In the age of social media, it’s hard not to feel like you’re behind when you’re staring at a never-ending list of house projects and waiting for the day your home looks less like a disaster zone and more like the vision on your Pinterest boards. But as Erin Conway, the creator behind the blog Kismet House (managed by Parker Talent Management), knows well, home takes time. It’s less about the instant gratification of quick fixes and impulse buys and more about putting in the work to create a home you truly love. A little over two years after purchasing a 115-year-old fixer-upper on California’s central coast, Erin still has a list of projects left to accomplish, but the house is starting to feel like home thanks to a heavy dose of DIY and plenty of cozy, modern-meets-traditional touches.
Read on for the full tour of the vintage-inspired home Erin shares with her husband Matthew, son Finnegan, daughter Tallula, and their adorable dog, a mini goldendoodle named Dorothy.
Erin Conway’s 115-Year-Old Home Tour
The details:
Name: Erin Conway
Location: Pacific Grove, California
Square footage: 2,200 square feet
Rent/own: Own
You and your husband Matthew have been renovating homes together since 2016. How did you get started, and how has it evolved into a full-time career?
We actually renovated our first “fixer” in 2008. Our first home in Fresno, California, was a cosmetic fixer: new paint, remove wallpaper and carpet, update the flooring. That’s when I learned how many handyman skills my then-fiancé and now husband had. I also learned just how much I loved design. In 2016, we purchased a full-blown fixer-upper in Pacific Grove in dire need of help. With my imagination and love of design and his skills, we learned our way through it. It became a career because we documented the process on social media and that turned into an audience and that turned into clients.
You’ve mentioned previously that when you first started creating content, many people doubted that you could actually hack it in the design world. How did you push past the skepticism and gain confidence in your abilities?
I definitely had skeptics. Most didn’t understand what I was doing on social media. A lot of “she’s wasting her time” and many trying to encourage me to “get a real job.” My son made it easy to push past the skeptics. My husband and I decided that I would stay home with him. He has autism, and at the time, he was very young and non-communal, and he needed a lot of therapies, one-on-one help, support, and consistency. My husband was gone often for work with the fire department, so I was the constant. We were a team, my son and I, though it was an isolating and scary time. Social media became a way for me to both connect to the outside world and ultimately bring in income. I didn’t need others to get it—I got it. I stayed focused on what I believed I was capable of and shut the rest out.
You’ve lived in your current home for about two years now. What initially drew you to the property?
The exterior is what got me. It’s a beautiful historic home, and even a little worn down, it still shines. The interior showed me a home that had been poorly renovated over the years but was definitely warm and loved nevertheless, and the potential stole my heart. What officially sold us and made us write the offer was the space it had that our other home could not provide. It offered a guest room, an office, a laundry room, a pantry, larger kids’ rooms, and a more walkable location, just four blocks from town.
The mural in your family room makes such an eye-catching accent wall. How did you come up with this idea, and do you have any tips for achieving a similar look?
I love that mural so much—it is a show-stopper and a huge conversation starter. I knew I wanted to use the mural but did not want to overpower the room with it. So, I took the concept from the ceiling detail and added it to the wall, creating a frame for the mural. That eliminated the dreaded focal wall feel and instead created large-scale art. The room where it lives is cozy. One wall is windows, and one wall is pocket doors, and with the other two, we wanted to make them interesting. So, one has a gallery of art and the other the mural. That little room packs in a lot of interest!
Renovating a fixer-upper is no easy feat. How did you approach such a large task without getting overwhelmed?
To be frank, we had no other option. We live somewhere extremely expensive, a popular vacation destination on the central coast. A fixer was all we could afford here in order to get the square footage we needed. Living in the home, through all the work, is the only option. That said, we absolutely get overwhelmed, but to have this home in this town is worth every second of discomfort. We remind ourselves how lucky we are for our overwhelm often.
Your home was built in the early 1900s but underwent many changes over the last century that covered up some of its original charm. How did you work to bring back that charm and honor the home’s architecture while introducing your own personality?
We did research, asked ourselves what would have been here, and worked our way back. We peeled away paneling to reveal pocket doors, removed drop ceilings to reveal higher plaster ceilings, stripped paint to find redwood doors, and pulled up linoleum to find wood floors. A lot of what we uncovered guided us on how to restore. The way I incorporated my personality is through the color and fabrics. I love cozy, layered, warm interiors with a traditional feel—think Nancy Myers set. The home lends itself to that beautifully.
From vintage lamps to gorgeous crystal chandeliers, the light fixtures you’ve chosen really take each room over the top. How did you go about choosing fixtures that felt appropriate to the home’s architectural style while also adding the style and ambience you desired?
Lighting is my love language. While I do like to choose a fixture that makes sense in the home, I worry less about that and focus more on it being a statement. Lighting is not permanent—you can easily change out a chandelier or swap out a table lamp— so have fun. Choosing a piece that has an interesting shape or scale is more important than worrying about whether or not it makes sense for a craftsman, you know!?
When it comes to lighting in general, I suggest you try to have at least three sources in every room: task, ambient, and overhead. A chandelier would be your overhead, a table/floor lamp could be ambient, and a downward-facing picture light to illuminate art could be the task lighting. Having different ways to lighten up your space for different needs and times of day is crucial to making a home feel cozy.
Your kitchen is one of the most stunning transformations in your home. What were your top priorities when designing this space?
