COLOR! (in the living room)

First of all, Happy Valentine’s Day my SQUEEZIES! :) Hope you had a great one.

I’ve been working on some changes in our living room over the last couple of weeks, and I’m nowhere near close to done, but I just couldn’t wait to show you! I am LOVING how it's turning out -- so excited.

I don’t know if it’s the three inches of ice that have finally melted off our driveway (for the first time in two weeks), or the warmer temps we’re getting this week that is giving us hope for spring, or maybe it’s because the cat peed on the drapes…any one of them could be the reason for my spur-of-the-moment decision to make some changes to our front room.

What’s that? Hmmmm? Oh yeah…I skipped over the pee cat thing. She was off her meds for two long and the inevitable happened. This time though…I’m GLAD. Because that’s actually what started this ball rolling. See – pee cats are good for something! (And she’s really sweet and loving and yada yada…)

Anyhoo, enough mentions of pee for one post. Onward! It started when I took a drape down to wash it, and it just spiraled out of control from there.

For the past year or so, I’ve been trying to add more color to our living room. It looked like this back in the day:

OK, well there’s been color – it’s just been one color. Red. :)

And then I made a few more changes and it looked like this for quite some time:

Notice the trend? DARK. A ton of dark peices and accessories, and red fabrics – ONLY red. You see, for the longest time I thought our wall color was hard to work with. It’s called Beechwood Grey from Porter, and I like it – but for a long time I just felt like I needed to match it, you know?

So red was the direction I went…and I liked it for a while. But my style…it is a changin’.  :)

And taking that one drape down kind of got my wheels turning. I noticed how much brighter it got in the room with just the one panel down. So I took another down…and another…and you get the picture.

The front of our house doesn’t get direct sunlight, but you wouldn’t have been able to tell – the room was positively glowing. And I was in luuurve.

That’s what started the ball started rolling – and the wheels in my head churning. First up was to trim out the windows like I showed you here. I’ve slowly but surely done this around the house, and I’m about half way through the windows now.

And then, since I was going to paint the sills and everything around the window, I went ahead and recaulked both of them:

I didn’t even keep it clean and pretty, because I knew I was painting over it all in white.

And that I did – the new trim and drywall around the windows was painted out in glossy white. See how this started with a little bitty thing and got HUGE? :)

Then another idea came to mind. I love love LOVE my free sewing cabinet and Ballard-esque cafe shelves between the windows, but they have seemed so HEAVY to me lately:

(The iron snowflakes hanging in the windows that I tried to convince myself didn’t look like snowflakes have been gone for a while. They are now packed away in the Christmas decor. Cause they are snowflakes.)

Anyway…I’ve always felt like I needed something more substantial between those windows.

So I took it all away:

(I had just wiped down the wall – hence the dark marks.)

I contemplated leaving those windows nekked by the way, just like in our kitchen. I was smitten, I tell you. 

But then…then, I found THIS:

I was perusing Calico Corners last week (I hadn’t been to the fabric store in forEVER), saw this and couldn’t get it out of my head. It had COLOR – so many beautiful colors. And I just thought the print was stunning.

I couldn’t resist it. And I’m so glad I didn’t. Cause now that dark room looks like this:

Now, I’m showing you in between pics here – keep that in mind. I like to show the process of things so I really wanted to show you the progress thus far.

I think it’s a dramatic change, yes?:

That dresser has made the rounds around our house. It was the Bub’s changing table forever, then it moved to the office, and then it was in the basement for a while.

I made hubs drag it up the stairs to see if it would work and I fell. in. love.

Do you see how differently the wall color photographs? It drives me a little batty. It’s looking way pink in these pics, when it really has more of a greyish tint like in the nekked window picture above.

I’ve mentioned before that we don’t use this as a formal living room – we use it constantly. So the dresser is going to be fantastic storage for puzzles and other activities we do out there:

I have a Goodwill lamp that’s almost ready for the left up on top there. The beautiful wood crate? HomeGoods baby! (For $16!) Doesn’t it looked like I plucked it out of an antique store? LOVE that color too.

One of the things I’d love to do, especially now, is to get a slipcover made for the chair and sofa:

But even without covers, I love them SO MUCH MORE in this room now. It’s just crazy – I don’t know why, but they don’t bother me nearly as much. (But I AM going to slipcover. Oh yes…I am.)

I have a plan for the wall above the dresser too – I already have everything I’ll need. Can’t wait to get it up there!:

And yes, there ARE about 50 holes in that wall from the various changes I’ve made to it. :) They’ll all be covered with my plan. I’m not even gonna fill them. Buwahahaha!!!  :)

I’m hoping to get the rest of the changes made to this part of the room by the end of this week, so I’ll show you as soon as I’m done. There’s some other stuff I’m working on elsewhere in the space too, but that is going to take a bit longer.

But for now…I simple cannot believe the difference a little editing and new drapes made…the before:

And after:

WHOO, swoon, ACK…Happy Valentine’s Day to ME…I am love! Ha! :)

Can’t wait to show you the rest! So far it’s turning out just like it looked in my head…just hope the rest of it does. (I love when that happens!)

P.S. I have not even hemmed the drapes yet…that’s how not completed this room is. Did I mention I have little to no patience?? :)

Like my version of the Ballard Designs cafe shelves?
You’ll LOVE Knock Off Decor!