Tom Schwartz & Katie Maloney-Schwartz Share New Details About Their Incredible House

When Tom Schwartz and Katie Maloney-Schwartz walked into their Valley Village house for the first time, the Vanderpump Rules couple knew it had everything they wanted — well, almost everything. 

"Our spot was turnkey. We kept a lot of things that were [previously] in here. We really liked the way it was set up. It came with a lot of the furniture," Tom exclusively told Bravo Insider. However, he added with a laugh, "I had terms when we moved into the house, and those terms weren’t met. They still haven’t been met. I didn’t get a ping pong table."

While Katie was quick to respond that her love of more than a decade "can still get" a ping pong table, Tom has found a suitable temporary solution: "I have this portable one now that you can sort of clip on to any table and improvise a ping pong table, so I’m pretty content with that."

However, when thinking about the rest of their home, "content" is the furthest word from either of their minds. "It’s always painful when it’s time to pay the mortgage each month, but other than that, it’s great. We love it," Tom said. "It’s in a great neighborhood. [West Hollywood] will always be where my heart is, but I love the valley now. We love the valley. It just feels right."

After spending the majority of the last year at home due to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, they are especially grateful for their larger living space. As Katie explained, "We talk about that often, how fortunate we are to have moved into a house and been able to spend all this time that we’ve had at home and not cooped up on top of each other in an apartment." 

In addition to having significantly more space than their previous rental apartments, the house now has the couple's personal touch in everything from the overall vibe to the smaller decor details. "It’s not super bougie or anything, it’s laid back, cozy. Got lots of plants now," Tom said. Katie, who noted the home has a transitional style, added, "It’s like if Restoration Hardware and Urban Outfitters had a baby." However, their abode is most certainly one-of-kind. Tom explained: "It still has its quirks and idiosyncrasies." 

The spacious house has many incredible rooms and areas, but one, in particular, stands out to Tom. "My favorite room is the bathroom upstairs, our [bedroom's] bathroom," he said. "It has a beautiful standalone bath, lots of plants in there. I like to go in there at night, light a candle, watch some movies on the tablet. 

Katie's go-to spot in the house is a bit more "obvious," she admitted, but for good reasons. "My favorite room is our bedroom," she said. "It has just such a warm coziness to it. We’ve got a fireplace." The serene bedroom is special to Tom as well, who noted, "It’s our happy place."

While Tom and Katie feel fully settled in the abode, they still have quite a bit of updating to do. "The room downstairs is a little like sophomoric, where Daug used to live," Tom explained, referencing his late lizard. Katie, meanwhile, is ready to get to work on a spare upstairs bedroom. "I have my extra closet and it has a vanity table there that I never use. I have thrown extra things in there," she explained. "It gives me a little bit of anxiety knowing it's just kind of like a pile room. I would like to know that it’s clean and organized and that I don’t hoard things in there. So I gotta address that really soon."

One room they can check off their list is the garage, which they had organized by Home on Point in February. "When we moved in, we never even tried to set up the garage in any way because we just sort of threw things in there," Katie recalled. When Home on Point arrived to get to work on the garage, the company "came in and gave us a complete transformation in there," Tom said. 

The organization project not only helped declutter the space but also allowed the couple to relax a bit as a result. "I like spending time in the garage. I feel like I can think clearly, I feel like I can breathe in there," Tom said. "Before it was angst-inducing, there was so much clutter. I want to do that with the rest of my life now."

"When you organize your life, it keeps in other aspects of your life," he continued. "You just have more clarity and focus. It seems like a little thing but it really does have a positive impact on other aspects of your life." Katie, it seems, is in full agreement. She shared, "I’m not a neat freak, but when things are where they’re not supposed to be and all over the place, it’ll just drive me crazy and I can’t do things I need to do."

With that in mind, Tom and Katie have paid close attention to Home on Point's method on various projects in their home and have picked up a few tricks along the way. "Labeling things is nice. Sometimes it might seem like an unnecessary step, but it’s really nice to have your little jars and your little labels," Tom said. Referencing how the company organized their pantry in 2019, Katie is a fan of  "the way they get rid of the packaging and everything is in the airtight bins, the plastic little bins," explaining, "It just makes everything look clean [when] you don’t have all the plastic or cardboard and packages and all of that."

Although their house is a perfect fit for the moment, they don't necessarily anticipate it being their forever home. "I do see ourselves, sometime in the future, having some sort of ranch with rescue animals with pigs, alpacas, goats, maybe another lizard — rest in peace, Daug, I miss you every day," Tom said. "I would love to have a ranch up in Thousand Oaks with a ton of animals. That’s our all-time dream, amongst others things. But I do want to have a ranch with a ton of animals, tons of dogs, at least 5." As for where this ranch will be, Katie mused, "I would love to go to, whether it’s like Ojai or Santa Barbara, up there where there’s that kind of space."

For now, the couple will keep working on adapting their Valley Village house to each new chapter of their life together. "Eventually when we have a baby, one of [the rooms] will turn into a nursery so we’ll shift things around," Katie said, before Tom added with a laugh, "Or a room for the alpacas." 

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