New Life for the Living Room: Part 453

Welllll... maybe not quite Part 453, but the living room project has dragged on for awhile. So far, Dave and I had painted the walls tones of greige with Benjamin Moore's Grant Beige and Berkshire Beige and repainted the trim with Behr's crisp white Swiss Coffee. We rearranged furniture {Is that really anything new? Not in this house.} and shopped for some new accessories. We conquered the corner fireplace curse and installed a new cable outlet for the TV where the huge beastly bookcase had been. And I painted a lovely pair of tall bookcases to fit the new look of the room. With some finishing touches that you can read about here, the living room was almost complete. What was left to do?

I'll give you a hint.

See the sofa table the TV rests on? It sticks out like a sore thumb sandwiched between the Dark Cavern bookcases. Obviously, I had to paint it.

So like most of my projects, I decided to dive in while Dave was at work, the baby was napping, and the older three kids were knees deep in LEGOs. I care-full-y eased Dave's baby the TV down to the safety of the living room carpet and dragged the sofa table down the stairs and out to the garage like a wild beast with its fresh kill. A coat of primer and two coats of Dark Cavern quickly converted the sofa table into a suitable match for the bookcases, but something had to be done about those reddish baskets that tucked neatly into the bottom.

A quick couple coats of spray paint turned the baskets into a better match for the darker sofa table.

I allowed the table and baskets to dry in the garage overnight and then wised up and sweet talked Dave into lugging them back to the living room.

Much better! {The TV could do without all the fingerprints, I guess.}

So what started with painting the walls and rearranging furniture spurred a whole slew of projects. I like the living room better now.

Of course, since no project is ever really finished in this home, I have a feeling there are more changes to come - like a couple new throw pillows for the brown chair, and baskets of some sort for the bottom of the bookcases, and maybe a piano makeover... It really never ends, does it?

Finishing Touches for the Living Room

Back to the living room. It's a work in progress, but the fam and I are loving it thus far.

As long as we'd lived here, the television's spot was above the fireplace, no questions asked.



The TV lived in the corner and that was that.

When you rearranged the room, you didn't have to wonder where to put the TV because it couldn't move, or so we thought. When Dave and I decided to rebel against the One-And-Only-Spot for the TV, a whole new world of possibilities opened up for decorating above the fireplace.

What to do? Well, the first thing I did was give the mantel a heavy duty dusting - yuck. And then I let my mind wander..... {as it does so frequently}. I've been loving globes lately, and blue and green would tie in perfectly to the new lamps and the painting we'd bought for the room. I also have this strange love affair with ferns. Outdoor gardening I can do, but houseplants seem to die under my not-so-watchful eye. Not disheartened, I decided to give it another go and purchased a beautiful lacy fern named Rhonda for the living room {she didn't come with the name; I named her that}. I'm really into monograms and letters and numbers representing our family, so I grabbed the framed "W" project I'd made for the master bedroom and then continued to shop the house for other decor, including some candles and pretty vases, to put together a new look for the little corner of the living room.

 

Dave and I bought this little globe paperweight on a vacation,
and it looks divine in a thrifted silver serving bowl turned upside down.

A candle sits next to the vase atop a crystal candlestick from Goodwill.

The framed "W" is nestled at the back of the wall peeking out from behind the fern
{a.k.a. Rhonda}. A blue vase and some hurricane candle holders complete the look.

 Built in shelves on either side of the fireplace are the perfect locations for piano music and photo albums.

Fresh and clean and crisp all while pulling in the blue and green colors from the room - I'm loving it! The mantel makeover can stay.

Back to the Bookcases

Having discovered a whole new arrangement for the living room complete with a brand-spanking new T.V. viewing spot {and cold air return!}, the family had been settling in for some prime time action with Tangled  and How to Train Your Dragon. Something that didn't settle quite right with me, however, was the black hole syndrome from the bookcases flanking the television.

Remember when I painted them? They went from oak to Dark Cavern, and I loved the more modern effect. Too much Dark Cavern, it turns out, can be a bad thing, especially when the bookcases embody literal caverns swallowing up everything I'd carefully placed on the shelves. Time for a change.

I'd picked up a few new throw pillows from Home Goods, and one of them reminded me a little bit of the painted wallpaper in the girls' room.



Roy digs the new pillows.


