Starting the Living Room Project

Now that the Master Bedroom Project is completed, 

we've moved on and are starting the living room redecorating project 

{actually I shouldn't call it RE-decorating when it was never decorated to begin with!}.

As I said in my Virtual Living Room Makeover post,
our living room is the first room you see when you walk in our front door
and it's high time that it got some love.

Here is my vision for the room...

Here's what the living room looked like before we started the project...

First step = painting the walls.

A few months ago when I started hoarding collecting Sherwin Williams' paint samples

to make my own paint fan deck, I immediately fell in love with Sea Salt.

It looked like the perfect mix of gray and light blue.

Just to be sure I liked it in our living room, 

I got a sample pint of it and did some patch testing on different spots throughout the room.

Sadly, this made me fall out of love with Sea Salt.

It just looked too baby blue on our walls.

So I headed back to Sherwin Williams and got a sample pint of Comfort Gray, 

my second favorite paint color.

 Again, I painted splotches all over our walls and decided that although I loved the color,

it was just too dark for the room.

So back it was to Sherwin Williams for the third time.

I explained my problem to the paint guy and 

we started messing around with the tint of Comfort Gray until I was happy with it.

We ended up cutting the tint by 35%, 

which means the color stayed the same, it just lightened up a little bit.

It was love at first sight.

Not too light, not too dark, a perfect mix of blue and gray and not the slightest hint of baby blue.

Once the paint decision was made and the paint was bought, 

we had to figure out which walls to paint.

{excuse the mess of toys. our formal dining room is currently serving as the kids' playroom.}

There are several issues that make painting rooms in our house rather difficult.

First off, all of our walls have rounded corners, which makes in hard to find stopping/starting points for adding color to our walls.

Second, our house has an open concept floor plan, which means one room blends into another without any real definition of separate spaces. 

Oh and the shared ceiling in our foyer/living room/dining room is 17 feet high at its' peak!

I knew I wanted to paint the main wall with the fireplace. 

I wasn't so sure about the other walls.

But once we painted the main wall, it looked like the room was closing in on you,

like the wall was coming at you. 

To remedy that, we painted the big wall with the window in the dining room to anchor the main wall.

I didn't dare do the other walls for fear of ending up having to paint the whole house!

 

{yeah I know, that play room is a real mess!}

We only ended up painting the two walls, but who knows, maybe we'll end up painting more!

But for now, I am really happy with how it looks.

So my advice to those of you who have open concept floor plan homes and want to add color, but are scared for fear of not knowing where to start/stop is this:

Pick a color you love {test it out first} and start by painting ONE wall. 

If you like it, stop. 

If it looks weird, paint another wall. 

Keep going until you are satisfied with how it looks.

If you have rounded corners like we do, here is a good website that explains where to stop/start your paint:

How to Join Two Paint Colors While Painting Rounded Corners

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I hope you have a fabulous weekend!

We'll be out playing in the snow - yippee!!

P.S. I'm joining these parties this weekend:

Fingerprints on the Fridge FYF 

Funky Junk Interiors SNS #70

Just a Girl SAS

Living Room Chairs

 I mentioned in a previous post (our virtual living room makeover) that Jacob and I bought chairs for our living room this year instead of Christmas presents for each other.

When we first started shopping for chairs, I was looking for something light colored and upholstered.
Something that looked soft and comfy.

Jacob was looking for leather.

I did not want leather.

I wanted our living room to have an airy, vintage, beachy feel. 

To me, leather did not fit into that picture.

One of our final stops while out looking for chairs was JCPenney.

We quickly cruised through their furniture department 

{with our kids running rampant and causing a ruckus}. 

I didn't see anything I liked and I was ready to get our kids, who were melting down, back to the car.

While I was chasing down the kids, Jacob parked himself in the leather chair section. 

I didn't bother to join him because like I said, I didn't want leather.

A few minutes later, I heard him calling me over....

"Erin! Come check this one out!"

So, with the kids in tow, I walked over and saw him lounging in this chair...

"It's okay," I said while turning up my nose.

"But it reclines!" he replied.

I could tell he was in love...with the chair.

