Living room redo - looking better and better

I have to admit the last pictures I posted of our living room re-do were pitiful.

If you missed my last post, you can see them here.

As promised, here are some much better pictures of how our living room is coming along:

The wall color is called "classic silver".
The trim color is white semi-gloss.


The room loks a little more filled in this week. I have slowly been bringing things in like throw blankets, pillows and knick-knacks.
It's taking me a little longer than I planned to get pictures hung on the walls.

The TV will eventually be hung on the wall above where you see it now. We are waiting to find a good price on the hanger thing for it. We were hoping to find a hanger for $50.00 or less, but the one that fits our TV is $85.00 (YIKES!). We'll keep looking and hopefully find something reasonable.

Standing by the TV, this half of the room needs a lot more work.

There are grey sheets on our furniture. I know the sheets are tacky, but it's much better than what is underneath!!!

Eventually we will replace the furniture with a new love seat and chair, or buy some "real" furniture covers.

I covered the big ottoman, although it needs to be re-done using a material that does not collect dog hair. Some of the softer materials seem to be worse than others with the dog hair. We have two of the most shedding-est dogs EVER!!!

A close up of the big ottoman:
Excuse the dog hair, it's a fact of life at our house.

The throw pillows.........I made them myself..............by hand!!! I was too lazy to get my sewing maching out, so I hand stitched them all.

This turquiose and black pillow is one of my favorites. It's my first quilt-block I ever made, and I hand stiched the entire thing. I am very proud of this pillow. Although you can't tell in the photo, this pillow is very close to perfect as far as the stitching goes. All of my corners met up perfectly. (If you sew, you know it is a great moment when your corners line up perfectly!!)

I usually make my curtains myself, but this time Tim and I went to Target to see what they had. I was looking for something bright to add some color to the room, but Tim found these, and I think they are perfect! The color is a darker gray, so they do stand out a bit. They aren't as bright as I would have liked so I guess I will have to add color to the room in other places.

They are a little bit see-through. I may add some material to the back to make them more opaque.

It took 4 pannels to cover the entire window.

A close up of the design on the curtains. I love them!

I also recovered this stool:

And now it looks like this:

A little blurry, but you get the idea. How's this for a little color???

The stool was a garage sale find from a year or two ago. Here is the post I made about it when I first got it and recovered it.

The carpet in the living room has been removed. It was really a giant rug that Tim's granny gave us when we moved in. It was getting stained and smelly, and I was tired of it.

We are on the hunt for a rug for the room, hopefully something with bright colors.

The floors in the living room and hallway both really need to be re-done. They look pretty bad. I'm also not crazy about the orangy color of the hard wood.  Tim and I have talked about sanding and staining them ourselves, or getting lamanate snap-together floors and installing it on top of the hard wood.

I think we have ourselves talked into the laminate floors, because neither of us has the energy to sand and stain (and repair) the existing floor. Either way it will be a huge job. I'll post about it when we get to that point. For now, we think a big 10X12 rug will help.

A pic of my orangy 1952 hardwood floor:

Did you notice THIS????

This is an old watch-makers bench that belonged to Timmy's grandpa. It's really awesome!!
Tim's grandpa died a long time ago (I think back in the 80's) and his watch-makers bench was given to Tim when he died. It's been in Tim's moms house for all of these years.
Tim's mom is getting ready to move, so the bench got to come live with us.

Tim was realy excited to see this watch-makers bench get moved to our house. He has childhood memories of his grandpa working at this bench. Tim was the oldest grandchild, and he was really close to his grandpa.

I really love it. It's my new pride and joy. I hope I can take as good of care of it as my mother-in-law has for the last 30+ years. It's really a nice piece, and it looks great in our living room.

There are still old tools in the drawers!!!

I put a fake plant inside for now, and the TV needs to be hung on the wall.
That cube shelf thing is only there temporarily. I had nowhere to put the DVR box, so I had to find something. When we hang the TV, we will figure out a better plan for the DVR box and DVD's.

From here, I need to inject COLOR into my living room. I'm not exactly sure how I'll do that, but I'm working on a few ideas. When we hang the shelves, and pictures on the walls, it should brighten up the room a lot too.

I'm not quite sure where I'm heading, but I love it so far!!


Here is a quick before and after of the living room:

BEFORE:

AFTER:

BEFORE:

AFTER:

There is quite a difference between the two.
I have to admit I loved my living room the "old" way, It was very cozy and homey with the darker color on the walls. But I also really love the new color too!! It's nice to have a fresh palate to work with, and I'm having a lot of fun with the decorating.

I'll keep you posted as we continue on!