What to do? You guessed it: I unearthed my trusty template and pencil and set to work "wallpapering" the bookcases.

Two bookcases traced and painted took a couple hours on a rainy Sunday evening. The results?

Eye-popping, for sure, but not my favorite. I couldn't exactly put my finger on what I didn't like about the painted wallpaper on the bookcases when I loved it in the girls' room and the same design on the new throw pillow. The closest I can come up with to describe my feelings is that it felt a little bit Gothic. That certainly wouldn't do; it was back to the drawing board. Dave and I really liked the new hues of blue added to the living room from the new piece of artwork hanging over the couch, and I decided to go a softer route and give blue on the bookcases a go.



Drawing from the new artwork for inspiration.


I rummaged through our extra paint {we have lots.... surprise, surprise} until I found some leftover Pensive Sky, which happens to be one shade lighter than Rhino by Behr. Two quick coats on the bookcases, and voila!

The bookcases were softer {not Goth!} and prettier and welcome to the party. Filling them up with our favorite things made them even more attractive.

Our books, pictures, and other delights popped against Behr's Pensive Sky, and the bookcases were back in business. The living room was one step closer to being just right.

New Life for the Living Room: Part 3

Oh, the living room. We never knew how much we didn't like it until we really started digging in and changing it. Dave and I had painted the walls, rearranged the furniture, and added new lighting and artwork, and we still had more on our to-do list. We were on a roll.

Problem #1. See the corner fireplace?

Previously, the only cable outlet in the living room was located above the fireplace. Clearly, this was not the best arrangement for catching up on our latest shows. The TV sat in the corner, and viewers would have to turn their heads all the way to the left to watch. Talk about cramping your style!

Problem #2. See the huge wall mounted bookcase?

I've never liked that bookcase. It's huge, it makes furniture arrangements look horrible, and because of its size, I always felt like I was going to hit my head or run into it.

Good news for our two problems: there just happened to be a cable outlet on the kitchen side of the partition wall.

We knew that cable outlet hidden away in a kitchen cupboard would come in handy!



We could install a new cable outlet on the living room side of the wall, rip take that huge bookcase down, and have a whole new TV viewing area - problems solved! Awesome! But first we had to do the work. Dave and I didn't know the condition of the wall behind the bookcase. We hoped it wasn't in need of too much repair. Standing on stools and 60 minutes of unscrewing and prying, and we had a partition wall in pretty good shape, bookcase-free ... and a cold air return???

Sure enough, the bookcase had been mounted right on top of the living room's cold air return. Score! Dave and I were feeling lucky. No damage to the wall from the huge bookcase and we gained a cold air return? Was this Christmas? Nope, it was better  than Christmas! This was the bee's knees, people! We wasted no time painting where the bookcase had been, installing that cable outlet on the living room side of the wall, and moving the TV to its new home across from the couch. We just so happened to have a sofa table that we weren't using, and the TV fit perfectly on top. With the painted black bookcases flanking the TV, we were well on our way to loving the living room.

We weren't finished yet. More to come.

New Life for the Living Room: Part 2

Last time I left you on the winds of change for our living room; a new furniture arrangement and new lamps and mirrors promised something good in store. One more trip to Home Goods with my friend, Laura, and the living room was about to take on new life.

Laura and I have known each other for 25 years. I was five and she was four when we met, and our families kind of adopted each other. Laura, her sister, Heidi, and I spent the majority of our waking hours together throughout elementary, middle, and high school, and we've remained great friends still. Laura loves decorating almost as much as I do, and her style veers toward that modern vibe I was looking for in the living room. With full trust in my lifelong friend, we set out to find a new piece of artwork that would better suit my style. Remember when I confessed that Dave and I used to have a bit of a love affair with Tuscan decor? Still hanging in the living room was this gorgeous {HUGE} painting depicting Wine Country, one of three that we own.


Time to find a new home for the HUGE painting.

It's lovely; we still love it, actually, but we wanted our living room to have a bit more of a modern feel to it.

