A Few Of Our Living Room

I've had these on my computer for months and forgot about them until this morning. Ha!

I guess the main reason I haven't posted these it because I'm still not satisfied with this room and I feel it needs a lot of explanation. I've had a love/hate relationship with the living room in this house ever since we moved in. I love all the space, but I cannot stand how dark it is. The builder was loco to put a tiny window on such a huge wall when we have a covered patio outside.

I threw the pillows together at the height of pregnancy hormones. Some days I love them, other days I want to change them. I love how the patterns still go together somehow even though they don't match at all. That was not on purpose but I'm happy it happened to work out! My preggo brain couldn't handle any more decisions at the time. ;)

I love my Goodwill chairs, but they are too small for the couches. I picked them out though because A) I needed low chairs to not block any more of the limited light coming in, and B) that's all the budget would allow. You can't find nice substantial arm chairs for under $250, so I made it work! I was hoping the upholstery job would somehow mask their smallness, but alas, it did not. ;)

What I would do, though, if I had the budget, is get really large armchairs (for the giant men that will roam this house some day) with really pretty lines---some pretty wingbacks would be nice. My in-laws have some that recline and I LOVE them. Maybe in a light gray-ish brown leather or a green velvety fabric. 

I would also love to swap out some of the accessories for nicer items (like a lot of the faux greenery which I did myself from Hobby Lobby...now that I've been to Market my eyes have been opened!), and I would also like to add a pretty wooden rocker (think colonial) and maybe some ottomans. 

I love our Craigslist dresser SO much. It holds all of my gift wrap, cards, boxes, ribbons, tags (including Christmas).  

I also DIY'ed those "linen" botanical frames and still love how they came out. I think they look pretty high end in real life and would like to make more. I used utility fabric that looks like linen, cream cardstock, and antique botanical prints that I ordered from Amazon years ago. They are 16x20 and cost me about $13 each. 

I would also love to get a giant gilded mirror to replace the smaller two but that's not in the budget right now, either. (Which is okay! Make it do.) 

AND, I would love to get my sister's painting framed at some point. It's on my list! 

So anyways, a lot of what we have in here was purchased due to a limited budget or was found or handed down via our generous parents or re-used, but I do still love it for the most part. Working on my home is something I love to do and this house is FOR SURE always a work in progress.

Have a wonderful Wednesday!

Fireplace Makeover! And some shelves...

Hello, hello!

Today I wanted to share our fireplace makeover. Although I think we might like to add more to it in the future, I am REALLY loving what it looks like right now. 

If you'll remember, we started out with this...

And then we put in new floors, painted the walls, and the trim and came to this...

I was still SO bothered with how dark the brick was, so one day I just started painting it with white primer. Bryan and I talked about how else we could change it without spending too much, and about a week and $40 later, we came up with this:

(We're going to pretend the the floors aren't dirty, okay?)

I am seriously loving it! 

After some debate, I've decided to go a bit more vintage/coastal with this house since I tend to buy home accessories and art (especially seasonal decor) that lean toward those styles. That decision is what led us to move forward with painted brick and a bit more rustic looking mantle.

I used Benjamin Moore Gray Owl (75%) for the color and we bought plain pine boards at Home Depot and stained them with (what else) Danish Oil. We also finally added quarter round to the base of the fireplace.

I still need to caulk and paint the trim on the sides (we tried to remove it completely but the brick doesn't even meet that wall so that was a no go!), but after that I will be done with this thing!

I also had a bit of fun last week and moved my Ikea shelves that we originally had in the craft room to the living room. Kind of shocked Bryan with that one when he came home from work, but I think he likes it. I thought it would be a good way to display our books and some extra decor, and most importantly, to hide of all of Parker's toys!

(Five points if you can spot the two-year-old TJ Maxx price tag that I have never taken off and the tipped over wreath--I'm obviously not that observant when I take pictures.)

