Monday, January 13, 2020

Living Room Reveal

Good morning!  I'm starting my Monday off with a blog post about the reveal of our newly made over living room.  I shared on my last post our big news about moving and showed some great before shots of the two rooms we've made the most changes in so far, the living room and the dining room.  Since the dining room is still a work in progress (just ordered new furniture) I am going to show some after shots of the living room and try to post a full source list at the end.  Since a picture says a 1000 words, we'll just start there!







So, the first thing we did... was hire a painter, who actually turned out to be an amazing all round handyman... but, back to painting.  We got the keys to our house on December 10th, which left us 14 days until Christmas, and 4 days until we actually had to physically move from the old house to the new.  Not a lot of time, and look at that dark paneling.  Everywhere.  There was no way I could take on a project of this magnitude without help.

I had been looking at paint samples and checking out all of the paint may favorite bloggers have used, and I decided to go in a little different direction.  A lot of folks have used Pure White or Cloud White, or Alabaster.  I was drawn to Chantilly Lace by Benjamin Moore, but my painter uses Sherwin Williams paint so they color matched it with the BM paint swatch.  I am so happy I went with this white!  It looks amazing without being too yellow and it also doesn't feel cold at all with the darker stained beams and the flooring.

We decided just to go for it and had Enrique paint the walls, fireplace and the ceiling in between the beams.  We also decided to have the beams stained a darker color, and Enrique started to get my style and stained the mantle as well.  It turned out beautiful, but it was a ton of work.  It took three painters 10 coats of primer and about 5 more coats of paint to get it looking good.  We did a satin finish on the walls and fireplace and semi-gloss on the trim.  Of course, as soon as the paint was finished we realized putting black switch plates and outlet covers on these walls wasn't going to work.  So, Enrique also changed out all the electric for clean white.  We had to spray paint the vents because they were funny sizes and we couldn't find new replacements. 

The transformation of the fireplace was pretty amazing.  Before there was an awful huge cast iron and electric insert.  It took three men to remove it.  The paint actually looks a bit different on the brick than the rest of the room because the brick was so porous and absorbed the paint so much.  It looks a bit like a distressed German schmear, which was something I remember Chip Gains trying on Fixer Upper a few years ago.  The end result though gave me heart eye emojis!! 

I decided to go for it and embrace the white and ordered the IKEA Farlov section with right sofa.  It is slipcovered and I can already attest to the fact that it washed well!  Best advice I can give with a white sofa (if you are OCD like me) is buy two slipcovers right off the bat.  That way if one cushion gets dirty, you can strip it and replace it right away instead of waiting for it to wash and dry.

We decided to have the TV mounted on the brick with an angled mount so everyone in the room can see it.  We watch a lot of TV and that was important to me.  I have a collection of art and a mirror that I layered on the mantle, but didn't want to clutter it up with too much stuff, so it's pretty simple. I used the Ikea cabinet I had in our old house to hold a few books, my camera supplies and a couple collectibles I like to look at every day.  That pretty much sums up the space.  I'll try to do a source list below, but really the star of the room is those dreamy beams, and the thing that made the biggest impact was a can or 10 of white paint.  Be sure to follow along with me @lilyseclaires on Instagram to see all the behind the scene changes as we update this entire 1961 Ranch House!




Sources: sofa- ikea, mantle mirror- hobby lobby, art- target & hobby lobby, wall mirror-target, glass cabinet- ikea, throw pillows- home goods, lamps- target, candle sticks- tj maxx, coffee table- antique store, rug- sam's club.

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