After years of apartment living, we found ourselves on the hunt for a new place—a rental house with good bones, better light, and space to grow. I'm excited to share my journey with you, and I hope it sparks ideas for creating a vintage, cat-friendly environment in your own home.
Moving, Style, and Finding Our Space
Time to Move
As many of you know, moving is not an easy task. You always have way more stuff than you think you do, plus all the cat gear—especially the office overflowing with shelves built just for them. We loved our previous apartment and how cat-friendly it was, but it was time for a change.
A Shift in Style
Speaking of change, my style has also been shifting. Inspired by the beautiful traditional styles of English manor houses and other European countries I’ve shifted away from midcentury modern into more of a transitional, vintage style.
Finding Our Space
Whilst looking for rentals, I happened upon this photo of a kitchen with black and white checkerboard tiles.
Instantly, inspiration struck me and as I looked further, I saw photos of bead board in one of the bedrooms and a lovely dining room with chair moulding. The perfect bones for the vintage inspired home I wanted to create.
Mind you, I was looking at this listing in June and our lease wasn’t up until October. But as luck would have it, this rental house is now our home and we (cats included) couldn’t be happier as we make it our own.
Empty House Tour
One of the things I love about this 1990s house is there is literally a window in every room of the house. This feature earned it the moniker, Bright House.
And bright and light-filled it is. It felt full of possibility. From the moment we toured it, I saw cat sunbathing zones, unique architecture for vintage finds, and space to grow it into a potential home both my husband, myself, and our cats would love.
Check out our empty house tour here:
Dining Room: Adding Timeless Details
The rug that was in our living room in our previous home was too big now due to the hearth sticking out but fit perfectly in our new dining room. Since our last place didn’t have a dining room, we were in need of a table. In fact, in the last few months since moving here we’ve bought a lot of second hand furniture, but more on that later.
Vintage Dining Table
When thinking about this dining room, I envisioned a stately table—perfect for the D&D game I might finally start up one day. And as luck would have it, I found this 1970s dining table on Facebook Marketplace "only" 2 hours away. Which my husband and his friend graciously drove to get and set up inside. Once it was set up Leon quickly claimed his perch as Lord of the Manor.
DIY Stained Glass Windows
Although the cats enjoy lounging on the table, their favorite place by far is chasing the light through the windows of the bay window. And whilst having lots of windows is lovely, it posed a bit of a privacy issue as well. Plus being 30+ years old, the windows are a bit faded, so my next project was to cover the windows. I think it might be one of my favorite DIYs to date.
Inspired by Tudor style windows I used Gallery Glass and faux lead lines to create a diamond pattern across the bay windows in the dining room.
Watch the DIY process here:
Here's what you'll need to create your own DIY Tudor-Style Faux Stained Glass.
Supplies:
- Gallery Glass Clear
- Gallery Glass Black
- Stained Glass Lead Lines
- Ruler
- Measuring square
- Dry-erase marker - to mark the pattern
- X-acto Knife or Scissors for cutting lead lines
- Plastic spoon - tool for making a more realistic swirl pattern
This DIY really brings even more character to the house, but I wasn’t done yet. What really brought together this room was these hunter green velvet blackout curtains from Half Price Drapes.
There’s still more to do in the dining room, but it’s definitely come a long way. Next on the list though is definitely reupholstering the cushions on the chairs as the foam has seen much better days. The top also needs refinishing as the lacquer is starting to crack but that is further down the priority list at the moment.
Primary Bathroom: Warmth through Paint
While working on dining room windows and hunting for furniture, I also found myself repainting the primary bathroom. This room felt really cold and stark with all the white so I decided to warm it up with some paint.
Also some of the trim work paint had been water damaged and was flaking so I had to sand, patch, and paint all that in Behr Blank Canvas which matched the original trim color perfectly. I also just love the name.
For the walls, I used Behr’s Crisp Linen in Marquee. It’s a beige with more of a warm tone than the odd taupe with a purple undertone that was there before. The Marquee is more expensive and technically a matte and not a flat but it was faster to paint because I got better coverage with one coat vs the Premium Plus which is much cheaper. In a sense, you get what you pay for in either time or money.
The star of the show was definitely the vanity, which I painted in the color Rare Wood by Behr. That rich, warm wood tone really grounded the space better and matched the tones in the granite counter top too.