This has truly made nightly clean-ups SO much easier since I don't have to sneak in Parker's room and put away his toys (or stuff them in a corner for the next day). ;)

I still have a couple of more things to do in the living room before I'm happy with it (for the moment, anyway). We finally hung curtains a few weeks ago but I still need to hem and iron them. I also ordered blinds and am anxiously awaiting getting them in the mail, AND I need to paint the back door and touch up all the trim...and hang artwork. (and, and, and...)

Also, if I were to pull back the lens on these photos, you would see that our living room is currently home to our kitchen cabinets which I am halfway through painting. I would be done, but stinky weather has put me on hold for now...darn. 

Cannot wait to share more! We are moving, moving, moving.

We also took this kid to the pumpkin patch tonight.

He's my favorite crazy car-loving boy on the planet!

Have a great week!

Inspiration for our Fireplace Makeover

Last week, I shared the progress that we've made on our mantle so far. I last left you with this:

The current look is SO much better than the 'Before', but we still have a lot that we want to do. I would really like to add more "oomph" to our mantle, along with a different brick color. The final touches will be the decorations, which I am pumped to play around with!

Here are some of my favorite images that have been inspiring our fireplace makeover.

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Edie's fireplace is beautiful, and I love the touch of color she added. It's colonial and classic with a twist and the columns on either side of the firebox are perfection.

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I LOVE this image. Those built-ins? Ahhh. Another classic, beautiful fireplace. I love the wainscoting above the mantle--this might happen to ours as well.

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The hearth height in this image is just like ours, and again, I love the classic columns and wainscoting.

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Another option we've been discussing is to make a mantle with distressed or reclaimed wood to add some depth and texture. I love the look of this driftwood mantle. This whole room is so whimsical and light--perfection!

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Here is another great painted mantle with a twist on the classic look. I also really love the white painted brick, but I'm not positive I would love it on our fireplace. Thoughts?

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Last but not least is this beautiful cottage-style mantle. I know that everyone is doing these wood planks, and with good reason--the look is truly beautiful and timeless! This would definitely add a lot of height and character to our living room if we went in this direction.

So what do you think? There are so many great looks with mantles, and it is SO hard to narrow it down to just one!

Have a wonderful day!

Beginnings of a Fireplace Makeover

On Monday, I shared the "Before" pictures of our living room and the direction I'm hoping to take to make it over. I also mentioned that a big project in this room is re-doing fireplace. 

We started out with this...an ugly cover, lots of brown, and a taupey-beige mantle.

(Here is another really terrible "Before" picture I took on my good camera. Sorry! Worst blogger ever.)

I painted the mantle a bright white, we painted the walls, and pried off that terrible cover. (We also replaced the floors.) That left us with this...

(You can see a teensy bit of our Goodwill armchair that I scored for $25 and plan to reupholster.)

It's definitely not "styled" or anything, I've just hung my trusty old painting that I love so much, but it looks a heck of a lot better already, if I do say so myself :).

My immediate plans for the next phase of this makeover are to paint the inside of the fireplace black (why do they paint them white in the first place? They always end up looking terrible), and possibly staining the brick to more of a red color so it doesn't blend in with the floor so much. 

Our "ways-off" plans include replacing the mantle with something much more substantial that surrounds the entire fire box and comes down to the hearth. We have also discussed doing some sort of moulding treatment to the wall above the mantle---but we don't know if that's for sure. And of course I need to fully decorate it! I love to decorate mantles. :)

I hope to share more inspiration and details for our mantle makeover sometime next week.

Have a great day!

The New House: Living Room

I love our new living room and how spacious it is, so much so that we've been able to add two new (to us) chairs and there is still plenty of room for Parker to run around and play. 

The ceilings are fairly tall, and since the photos below were taken we've painted and put in new floors... but there are still two things that I think need some major changes.

The first is the lack of natural light in here.It's actually not as dark as it looks in the picture (I'm sitting in this room right now and it's plenty bright to not have any inside lights on), but I like for rooms to be completely flooded with sunlight, :) so we have an obvious situation. (Sidenote: Parker looks so teensy in this picture! He wasn't even walking yet....sigh.)