Cruising around Home Goods, Laura spotted this little beauty:

It wasn't so big as the Tuscan Monster, it shared the same colors as the green couches and the new lamps for the living room, and it instantly captured my attention. How did I know I loved it? For one, I wouldn't let Laura put it down. There was only one available at this particular Home Goods, and though it was a fairly quiet Friday night, I didn't want to take the chance that someone might come by and snatch it up. The Blue Green Beauty was too big to fit in our cart, so I insisted that one of us carry it around the store. "Don't put it down! That man who was in the aisle before might be coming back to look for it!" Laura had to reasssure me that we had last seen "that man" 30 minutes ago, and he had most likely left the store by now. Oops! I was getting a little territorial with the Blue Green Beauty. Home with us came the new painting, where Dave and Laura's husband, Ben, approved.
{Side Note: I don't think Dave and Ben particularly cared much about the new painting, but they nodded their heads and pretended to really study the canvas for its true meaning to entertain us. They are great guys.}

Bright and early the next morning, I convinced Dave to hang the Blue Green Beauty in her new home above the couch. Love! The new lamps went on the end tables on either side of the couch, and the mirrors from that last Home Goods trip went up above on either side of the painting.

Remember the living room before the new arrangement and accessories?

Here is the living room with its new arrangement and trying out the Blue Green Beauty, the new lamps and mirrors:

I really wanted to love the new look, but the mirrors weren't doing it for me. We'd made a lot of progress in the living room, but it still needed some tweaking; down came the mirrors. I packaged them back up and returned all but one of the circle mirrors. The lamps and Blue Green Beauty were definite winners in our book, however.

More changes were in store. Goodbye old living room; hello new style! 

New Life for the Living Room

Last time I chronicled my shopping trip for new lamps and mirrors for the living room. Safe at home with four mirrors, two lamps, and no missing children or broken items, I set out to give new life to the living room. You can read here all about how we recently added new paint to the whole upstairs. With a calmer, cleaner palette for our home, I was ready to make some changes to our family's favorite crash zone, the living room.

Last time you saw the living room, it looked like this.

I tell people all the time that having a corner fireplace is as much of a curse as it is a blessing. A blessing because it's tucked away in a cozy corner; a curse because arranging a room around it is a big fat pain in the you know what. We've had our couch and chairs in every imaginable spot in the living room and nothing ever has seemed quite right. The fireplace isn't the only one to blame, however. Dave and I purchased the huge couch and matching monster snuggler chairs before we even moved into the house {oops!}, and all that oversized comfiness makes it difficult to fit everything into a room without the room appearing cramped. One of us had the brilliant idea to move one green snuggler downstairs in order to make more space in the living room. Less seating for guests? Yes, but that was a tradeoff for a better look for this part our home. We moved the couch to the wall that joins the stairway to the fireplace and put a green snuggler chair perpendicular to the couch and opposite our piano. Breathing room! Plenty of room to walk!

I moved a pair of tall end tables on either side of the couch {the perfect spot for those pretty new lamps} and brought an old steamer trunk that we had sitting in our downstairs living room upstairs to sit next to the green snuggler chair. The steamer trunk has been in my family since my ancestors made the voyage from Norway to America {pretty cool!}, and I was happy to have it in a place where I could enjoy it more. Previously it sat downstairs in our family room as a side table for a lamp; now it's one of the first things I see when I walk through the front door. One more switcheroo for the living room - we had a huge coffee table upstairs {What was it with us and huge furniture??}, and it monopolized too much space entirely. We had a smaller coffee table sitting in our storage shed and decided to let it take center stage in the living room.

Dave and I were really starting to like our living room as its new form was taking shape. "Why didn't we do this a long time ago?" I asked. You know the answer: because it's way too easy to put something somewhere and leave it sit forever instead of reassess once in awhile. "Is this right for our home? Do I love this here?" You know the drill; it takes effort and a lot of careful thought to love where you live.

We finally had a really great arrangement for our living room space, and we were thisclose to really, really loving it. First, we had to try out our Home Goods lamps and the new mirrors and tackle a few more obstacles in the room. And we weren't finished yet. A couple more trips to Home Goods were in store, along with a project involving power tools. Stay tuned!

Shopping for Lamps and Mirrors with Small Children

I ♥ Home Goods - big, fat capital "H" ♥ it. I actually hadn't been there in awhile and was going through withdrawl, and Dave, of all people, found a reason for a visit to the sacred home decorating store. Our living room has no ceiling lights, so we rely solely on lamps for lighting. One problem, we have no lamps. We used to have lamps in the living room, but we moved them to different areas of the home and never replaced them. Four kids, a dog, a cat, and lots of balls, Nerf guns, and general wrestling around do not bode well for lamps and breakable things, so that played a part in why we held off on that purchase, I suppose. But there comes a time when you can't rely any longer on the dim lighting from other rooms, and you have to say "Enough!". Practically no light at all can make for awkward situations: "I can't see! Who is sitting on the couch? Your grandma? Or your grandpa?" We needed lamps, so off to Home Goods I went.

