Before And….Maybe Someday? Living Room

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As promised, here is the second post in my blog series this week.  I thought we would run into the Living Room for our next one. You can see the Living Room from the Dining Room we were just in….and from the Kitchen and basically from everywhere except the Powder Room.  Thankfully! If you’ve followed me for longer than 5 seconds you probably know that I am NOT a fan of modern or open concept at all but that’s what I’ve got to work with currently so here we are!

Here she is in all her glory, folks!  Again, the carpet looked and smelled much worse in real life than it looks in these pictures.  Trust me!  Do y’all love the huge gaping hole above the fireplace for the great big TV that was all the rage when this house was built?  Gotta love it.  I mean a niche would be fine because you can style that but no matter what I tried in this gaping hole, nothing looked good.  It looked like a gaping hole that needed to be gone.

Here is a slightly different angle that shows you the hall with the Powder Room in it and more of the lovely wall color that was here when I moved in.  The color sucked all life and light out of every room.  It was seriously always dark and depressing in spite of all the windows!

The Living Room has evolved in stages.  Slow stages.  First to go was the carpet because I couldn’t take the smell anymore.  Because of all the stains that had gone through into the subfloor, I actually painted them with a stain and odor blocking paint prior to putting down the underlay and wood floors.  It took a long time but it helped a lot.  The walls remained the same for quite some time here because I was planning on doing away with all the orange peel texture and the plastering of the walls takes a while!  I didn’t start that job on a whim!

Plastering and painting was a huge job and took me months from start to finish because I did all but the top coat by myself in between everything else I had on the go.  First I plastered, then I primed and then we lived like that for a while.  Then some relatives came for a visit and helped paint the top coat!  Did you notice the big gaping hole over the fireplace is gone?  That alone is reason to celebrate!  I put plywood over the framing, underneath the drywall when I filled it in so that I can hang really heavy things up there if I want to including but not limited to – a beam perhaps for a mantel?  Just throwing that out there.

This is my current Living Room.  The Now.  As you can see the floors are now wood, the windows are no longer covered with horrible broken blinds, the gaping hole is gone, the walls are a much better color and the light is streaming in!  I don’t want to have blinds closed all the time to block out sun but during the hot summer months it can get very warm in here!  The air conditioning doesn’t stand a chance!  This summer I put some film on the inside of these windows, including my glass sliding doors, that blocks over 90% of the rays and heat but only just slightly makes them tinted.  This allows me to get all this wonderful sunlight in all day long without the heat and fading.

I made these curtains for the windows from a picture I saw online.  I still plan to add some fringe trim to them but haven’t found exactly what I want yet.

These pillars have been painted and antiqued, all the trim work has been painted as well as ceilings and walls.  Here is my deconstructed chair which you can see the tutorial for here .

What’s still to be done?

• I plan to remove all the ugly floor tile from around the fireplace and replace it….I won’t tell you with what!  You’ll have to keep watching for that upcoming post!
• There will also be a mantel.  A proper one that is the right size to be proportionate to this wall!
• I am still planning to put a large area rug in here – I used to have one but some of my fur babies decided to suddenly start marking my house including the legs of my coffee table which made quick and stinky work of my area rug.   We are still in the process of dealing with said dog (not the sweetie pictured) before replacing the area rug!
• Speaking of coffee table.  This one was given to us by my in-laws and has sentimental value to The MR so it’s staying.  That said, it isn’t really the look I want as it is.  Sounds like a fun project, right?  Exactly!  Not only do I need a full-time cleaning person to keep that glass looking decent, it’s just not safe with the number of times I have found one or more of my children wobbling precariously along the wooden edge of it!  I am convinced some day someone or something will be going thru that glass!  Lets just say the top will be looking a lot different one day soon.
• The sofa is being replaced and there are plans for some more seating.  Also projects.    You’ll see.
• Clearly decor, including something magnificent above the fireplace, is something that changes all the time in my home but there are definite plans for that!

That pretty much does it.  I hope you’ve enjoyed seeing how far this room has come and that you will dream with me as to where it will be.  Someday.