The second problem is this fireplace. There is nothing truly wrong with it (besides that hideous cover), but it was a little too brown and blah for my taste. Now, we have already made a few small changes to it which I hope to share with you soon...but we still have a ways to go. 

Here is the back wall--if this picture had our furniture in it, you would be looking directly at our big couch (and me wrapped up in a blanket typing this post). The room is big enough that our couch isn't even against the wall, it's about 4 or 5 feet in front of it. This also poses another small problem because I cannot stand overhead lights and would love to get some lamps or sconces near the couches to bring in some ambient lighting. 

Here is what the room looks like from the corner with the back door. You can see a peek of our kitchen and   a hallway. Our TV is on the wall with all of the outlets.

Now, there are a lot of different inspiration images I can show you for each area of this room, but we can save those for separate posts....right now, I'm going to share the general 'feel' that I'm going for in here.

I LOVE Edie's new house. LOVE. As I've said before, I'm attempting to go for more color and texture in our new house--and this style is kinda the route that I'm thinking of right now. The high curtains, the patterns, the dressed up, yet lived-in feel of it...oh, me. I also absolutely love how the fireplace is done--we are thinking of doing something very similar to ours, too.

Another, cozy, colorful, beautiful room. Our furniture set-up is very similar as well...we have everything in the center of the room.

I don't think I could ever go this bold with my color scheme, but I really love Carmel's style and all of the layers in this room.

This room has been one of my all-time favorites for years. Although I'm attempting to be more bold with color choices this time around, I will always be a blue and green girl at heart. I also adore the set-up of this space with the furniture in the center surrounding a focal point--much like our living room is right now! Beautiful.

To remedy the natural light "situation", we are really, really, really hoping to knock out that back wall and move the back door and window to go from this...

(excuse the terminator, haha, this was taken during our inspection)

To a wall of french/sliding doors and windows similar to this...

Or this...

Or this...

(Love those herringbone floors, too.)

And wal-lah! We will have the perfect (to us) living room. Hope you enjoyed my long jumble of thoughts. Have a wonderful day!

Ch-ch-ch-changes

As I've mentioned before, I am in the process of finishing the living room. I LOVE our living room, it is my favorite room in the house and is definitely the place we spend the most time.
I've made a few changes this week and I wanted to share them with you all.

Here is what the living room looked like in February:

And here it is now:

The changes are subtle, but I love them.

The first (and most obvious) change is the new painting that is above the mantel. I found this at Ross for $49.99 and just had to get it. I also finally hung a mirror that I've had for several months over the little dresser in my favorite awkward corner. Excuse the sticker that is still on it--I haven't felt like using Goo Gone yet!

Love, love, love it.

The lovely little sliver of my reflection-HA.

Here's another picture of the vignette that I talked about in this post.

I also bought my most favorite lamp ever at World Market and put it near our couches. It seems to fit the style of the room a little better, no? Glass lamps are the BEST thing ever.

So here is the living room as of now. I'm really loving it, but I'm still getting used to the bright colors of the painting. I'm worried that they are too bright...what do you think? Does it fit? I can't wait to keep working on this room, I have so many ideas!

The next few goals in the living room mainly consist of getting more stuff on the walls and making it all feel more "home-y". I'm excited to work on the wall that the TV is against. More details to come!

Pretty Pictures.

Here are a few living rooms that are inspiring me today:

Source: houseofturquoise.com via Katy on Pinterest

Source: inspirationfordecoration.blogspot.com via Katy on Pinterest

Source: houseofturquoise.com via Katy on Pinterest

Source: houseofturquoise.com via Katy on Pinterest

Source: houseofturquoise.com via Katy on Pinterest

Source: inspirationfordecoration.blogspot.com via Katy on Pinterest

Source: fortheloveofahouse.blogspot.com via Katy on Pinterest

Source: houseofturquoise.com via Katy on Pinterest

Source: inspirationfordecoration.blogspot.com via Katy on Pinterest

Source: houseofturquoise.com via Katy on Pinterest

Have a great rest of your day!