I waited until I was down to two kids; Greta was at school, and Charlie had been dropped off at 4K for the day. I had the pleasure of searching for the perfect lamps with a three-year-old and a one-year-old. Louisa sat in the cart, of course, but Frankie walked beside me and is especially attracted to shiny "beautiful" things, like all of the lamps in the brightly lit lighting section at Home Goods. It took all of my concentration to steer the cart clear of the racks, keep Louisa's hands far enough away from anything breakable, and convince Frankie not to touch anything. We went carefully up and down each aisle of the lighting department three times before I spotted them: a set of gorgeous aqua and green glass lamps with soft beige shades. This was it! I jammed them into the cart {those Home Goods carts are not all that big, you know}, and gave Frankie a spirited high five. And then I maneuvered us past the rugs and the lovely chairs and throw pillows to our final destination: the mirror section. Home Goods has a huge selection of mirrors. Frankie loves mirrors. It couldn't be that bad, right? I won't keep you in suspense; nothing crashed. I was just that mom who said, "Don't touch!" 437 times before picking up a set of small, round mirrors. Two ladies in the mirror section  tried to snatch the lamps right out of my cart complimented me on the lamps I had found. I knew we had made it to Home Goods just in time; if I hadn't spotted those lamps when I did, they would have been goners.

We loaded our prizes into the van with time to spare before we had to pick Greta up from school. Obviously, that meant we could stop at Target. I was forming a plan, and I thought Target might have the last piece of the puzzle: a final set of mirrors that I hadn't found at Home Goods. Into Target we went, and into the familiar red cart went Lou Lou. We made a dash for the mirror aisle where I spotted two mirrors that just might work. "Great work again, Frankie!" Another high five. We left Target and made it to Greta's school right on time.

Back at home, I laid out the day's purchases and gave myself a pat on the back. Two lamps and four mirrors with a three-year-old and a one-year-old - not bad!

When it all came together, was it a success for our living room? Partly. More to come.

Paint Reveal

Last time I told you all about the process of choosing new paint colors for our upstairs. We decided to incorporate three colors by Benjamin Moore into our entryway, living room, kitchen, hallway, and bathroom - basically the whole upstairs with the exception of the kids' rooms. After lots of thought, we took the plunge with Grant Beige, Berkshire Beige, and Texas Leather.


Grant Beige by Benjamin Moore



Berkshire Beige by Benjamin Moore

Texas Leather by Benjamin Moore

 
So how did we decide to lay the colors out? Our entryway got a total makeover {more on that later}, starting with the medium brown shade of Berkshire Beige. One special spot in our entryway was reserved for the rich brown Texas Leather, and the outcome was so awesome that I love coming in the front door! The largest space, the living room and hallway, was treated to the light and neutral Grant Beige. It's a perfect pairing for our sage green couches and white trim. We painted the partition wall between the living room and kitchen with Berkshire Beige to make it a bit more of a focal point to the eye as you walk up the stairs. The kitchen received an update with Texas Leather, and we painted the bathroom Berkshire Beige to set it slightly apart from the Grant Beige in the hallway. Here are the results:

Living Room Before:

 Living Room After:

The partition in Berkshire Beige.
I'm still accessorizing the bookcase; ignore this look!

Berkshire Beige on the partition wall reads
slightly darker than the Grant Beige on the rest of the walls.

Kitchen Before:

 

 

Kitchen After:

Grant Beige is on the walls above the cupboards, and Texas Leather rests on the
walls below. The dark gray-brown of Texas Leather is a perfect companion to the counters.

Louisa will turn one on St. Patrick's Day,
so we're in full party mode around here!


The new colors are so much more soothing and fit the bill for the more sophisticated and neutral look we want for our home.

Dave and I have made lots of changes to every room during Project Paint the Upstairs, including major changes to the bathroom. More of those changes coming your way soon! Have you found the perfect colors for your own home yet?