I’m sure my husband thought I was crazy, but bless his heart he went with it. And believe it or not, we got it all done and the place looks fantastic!
So back to the beginning. I’ve known I wanted to get rid of the turquoise in the living room for some time. It looks great downstairs in the small bathroom, but it just doesn’t work up in the living room. And that’s not to say I don’t like bold colors, I do! See my red bedroom for example…but this one just didn’t work, plus its such a big room I needed more flexibility in decorating…so a month or so ago I decided I wanted to just paint it the same blue/gray as the rest of the house. And after seeing how my Christmas stuff looked next to it, I decided now was the time. So a couple Sundays ago my husband and I laid down drop cloths and went to work. I painted the mantel a glossy white to go with the trim and the end result looked perfect. We were able to fill in all the holes left by the previous owners, and we even filled in the seams of the wood paneling above the fireplace to make it a little less wood paneling looking.
The bonus, it didn’t cost us a cent! We had all the paint and materials…one day of labor and poof, a beautiful new living room.
In addition I decided I didn’t want a bunch of frames in that room since we had our little frame gallery in the hallway. And I definitely could use a bit more display area, so we decided to put up two shelves above the buffet. I also wanted a new look above the fireplace and I liked the idea of a round mirror to curve off all the square we have going on in that room. Luckily I found a great mirror at Ross for only $30 and we already had one of those floating shelves from IKEA, so we really only needed one more to complete the look we wanted – to me $60 and a whole new look couldn’t be better, so a quick trip down there brought home a matching one to go with it. Unfortunately that quick trip had me running into the table of my dreams for half off! Yep…the Bjursta table was in the as is section, their old floor model, in perfect condition! For only $150!!! Of course I saw it with 10 minutes till store closing, and I had our tiny little scion with me…but my husband and brother grabbed the truck in the morning and went down there the very next day and got it for me! so happy!!
Since our roommate will be moving out soon, and the table we had upstairs was his, this was perfect timing! I’ve been wanting a big table with leaves in it so I could make it bigger in case we ever want to host Thanksgiving dinner or something…and now we have it! It also goes with the buffet, shelves and general look of upstairs perfectly – once it was put in it looked amazing! And its much bigger than I thought – it fits 8 chairs around it easily, without the leaves! And it fits in the space perfectly too, nice and slim so you can walk around, and the perfect length. And for super cheap too. Now we just have to find chairs….since my $60 living room remake turned into a $225 remake, we obviously did not have a budget for chairs. So I’ll be scouring craigslist for the next month or more till I find the perfect ones! We’re thinking since we have so much black/brown in the room that we may buy some modern looking old chairs with a padded seat for cheap, paint them white and reupholster the seat with some fun fabric. Another future project that I hope we can complete. Untill then my mom brought over some stacking chairs they had and we’ll be using them till we find something better.
So here are the before and after pic’s, note all the christmas decor in both!
looking pretty good huh?
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