Before and After: Living Room

Okay, It's finally time for a full post on the living room, room number 1 of our new home renovations. I posted on Saturday with some of the after pictures, but you don't get the full extent of the change unless you see the before AND after shots. Keep in mind that the before pictures were taken in the midst of my grandparents packing to move in with my parents (Click here for the full story). My Oma would be mortified if her house looked like this on a regular basis.

The living room is pretty much a large square. It is an addition that was put onto the house, above the garage. I actually think it is bigger than our first apartment; I could easily vacuum our first apartment without switching outlets, but I can just barely vacuum this room without switching outlets. My favorite thing about the room (which is also the hardest part to decorate around) is that it is almost entirely windows. And the wood stove; I love the wood stove!

I tried to match up the before and after pictures as best I could.

Before: view of the room coming from the dining room.

After: similar view, same corner, from closer up.

Before: Looking to the right of the living room from the same doorway. Notice the peach curtains and flower border, among other things.

After: We got a lot of grief from my mom and grandmother for putting  the sofa in front of the windows, but we tried every other arrangement we could think of before deciding to put it here. It's difficult to tell from the picture, but we have sheer white curtains over the windows with decorative stainless steel curtain rods. I think the paint color is porpoise gray.

Before: View of the left side of the living room after stepping over the threshold. This sliding glass door looks out onto the back yard.

After: We bought white bookshelves and painted the backs a goldenrod yellow to add some more color to the gray room. The lights are only there for Christmas. We are also keeping the small table there for playing cards.

Before: Again, keep in mind that they were preparing to move at this point, hence the mess. This is the view of the wall that shares the doorway to the dining room. Note the chimney color.

After: We decided to paint the chimney red, again to add more color.  I plan to freshen up the black on the  stove with some stove paint my dad has. 

Before: I replaced the huge fake oil still life with...

After: scrapbook paper wrapped canvas. It was another way to pull in our color scheme; teal, goldenrod, and red. You can also see that I covered the switch plates with the same paper. 

Before: I already showed almost this exact same picture, but in this one you can see the french doors into the  dining room. They are usually open as in this picture.

After: I only closed them in this one to try to get a view of the snowflakes I made.  

Before: Another view of the one corner. You can see how much furniture was crammed into this room. They were using it as both living and dining room.  The room we are now using as a dining room was a formal living room that no one used.

After: Computer desk, some black and white cityscapes, and the ugly air conditioning unit. This picture probably gives the best idea of the actual color of the room.

After: Slightly broader view. Steve's record shelf can be seen; we painted the inside of that yellow also.

After: Slightly broader still. Christmas tree. New recliner.  And my favorite part, the coffee table.

I plan to post the before and after the of the dining room, bedroom, and craft room soon, but I need to find the time, and actually hang up pictures/artwork in the dining room. You can see some of the plans for the dining room here.