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.

New Living Room Furniture

In addition to organizing my plethora of yarn and finishing our hallway, I (along with Steve) moved out our old couch, which you can see in this post and brought in some new ones from Ikea. 

Actually, Steve wasn't around for the actual removal of the couch, I did that with a couple I had never met before. We had decided to give the old couch, which was still in decent condition, to a missionary family that our church supports, and since they are still on the mission field, some friends of theirs moved the couch for them. It was nice to know that the couch was being put to good use.

Anyway, Steve had just gotten his year-end bonus and we decided to use some of it to replace our furniture. The old couch had served us well and we really did like it a lot, but it limited the arrangement of our living room making it so that no matter how we arranged it, it blocked our windows. We were actually having problems with it blocking the baseboard heat and, in a way, pushing the heat out the many windows. 

We didn't want to spend a fortune, so we went with Ikea's Ektorp couches in Svanby gray. We bought both the regular couch and the sofa bed. We are SO happy with them. Of course, we had to train the dogs not to jump on the couches anymore, but so far that has gone smoothly. The best part is, if we run into any accidents, the covers are removable, dryclean-able, and replaceable (for like $50!).

We also bought new throw pillows. The yellow ones I bought on Etsy, but the other two sets are actually from Target's outdoor and patio department. So is the striped "pouf"; we decided we needed an ottoman because we no longer had the recliners built into the old couch.
We also decided to build an entertainment center. We bought two Ikea Billy bookcases and one Besta shelf. I put them together. I seem to be the furniture assembler in this house, most of the time. As much as people say Ikea furniture can be junk, the quality of these was a thousand times better than any I've bought at Walmart or Target. Together, the shelves fit perfectly in the space between the wood stove and the wall. I mean perfectly, maybe less than a quarter of an inch to spare. It looks so much neater than it did before.

Except those chords. Anyone have an inexpensive solution for hiding those messy chords?

We're also looking for some new artwork for this room. Something to hang on the wall to the left of the entertainment center. If you look at the link to the old couch, you can also see the canvases I covered in scrap paper and hung on that wall. I don't like the look as much now, and since we took them down because we weren't sure which wall we'd put the entertainment, I decided I would keep them down until we found something better.  I can't find anything I like that is in our price range. Grr.

Anyway, we're happy with the homey look of the new furniture...

...and apparently Finn likes it too.

How 'bout you? Any ideas for living room art or hiding chords?

Living Room: Finally Put Together!

Boy, has it been a long time since I posted anything! But I finally have found time to share with everyone what our new living room looks like. If you're not sure what I'm talking about, read about it in this post.

Let me preface these pictures by saying that I used my Droid to take them, not my camera (the battery was dead) and it was already starting to get dark (my least favorite part about about winter). I really wish I had the before pictures to post also, but they're on my laptop (I'm using Steve's because I temporarily misplaced my cord).

I did find this picture which is not so much a "before" shot, more of an in progress shot, but you can see what the chimney used to look like (far right).

Woodstove. So thankful for this.

View from the left of the woodstove.



Computer desk.

Top of computer desk.

View from couch.

French doors between living room and dining room. They are usually open, but I wanted to show the snowflakes. :o)

Scrapbook paper wrapped canvas.

Christmas tree.

New recliner.

Love this coffee table. We bought it unfinished and painted the bottom and stained the top. It's the kind on hinges so the top lifts up to come closer to the couch.

Eventually I'll post pictures of the dining room too. I love the way that turned out, but it's not totally done yet.