The Living Room.
The first room we really remodeled in this house. After almost a year of strangely painted walls with an ugly stripe, a Popcorn ceiling with a water stain, no TV and a ripped up brown leather couch.
We rarely spent any time in here.
The idea for the living room came together pretty quickly; we knew we wanted a bookshelf wall, a picture wall, and the entire room to be painted white, like a canvas.
Of course we had a few trash ideas too. Like no TV or hiding a small TV inside a cabinet on the bookshelf, or painting one wall orange.
And then there was the temporary freak out at IKEA when we last minute decided to get white bookshelves instead of black, had an existential crisis, then realized we were being silly and got the black ones like we originally planned. Typical IKEA trip.
Over the years the bookshelves became filled with collections of our favorite things. For me vintage cameras, for Steven, antique radios and space stuff.
The picture wall is a mixture of Steven’s drawings and my photographs. Plus a few old photos we found at antique stores.
Our IKEA couch was eventually ripped to shreds by the cats, so we replaced it with this one from World Market. The cats quickly got to work shredding this one as well, and then I realized that my dumb self should have put a scratching pole nearby. As soon as I did that the couch scratching stopped! The scratching post lives next to the coffee table most of the time, and the cats spend so much of their day going crazy on it! I have to buy a new one multiple times a year.. But better than buying new couches!
Our living room is now a nice peaceful, relaxing place, just like we hoped it would be.
Before and After shots are located HERE. Click at your own risk. That posts contains some cringey 2014 photo editing skills. And writing..
However, we didn’t really like the look of generic replacement windows with the grids on the inside of the glass because they don’t show up very well and they look less authentic. We decided to go with the more pricey option of buying windows with exteriors grids, which look a lot closer to the type of windows that would have been original to the house. The windows we choose had black exterior grids to contrast with the house, and inside the house the grids are white.
