If you follow me on Twitter or Instagram, you might have noticed that I've been talking a lot about my living room makeover that we had planned. The Hubs and I have been making the most of our extended weekend and did a complete room redo in our family room. We moved into our house 3 years ago (over Memorial Day weekend) and I had grand plans of how I was going to decorate our first home. But then, 2 weeks after we moved in, Emmy decided she was going to cause us some grief. I was 28 weeks pregnant and had a placental abruption and landed myself on bedrest for the rest of my pregnancy....aka we only had 1 paycheck coming in. So any money we had saved for the house went to paying our bills since I ended up being out of work for a total of 15 weeks. So for the last 3 years, our house has never been completed finished. Our dining room finally got a coat of paint.
We I couldn't decide on curtains for the dining room. And I HATED the color of our living room (and I was the one that picked it out). Just sitting in the room made me depressed. So finally decided it was time to figure out what I wanted the room to look like.
I've been quite inspired by the current trends in home decor. I love grays and yellows. I love turquoise and greens. I just knew I needed to choose a color palette that would allow me to change the look of the room without much work. OK let's face it...I change my mind a million times and get bored easily. I needed a color that would accommodate my indecisiveness. We scoured Lowe's paint section and came up with 3 colors that the Hubs and I thought might work. I had the paint chips taped to our wall for a few weeks before I decided it was time to actually test out the colors. I love that major paint brands now have sample sizes. I scooped up the 3 samples and painted them in random places on our walls. I had to see how each color looked on each wall in any type of light. So for a week, our walls looked very similar to this:
We pretty much narrowed it down to the middle color and the one on the right. Depending on my mood, what time of day it was, what direction the wind was blowing, I knew what color I wanted. It changed by the minute. So on Saturday we headed to Lowe's and I had about 30 seconds to come up with my paint choice. We shopped around a little bit before hitting the paint aisle. We went to the curtain section and I fell in LOVE with the curtains we purchased (and the ones we purchased for our dining room). And as we headed to the paint section, I happened to glance at the curtain packaging and noticed that the brand of curtain is also a specialty paint line too. They suggested 2 different allen+roth paint colors that coordinate perfectly with our allen+roth curtains. We checked them out and decided to go with the color Portland, a happy color that was the perfect blend of the 2 colors I was originally debating between. We loaded up our shopping cart (Lowe's was quite good to us....it was pretty much 1 stop shopping) and headed home. We unloaded the car, loaded the kids back up, and headed to the mall for some shopping, then hit up Bed Bath and Beyond for some finishing touches (a new rug, slip covers, a huge mirror for our room, and more).
We came home and once the kids were asleep, the Hubs and I put on the first coat of paint. I was in love the minute the paint touched the wall. The color was perfect. We finished up around 2:30am and hit the sack. The kiddos let us sleep in a little and then it was back to work for us. We ended up not needing to put on a second coat so the Hubs seriously cleaned the floors while I helped Noah clean his room. Then we put the new slip covers on the sofa/loveseat, put out the new rug, changed out our outlet covers and switchplates, and hung the curtains. I'm so happy with the way it turned out! We're not done yet but we need to save up some more for the finishing touches. I hate the way our old end tables look in the room so those are next on our "to buy" list along with a new desk, accessories, and a double curtain rod. I have an idea of how I officially want the curtains to look but need the double rod to make it look right. I'm also waiting on 2 canvases to come in from Canvas People, I have to order the wall art for above the TV, and I have to decide how I want to make my gallery wall. But all in all, we're so proud of how our room is and everyone who's seen it so far has loved it. Now I sit in the room and just smile because how amazing it is!!!
Here's a before picture of the horrible brown couches and ugly green wall (ignore me...this was from way back when for My Style Mondays) We also had dark brown curtains to match. It was like mint chocolate chip ice cream threw up on my living room.
And now, without further adieu, here is our new family room!!!!!
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| Before the ugly end tables returned to the room |
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| Curtains drawn...they're reversible!!! |
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| I love this rug! And Lucky is sulking because I won't let him on the new couches |
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| The walls aren't finished. I'm waiting for the canvases and I'm putting up shelves where those pictures are. Isn't the Hubs cute?!?! He's looking at our wedding album!!! |
I just love the room! I can't say that enough. But we also put the finishing touches on our dining room. The dining room was probably the most complete room in the entire house. I never could find curtains I liked. We were going to have them custom made until they quoted us $1300. We quickly nixed that idea. But enter Lowe's to the rescue! I found curtains instantly! The Hubs hung the curtains, moved our candle holder and hung our family tree wall art. Now I love this room!
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| please ignore the 3 areas I have to re-spackle and touch up |
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| I just love this room!!! |
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| The curtains I fell in love with....and my sad wine rack |
I'm so proud of the Hubs and I for completing our first true home improvement project. We did it all by ourselves (minus my dad rewiring an outlet and helping to hang the template for the wall art). We didn't kill each other which is also a plus. I just love it so much and can't wait to complete the room!!!
