Wood Stove: Before and After

Another change I've been meaning to show on the blog is the wood stove and chimney. 

This is what the wood stove looked like when we moved in and the house still belonged to my grandparents. Oma's style is very...Oma-ish, haha. The walls were cream, the border was floral, and, well, there was a lot of stuff. It's hard to tell in this picture, but the black parts of the stove were turning red.

Then we moved in and painted the wall gray and the chimney red. This was also before we put in out entertainment center. Shortly after this I painted the black areas of the stove with black stove paint (Did you know there's such a think as stove paint? I didn't; my dad had some).

And this is what it looks like now. You can see how much darker the stove is (except that one red strip at the top that I missed). Most recently, I painted the chimney that dark gray, and I am so much happier with it. We liked the red when we did it because we had red, teal, and mustard accents in the room, but I've slowly been cutting back the colors until it is now just gray with teal accents. I love the way the zinnias pop against the dark background. It's harder to see in the photo, but our family picture pops nicely too. Eventually we want to pain all of the trim white to match the trim around the door to the dining room. I'm actually super pleased with our living room right now, even with toys all over it. Again, small changes over the past four years have made a big difference.