Paint Colors I Used:
Vanity: Behr Rare Wood (Marquee) — a deep reddish brown
Walls: Behr Crisp Linen (Marquee) — a warm beige
Trim: Behr Blank Canvas (Marquee)— a warm antique white and a perfect match to original trim color
When I can’t find one of my cats at the end of the day, they’re usually in this bathroom soaking up the last few rays of the day and hopefully admiring my painting job.
Living Room: The Sectional That Saved It
Our living room posed probably the biggest design challenge. It had a lot of angles and the fireplace hearth jutted out as well, there was also a half wall that separated it from the dining room. Also we couldn’t really put anything in front of the shutters if we wanted to open those up fully to let light in.
Part of the issue was our furniture, which wasn’t really designed for the room— especially our leather couch. I tried a couple different layouts that you can see below, but in the end it just wasn’t working. I could tell because we didn’t really spend any time in the living room.
Back to Facebook Marketplace I went looking for a sectional. Whilst looking with my husband, he found one about 4 hours away (You’ll see a theme here for us with vintage finds and great distances). It was the perfect shape and size for our living room. A 1950s 3-piece sectional with a curved corner piece for $175. It was a trek worth taking.
Tips for searching Facebook Marketplace for vintage finds:
- Expand your radius: Sometimes the best finds are quite a drive and less likely to be snatched up.
- Use specific search terms like: vintage couch, antique mirror, Victorian jewelry, modern side table, mcm credenza, and so on to pull up a certain style and train the algorithm to your tastes.
- Set up notifications: Save your searches and get notified when something new gets listed especially for hard to find pieces such as a mcm panther coffee table.
- Give it time: Marketplace’s algorithm takes time based on your search history to bring up items more in line with your aesthetic.
Luna and Leon were immediately attached to the sofa once we got it home. They also love scratching it despite having a Cat-e-Corner. So I’m definitely going to need to get it reupholstered in a lovely rich velvet so that they can’t get their claws into the fabric, but that’s going to be a much later project as it will be quite a pretty penny.
The floral pattern was tricky to decorate around, but having some muted warm toned velvet accent pillows definitely warmed up the room and created a more cohesive color palette.
Having lived with this couch for a couple months now, it has its pros and cons—but the curve is its stand out feature.
The middle seat is the perfect view of the TV, my husband can lay out on one end, and of course the cats love lounging on it too. Movie nights with everyone gathered on the sofa for a show are probably one of my favorite parts of the day.
I have more to add to this space, including a rug, coffee table, and painting. But for now, next on the list is to give the cats a better lounging space in the bay windows. Currently it’s kind of a dead space, but I have just the collaboration for that coming soon.
Office: A Desk with History
One of the spaces I spend the most time in is my office. Some long term readers may remember the DIYed butcher block, T-style desk in my previous cat-friendly office. It worked really well for our two bedroom apartment, however, my husband really didn’t have a space to call his own. With us gaining a third bedroom, we were able to make that space a dedicated space for him.
And for me in my new solo office—which I’m calling The Studio—the centerpiece and inspiration for my upcoming office makeover is this ball and claw, leather accented, executive desk which I found on, you guessed it, Marketplace. In The Studio, you can find both a litter box and plenty of room for a cat to sit next to me at my desk while I work.
I love vintage pieces for many reasons, one of those being that they have history. This desk had a bittersweet story behind it. The man who sold it to me said it was originally his late wife’s. I could see the relief on his face that something his wife cherished so much was getting a second life with me.
This office still needs a lot to reach its full potential. Here’s a sneak peek of my vision board for my cat-inspired moody office:
What’s Next
Over the past six months, this space has truly evolved. I’m becoming more comfortable with this European, castle-core type aesthetic and acquiring pieces with history, character and potential just like the house.
Which vintage piece or renter-friendly DIY stood out to you? Do you have any suggestions for how we can make Bright House better? Share in the comments.
From DIY stained glass to secondhand treasures, our journey into cat-friendly vintage decor has just begun. Bright House is on track to becoming the perfect little home I saw potential in. It’s taken about six months to really settle and live in the space to know how to design for it, and now it’s time to turn our attention to more cat-focused updates—from cat trees, cat shelves, and more. Stay tuned!