So I said, "I'll think about it." to appease him.

When we got home, I found the chair online and stuck it into a picture of our living room.

After adding in some accessories to give the room that airy, vintage, beachy feel I was after, 

I decided that I actually liked the leather chairs.

And marriage is all about compromise, right??

So even though I didn't think leather fit into my picture...

I think they are going to work out just fine...

AND I have a happy husband {he mostly loves the fact that he won}.

I think they look strikingly similar to these ones from Pottery Barn...

except theirs is priced at a hefty $1,199 EACH {plus shipping}

and we only paid $888 for TWO!

{we waited until they were on sale plus we found an online coupon}

To avoid paying $250 for delivery, we also opted to have them delivered to our local JCPenney for FREE!
And yes, they are real leather,
not that plastic-y stuff that's supposed to look like leather.

I love getting a good deal...

but who doesn't!?

Virtual Living Room Makeover

 Jacob and I decided that instead of getting each other Christmas presents this year, we would buy ourselves two (much-needed!) chairs for our living room.

Our living room is the first room you enter when you come in our front door. It's got super high vaulted ceilings and is is connected to our dining room, so it's a pretty big space.

A pretty big space that is really boring and lacks decent furniture.

I'm a little bit embarrassed to invite people into our house because their first impression of our decor would be pretty sad.

So I spent a few hours giving our room a virtual makeover in Photoshop to see how our living room could potentially look AND to help us decide what kind of chairs to buy.

Here is the BEFORE (what our living room looks like now)

 and virtual AFTER.

I think it's all pretty do-able. 

Buy the chairs.

Paint the walls.

Build the bookcases and trim work above the mantle.

Slipcover the sofa.

Fix up the coffee table.

Buy a rug.

It just might take us a year to complete though :)

Linking up to:

Shutters

I had been looking for something to add to our mantel to give it a little more depth. 

Our fireplace sits against a huge wall and sometimes the things that I put on our mantel get swallowed up by the big wall.

So while I was out junkin' one weekend, I came across a pair of shutters that were just the right size to sit next to the mirror on our mantel. 

How did I know they would be the right size?? 

Well I carry a handy dandy little tape measure in my purse at all times, or course!

The shutters weren't very pretty when I bought them (for 10 bucks!).

This is actually a picture of the backsides (looks the same as the front did) because I got too excited and spray painted the fronts before I took a 'before' picture!

 Speckled red paint on the trim with bad gold paint on the louvers.

Nothing a little sand paper and spray paint couldn't fix though!

And viola! 

Here is how they look now after a few coats of Valspar Warm Grey spray paint. 

Pretend you don't see the beginnings of my Christmas decorations, just look at the pretty shutters!

Now I think I need to paint the ginormous wall behind it - ugh.

Linking up to:

Funky Junk Interiors: SNS #53 - Shutters

Sawdust and Paper Scraps: Weekend Party

Ceramic Garden Stool - A Steal!

I've been coveting ceramic garden stools ever since I saw them featured in my House Beautiful magazine awhile back.

You know the ones...

you see them everywhere...

Here's what House Beautiful had to say about them...

But they are oh, so expensive!

I've searched high and low for a good deal on one.

Ballard Designs has them for $139

Target sells them for $169

Pottery Barn sells them for $159

But the best price I found was at Wisteria for $99 (on sale).

I still wasn't willing to spend that much.

I resigned to the fact that I would never have one.

Then I got a tip from Beth over at The 7 Daggetts. 

She found garden stools at Big Lots for $10!

That's right, I said TEN DOLLARS!!!

And they are EXACTLY the same as the ones from Ballard Designs, Target, and Wisteria.

Thanks, Beth!!!!

So of course, I packed all of the kids up this morning and raced out to Big Lots.

I searched the whole store and finally found them in the back corner with the gardening supplies (duh!).

I had a hard time choosing between red, blue or white, but ultimately settled on the white one.

The price tag was marked at $20 (still a killer deal!), but when the cashier rang it up I found out it was 50% off.

I am beyond thrilled at my purchase. 

In fact, I think I may go back and get the blue one too :)