Welcome to my house tour! Come in and check out our humble little abode. It’s still work in progress, but follow along on our journey towards making it our home.
We live in a Tudor-style new-build house just outside of Amsterdam, Netherlands. It’s a 123-square-meter townhouse that spreads across three floors. From our front door, we can see a canal running alongside our street. It’s a very quiet and peaceful area, surrounded by farmlands and green fields.
My family and I moved to Amsterdam from Spain four years ago, but we’ve only lived in this house for about a year. In the past year, we’ve been transforming the house into our family home to reflect our style and interest.
Our house still not perfect in every way, we have much more to do, but it is our home. How long we will stay, I don’t know. I still have a few projects in my mind for this house, and I’m pretty excited to see how our home and life will evolve in the upcoming year.
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Join Me on My House Tour!
I would say the favorite thing about our home are the plants that I’ve accrued over the years. My plants bring a slice of the tropics – where I grew up (Singapore) – to our current home in the Netherlands, and make me feel more connected to my roots. Plus, they really brighten up our home in dark gloomy winter days (which we get a lot in the Netherlands).
I’m not an interior designer and I’m far from being an expert in home decor. I just enjoy decorating with plants and wanted to welcome you to this blog with a house tour. Join me on a virtual house tour of our minimalistic home!
Our Living Room
This is the heart of our home, and where we spend most of our time as a family. I love how bright and airy our living room is, with big sliding glass doors that open up to our backyard. Our velvet sectional sofa is definitely the best purchase we made, as it’s so incredibly comfy we often fall asleep on the couch. Above the sofa is a massive 3D wooden world map Alberto got me for Christmas, and it’s my favorite feature of the living room. You can probably tell how much I love earth colors.
The Kitchen and Dining Area
Our kitchen and dining area are combined into one small space, but they work for our small family of three. Our glossy white cabinets have a modern flair, so we chose contemporary black lighting, plant shelves and chairs to complement the look. We also ordered a sleek wooden live-edge table, and it works well for our family, but it’s too small to entertain friends.
The Master Bedroom
Our master bedroom on the second floor isn’t a big space but that kinda forces us to keep things simple and use it strictly for sleeping (instead of cluttering it with stuff). The massive king bed and an IKEA 12-drawer chest fit perfectly into the room, but that’s about it. To add some color to an otherwise all-white room, I placed a couple of plants on my window sill and the base of our bed. And this is where I keep my plant humidifier as well to keep my plants healthy and the air nice and moist.
The Walk-in Closet
This is possibly my favorite room in the house. It’s actually a tiny room that we converted into a DIY walk-in closet. I ordered the BOAXEL system from IKEA, and my handy husband Alberto installed the system. It took us two full days to install it, but we love the results! Best of all, we didn’t even spend much on the wardrobe combination — the entire system only cost around $500. Read how we built our DIY walk-in closet.
Our Daughter’s Room
We definitely spoil our daughter too much, as she got the biggest room on the second floor. I decided to give it a blue-ish theme as her favorite color is turquoise. We got all of her furniture from IKEA (the only affordable option in Netherlands), including the armchair, bed, wardrobe, desk and chair. To match the blue theme, I bought these blackout curtains with starry-shaped holes from Amazon and they work marvelously for her.
The Attic
The third floor is a big attic with massive Cathedral ceilings that we sadly haven’t made the most of it. Our plan is to build custom shelves all over the feature wall, from top to as high as we can get, and fill them up with books and souvenirs from our travels (I’m obsessed with travel if you don’t know by now, check out my About page.) We hope to turn it into a home office that doubles as a guest room and games room.
The Backyard
Our backyard is probably the most nondescript feature of the house. We basically just have an outdoor dining table and chairs, and a football goal. We have plans to get lots of garden plants, a trampoline and an outdoor sofa, but the weather has been so bad that we’ve rarely spent any time on sprucing up our backyard. Hopefully we’ll get to it this summer!
That’s it for my home tour! Hope you enjoyed taking a look around my home. We’ve put a lot of love into it but it’s also important for us to keep it simple and minimal. As you can see, we still a lot to do. Meanwhile, I hope you stick around and follow my journey towards creating a comfortable, functional home!
I really love this content. I love plants and when I see this posted just like food for my soul lol 😂