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Name: Justin, Crissy, Elijah, Tuli Dastrup
Location: Hyde Park, Kansas City, MO
Size: 3 Story Four Square House
Years lived in: 1

Justin and Crissy Dastrup's home is located in the heart of Kansas City, Missouri in a neighborhood with a great deal of history. But like many inner-city neighborhoods, is on the mend and they're a family determined to be a beacon of light in an area that's being revitalized. They've been in their space just over a year and all we have to say is &mdash shine baby shine!

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Crissy and Justin, along with their two kids are eclectic people. Their travels have taken them all over the globe and while they've made the Midwest their home, their thoughts are never far from where their next adventure will be. Over the last year they've been busy pulling up floors, painting and converting an old butler's staircase into the tallest bathroom we think we've ever seen, dressed head to toe in shiny pastel tile.

This home is 3 floors with fun things everywhere you look. This tour is large (60 pictures!), but we just couldn't leave anything out. Their house is still a work in progress, but like like everyone else, they take it one day at a time. We hope you have as much fun gazing through their home as we did, it's a great place to be family.

Check out the survey below as Crissy Dastrup walks us through their design choices and then later chats openly about the resources for her space. She leaves nothing out and is a great source of inspiration when it comes to taking on monster projects with a limited budget and the occasional splurge!

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Apartment Therapy Survey:

My/Our style: Our style is very eclectic. We search for deals and steals that allows us to splurge on occasion! I love taking old, historic trends, and putting a modern spin on them either with lines or color.

Inspiration: Thrift Stores, Anthropologie, and of course, Martha Stewart...I just do whatever moves me.

Biggest Challenge: Restricting my desire to fix everything at once and spending millions of dollars with no remorse.

What Friends Say: Honestly, when people see the amount of decorative items we have in our house at 28 years of age, they act surprised it's possible. Little do they know I've been collecting things that I envisioned in my dream house since I was a freshman in college. They're always shocked at the deals we find, never let it be said that a little leg work doesn't pay off!

Biggest Embarrassment: We still don't have most of the switch plates up, though everything else is finished in the rooms, and that has gone on for 6 months now! We have the switch plates, they are just not screwed into the wall, so our new victorian pushbutton switches are exposed!

Proudest DIY: We stained all of our hardwood floors after we ripped up the old gross carpet for our anniversary last year. It was a lot of hard work! It's always gratifying to find something old and broken in a thrift store, like two of my current chandeliers, and then fix them up to make them better then new!

Biggest Indulgence: I adore Restoration Hardware and always seem to find a "must have" steal when they have a sale. We did our entire first floor bathroom during a clearance sale last year! We bought the sink for another house (that we didn't buy) and sent to a friend's house to hold until we closed on this one. We found that the sink didn't quite fit and as usual, I was determined to make it work. I found a glass cutter to cut the center rod and made it fit after a few adjustments. My husband, as always, wasn't shocked that I found a way to make it all work, he just shakes his head at me when he sees that determined look in my eye! (Love you hon!)

Best advice: Don't let yourself think everything must be perfect all at once. Stick to your budget, time constraints, and just ride the ride of restoring/redecorating — and try to enjoy it! Research for the best price, you can save hundreds or even thousands of dollars.

Dream source: I love the whimsy in Anthropologie. All of the bedrooms have Anthropologie bedspreads. I feel like their designs bring a sense of the outdoors inside and make the physical aspects of decorating come to life with a soft, whimsical presence found in nature, I collect birds and other woodland representations. I use their displays in stores and online for inspiration and have picked up countless items from thrift stores that look very similar to the items I found in Anthropologie.

Inspiration: We take a little bit from every part of our life and just throw it all together. There's no reason to confine yourself to one style, just do what you love.

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Resources:

Where to start?!

• I re-upholstered all of my thrift store and hand me down furniture in Amy Butler Upholstery Fabric from quilthome.com. I would cover my entire house in her fabrics if it were possible! Her designs are everything I love.

• My tile source for the twig and plank tile in the first floor bathroom is designerstonewarehouse.com....where I got the amazing stained glass tile for $7.95 a sheet, which enabled us to take our tile ambitions all the way to the ceiling!

