Drees Difference
Blogger Stacey Collins Sets Out to Turn Dirt Into Dreams
Posted on Oct 28, 2022 by dreeshomes 3 min
Posted on Oct 28, 2022 by dreeshomes 3 min
Nashville blogger Stacey Collins thrives on creating joy at home. In fact, she has built an entire online community centered around this concept. Through decorating inspiration, DIY tips and workshops, Stacey shares her passion for handcrafting a beautiful, yet personal home with others through her site Wilshire Collections.
Most recently, Stacey’s work was featured in Better Homes & Gardens magazine, allowing her to cross off a major bucket list item. Next up on that list is designing her dream home. Stacey and her husband Anthony are getting ready to tackle the project of a lifetime. While she has a knack for decorating, Stacey admits that curating all the selections for a brand new home is a completely different ball game. Luckily, we have a whole team of experts there to help guide the Collins family along the way.
We partnered with Stacey to document her Drees home building journey. Periodically, she’ll check in with updates on her build and a few Facebook Lives for a peek behind the scenes.
By Stacey Collins from Wilshire Collections
My family and I are building our dream home and are thrilled to take you along on this journey with us! We are so excited to be designing our new home with Drees, and today, I’m sharing a look at our Design Center experience.
First a little backstory on why we picked Drees … When it comes to building homes, experience says a lot. Drees Homes has been family-owned and operated since 1928. The company is actually getting ready to celebrate its 95th year in business. My parents built with them 10 years ago, and they truly build beautiful, quality homes. You can read more about this dream of ours and how it came to life here.
We not only loved their customized options, but also how their build process worked, especially the Design Center part. Their purpose is “Enriching lives by making dream homes easy.” Sign us up! We found the perfect home site and fell in love with one of their floor plans that we knew was the one for us.
Once we were under contract, the Design Center fun began! One thing that we liked about this is that it was truly a “one-stop shop” for everything we would need to pick out for our home. No running around from this flooring store to that one, this tile shop, etc. The Drees Design Center had it all!
There are two main selection appointments with a certified designer who is dedicated to helping you through the design process. However, we were able to go several Saturdays leading up to those appointments to browse and gather ideas. Anthony and I took FULL advantage of those days and it was so beneficial and something I would highly recommend doing. I was truly in my happy place during the Saturdays spent at the Design Center.
I will say this though, even though decorating is my passion … designing a new home is a whole new world for me! For some things, I knew the look I wanted right away, because of course, I spent hours on Pinterest and have been dreaming of this for years. Other things definitely had me a little stumped though. To be able to match tile with flooring, with counters and backsplash … that is where I was SO thankful that our Design Consultant Jen came into the picture. She was able to help guide us through those big decisions that didn’t come easy to me.
One thing I loved was being able to physically see everything we were selecting for our home in one spot. I am such a visual person, so this really helped me visualize how things would look together in our home. We would mix and match until we found the perfect combo each time.
Here are some selections we landed on for a few different areas:
For me, the hardest decision was the backsplash in the kitchen. It may sound silly, but I changed my mind at least 999 times. In the end, I ended up going with something classic and timeless: a long matte subway type tile (which I can’t wait to share what I’m doing with the pattern of it)! I feel SO good about this choice because of the guidance of Jen.
Building a home can feel overwhelming, but it doesn’t have to be. At Drees, they understand that choosing a new home is one of the most important decisions homebuyers will ever make. They take the worry out of the process so homebuyers can concentrate on what matters most: seeing their dream of a Drees home come to life!
We had such a great experience with Jen at the Drees Design Center. She went above and beyond to make sure we got everything we wanted and were happy with all of our selections! At our last appointment, we were thrilled about our exterior selections and how those all came together too.
I recently had an opportunity to share a behind-the-scenes look at the Drees Design Center. I partnered with Jen to publish a peek at our final selections. You can watch the video here:
Are you ready to hear the best part? Now that all of the big decisions have been made, we can sit back and enjoy the process of watching our new home being built … a literal dream come true! We will be watching this dirt turn into a dream and can’t wait for you to come along on this journey with us. Are you ready for the fun ahead? We sure are and are so glad you’re here!
Until next time …
Stacey
From Instagram inspiration and Pinterest pins to your final floor plan, Drees makes it easy to bring it all together. We know your home is more than a dwelling. It’s an expression of who you are and what you value. Designing a custom home is a very personal endeavor, and we want to be here to help you every step of the way.
Stacey Collins with Wilshire Collections is a home decor blogger who loves inspiring others to find joy in their homes through decorating and DIY. You’ll find her on social media sharing decorating tips and tricks, craft ideas, shopping finds and more!
Stacey lives just south of Nashville, TN with her husband Anthony and their two boys. They have talked for years about one day building a home from the ground up. With Stacey’s love of decorating, the idea of getting to truly make a home her own was a dream. They are now making that dream a reality and building with Drees!