Function was priority one. My husband loves to cook, we like to entertain, we have big families, and everyone gravitates toward the kitchen. We wanted to make sure it was pretty, yes, but mostly very functional, so we needed prep space, a large range, and lots of closed storage for utilitarian items and food. We also wanted lots of overflow storage for the occasional-need items like the food processor or blender.
Although your kitchen was a complete gut remodel, it totally looks like it belongs in a century-old home. What are your best tips for making a new space feel layered and full of character?
First of all, thank you! That’s music to my ears. My tip is to spend a lot of time doing research. I looked toward designers who work in brownstones and English countryside estates, working within the limitations and features of their old homes and buildings. DeVOL Kitchens was a massive source of inspiration because they are masterful at working within the parameters of what’s there and making the kitchen feel like living spaces, not just utilitarian ones. That often means incorporating interesting materials and woods, using furniture for an island, and planning space for decor and art. Focus on function first and then focus on ways to bring in design, like shelves for display, hooks to hang pots, layered lighting, maybe a beautiful runner, and interesting hardware
Your pantry used to be a pass-through space that connected the kitchen to a guest room. How did you decide to make this change, and what was the process of reworking this space like?
The door connecting the guest room to the pantry/kitchen was always an odd one. While yes, we used it when it was still open, it made the function of that pantry space very limited. We knew the storage we would gain would provide so much more function than the doorway offered, so closing it to capture space for cabinets was a no-brainer. It also provided a much greater sense of privacy for the guests who stay now that they don’t have a door connecting them to the pantry next to their bedside.
You have tons of beautiful artwork displayed throughout your home. What are some of your favorite places to source art and frames?
I love finding vintage art through antique stores, but I also love a good digital print from North and Finch or Etsy. I’ve also found lots of small artists on Instagram, like Mel Remmers, Josh Young, Monica Lewis, Alice Peto, Rachel Nelson—the list goes on. I also love Minted and Framebridge.
Hearth & Hand with Magnolia
Your home is full of muted blues and greens with pops of warmer hues here and there. How did you land on this color palette and thread it through each room?
I knew I wanted to play with color in this home based on its age and semi-compartmentalization, but I needed to make sure it was a palette I would not tire of. I paid close attention to the designs I was repeatedly drawn to, identifying what the color story was and what my favorite colors were in it. The palette I landed on was: blue, green, berry tones, and neutrals. That was (and remains) the guiding palette. One color does not have to dominate room to room, and I can also use any shade of the colors. As long as that palette is in play in some way from room to room, each space can be unique and flow seamlessly.
“Homes that feel collected and layered and that have personality are the best homes.”
Your style leans very traditional but with some more modern elements mixed in. How do you strike a balance between old and new while maintaining a cohesive look?
Being intentional with your color story and playing with interesting shapes allows an easier marriage of styles. Worrying less about whether something is too modern or too traditional and instead focusing on whether this color story works here or if the shape is right, etc. helps. Homes that feel collected and layered and that have personality are the best homes. Everything doesn’t necessarily need to make sense; it just needs to be complementary.
The narrow shape and sloped ceiling of your upstairs office likely made this space difficult to decorate. How did you approach this room and make it work for your needs?
The quirky scale and ceilings of the room immediately guided my hand in the design. I told my husband that since this space is tiny and awkward, let’s really lean into that and give it an old English cottage attic feel—as if it was once storage that we converted. We planked the walls, added some beams, built in a bookshelf, and really leaned into the feeling that we reclaimed some otherwise unused space. It is one of my favorite rooms in the home. It functions perfectly for us as an office and is so intimate and cozy.
“Renovation, design, and making a house a home take patience and time.”
Your son’s bedroom clearly shows off his personal interests, but it also feels cohesive with the rest of your home. How did you manage to achieve everything on his wishlist while also making it feel layered and vintage-inspired like the rest of your home?
My motto in kids’ rooms is to let kids be kids. Let them hang up the basketball hoop and have bean bag chairs. The way to make them “flow” with the home is with any architectural elements you may add. In his room, we rolled back the carpet to reveal original wood floors in very poor shape, so we painted them. We added beams to his dormer, mirroring the office dormer and making it feel like it’s always been that way. Then we added a chair rail with vertical tongue and groove beneath, a feature that happily lives in this era home.
The rest of the decor we brought in was all his choosing. It doesn’t matter that the chair rail details are painted San Jose Sharks teal and the floors navy blue—the room still feels like it complements the home because the architectural details and textures are era-appropriate. He gets his unique space, and it still “belongs.”
When people see an amazing before-and-after transformation on social media, it’s easy to forget about all the hard work that had to happen in between. What do you wish more people knew about the reality of renovating a home?
Home takes time! It is slow and messy and can be very expensive. It is also a lot more doable than you think. We are capable of so much more than we give ourselves credit for! So much money can be saved if we tackle things on our own. We personally could only afford a fraction of the work we have accomplished if we hired everything out.
I also firmly believe in living in your home for a while before you do any major gut renovations and letting the home tell you what you need it to be. We have very often planned to change something and realized we didn’t want to change it once we lived with it. Or like with the pantry/guest room pass-through—I never planned to close that when we bought the home. Then we lived with it as is for over a year and knew closing it was the right move.
“Home takes time! It is slow and messy and can be very expensive. It is also a lot more doable than you think.”
Renovation, design, and making a house a home take patience and time. Also, keep in mind that a lot of us home accounts have to move at a break-neck pace to keep up with the demands of audiences and brands and our rate of speed is unrealistic. Do not feel less than because you can’t keep up with an impossible rate of speed.
