jack's position between the very traditional and ornate medallions with the kind of more streamlined modern light fixtures I think it's kind of quirky and it's kind of the whole style of the house in my opinion is trying to bring some warmth and history to a new and modern design probably my two favorite things are these paintings once an antique oil pastel that's kind of falling apart but it's I think it's really pretty and it's of the ocean which reminds me of when we first were married Billy was stationed in Oceanside California so that's kind of fun and then there's other oil paintings from the 1920s but it's of East Tennessee so it's kind of like both of our homes those are relays from the chickens we have our cat and our dog and our bunny rabbit who's kind of a shot bunny rabbit he travels he goes to work with Lacey every day and then we have a handful of chickens and a peacock more peacocks to come I think so it's kind of a farm inside the city but we we grew up on farms so and we like having fresh eggs and eggs that come from Happy chickens and that's a big deal to us the kids kiss the chickens to thank them for the eggs it's pretty cute this is our stairwell and oddly enough it's probably our favorite room in the house even though it's not really a room it gets the best sunlight we have kind of a break in the tree so it kind of closed during the day which is fun it just kind of brings both of our Styles together into one spot it's very tall when you're going up the stairs because we left the ceiling full height and a lot of light comes in there because we have a couple large Windows when we're building the house the stairwell didn't exist it was just kind of it looked like an empty shaft it had a ladder in there for a very long time until I built the stair treads and finally started getting stairs there was really no plan with the stairwell from the get-go it just we know we have to have a stairwell and we kind of rolled with it and we wanted to incorporate more steel into the house and the easiest way to do that was for me to weld up a handrail quite a few and an opportunity to kind of incorporate them all together and it's a lot of candid snapshots some drawings of mine and a couple vintage paintings and things as well well let's uh head upstairs and see what's going on up there um so this is our bedroom here and it's not a very large footprint of a bedroom however we decided lacey'd rather decided that she wanted a taller ceiling here to kind of match the downstairs tall ceilings so we have 11 foot ceilings in here and it makes it feel a lot larger than it is and we wanted to add some big windows so we have like this big window that window header is built where I can turn it into a door and possibly put a porch out there someday just like any project not always done just need a couple more days to get something done and a couple more days to get something done so that's just kind of how it is in here and we love that we can see the mountains in the winter and in the summer it's nothing but trees out there well I grew up on a farm so being able to fix things and build things was a necessary evil from a very young age you learned that if it's broken you got to be able to fix it where we grew up we were very far from a hardware store or a lumber yard so you would make do with what you had you become very innovative and here it's a lot easier because we're four miles from the lumber yard we chose to do this green in here because both of our favorite color lies somewhere in the greens family so it feels most kind of at home and cozy to us and just wanted it to really feel comfortable and like a place of rest so the dark color is kind of cocoon kind of feels cozy and filled it with my favorite found art pieces so happy we're happy place and I originally was gonna paint the ceiling green also and actually that was one of the things that you said no we don't need a green ceiling in our bedroom so the color of our bedroom is pretty much my favorite color olive drab green that was one that she gave me two choices the First Choice was what color is the couch baby poop green what's the real color of the couch like a chartreuse chartreuse I don't know what that color is but when she shows me a paint chip of chartreuse I say no and then she gave me the option of the color that is our bedroom and I said I can deal with that and she wanted to paint the ceiling and that color also but I figured we'd just be in a big green box so we decided against that and it worked out all right is this art wall my favorite paintings I think this this lady here is probably my oldest original painting and they're just special so when we decided to use the attic space to make the ceilings tall I really also wanted it to continue into our bathroom which really I thought was kind of ridiculous I still kind of do but overall it's just it's kind of neat when you go into a small bathroom and it's crazy tall I'm taking a shower and you feel like you're almost outside because the ceilings are so tall so it's kind of a neat thing and it's lacy did all the marble uh tile in there and she did all the tile in the house pretty much so she did a great job on the tile in the bathroom why thank you one other chance at building another house because there's certain things in here like I think we did a great job with what we had and the time frame we had in the budget we had but there's things once you live in a place you realize oh that we could have done that differently or we should have added this or we didn't need that so doing it again would be kind of neat also now that we're finished it kind of feels like it'd be fun to do it again I don't know what it's like not to have a major project taxing my brain and my schedule so we can only settle in for so long I think if you like this video give it a thumbs up and subscribe to handmade for more just like it foreign\n"