• My huge plants came from an elderly couple's estate sale. They were very invested in their gardens and we got both succulents and a gigantic rubber tree for $10!

• My brass collection (obsession) was all acquired from garage sales and thrift stores. I will buy almost anything if it is solid brass. We had all of our air grates and vents cast in solid brass to keep with the history of the house. House of Antique Hardware is where we were able to finish out the brass details for all of the pieces attached to the house itself (locks, vents, hinges, etc...) One thing I learned from Martha is to go all the way with the details, and I always get comments from old house lovers about my brass accents and fixtures.

• My shaded chandelier in the living room was a true steal from a Re-Store here in Kansas City. The fixture was an original from a Chicago Brass Designer valued at over $800, I paid $15 , and added new shades from Restoration Hardware during their anual lighting sale.

• The mother of pearl tile wrapped around our fireplace came from Tile Warehouse here in Kansas City off Antioch Rd. It was a little pricier at $24.95 a sheet. Before it was installed, my mother thought I was crazy and told me she thought it belonged in a 1970's pimp's house! She never holds back, but after she saw the finished project, she was blown away....as I knew she would be. (Thanks for the vote of confidence Mom!)

• Most of my art is from thrift stores, my wedding photos were taken by a very talented 10th grader, who I paid $100 to shoot the entire day. We had them enlarged at Wal-Mart and picked up frames from IKEA.

• IKEA is a huge filler source. I really believe in buying large pieces to fill up the room. All of the bookcases, the yellow buffet, the kids storage pyramid... are all IKEA. Also, all of our curtains are IKEA at $20 for 2 panels, and they are hung on $1500 worth of Restoration Hardware curtain rods! Save a little... splurge a little.

• All of my framed travel poster's and large Matisse in the stairway are all from Sophomore year in college! I waited for the sales at Hobby Lobby and bought them frames and had them dry mounted....I've added some, but I definitely stayed true to the prints who made it through college!

• All of the decorative crown moulding in the stairway is NOT WOOD! It's the synthetic foam from Lowes that I spray painted white, along with all of the chandelier medallions.

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• The bedroom has a lot of West Elm influence such as the platform bed and chaise. The side tables (my favorite) are actually vintage and custom made from around mid-century, as well as our bright green enamel/brass bureau and chest of drawers! We knew matching furniture to a gray bed (which was also ordered early and stored in my friends garage) would be difficult....so we decided not to match anything! Gray bed, ivory side tables, red bookcase, green clothing storage.....and dark wood chaise and vanity. I think matching is over-rated.

• The extra large prints found above the bedroom fireplace and bed, and in Tuli's room are all from Tuesday Morning, which I love! ($75-100 each). All of Tuli's and Elijah's beds are from garage sales, and then they were all painted (the brass wash polished). Tuli's other furniture all came from a thrift store, very close to my heart, in Oklahoma on the military post of Fort Sill (most all of my thrift store purchases came from there).

• Most of my decorative plates and star burst clocks are thrift store finds!

• Elijah's bureau and chest of drawers was ordered from Target, and then the knobs were changed from wood to brass by the Brass Queen (me).

• I took some of my mothers items and spray painted them (the yellow matching lamps on the piano) and have literally lugged my items from state to state, throughout college and the army....and now we finally have our first house to call our own! Everything can finally nestle down into it's place, where I always envisioned it to be! I like to decorate the house so that anything I fall in love with from any store or place, could somehow find a way to become part of the decor. I guess you could say I'm an all inclusive shopper and wouldn't want anything I fancy to feel left out! It also makes it really easy to accept hand me downs from my mother and anyone else — like the green sectional in the playroom, pink bedroom chairs and dinning room table.

• The house still has a ways to go, but I'm enjoying my modge podge of dining room chairs, 1980's kitchen, and other charming reminders that good things come to those who wait! My husband likes to reminisce about the days of old (a year ago), when we were ripping up carpet all day on our anniversary before he left for his night shift on the railroad, and thinking of how far we've come and the experiences we've enjoyed in just a years time with our first house. It really makes us excited for the future!

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(Thanks, Crissy and Justin!)

Images: Sarah Rae Trover

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