Living Room Before and After

With all of the rain that we have had lately, Dan has had some free time to work on the house a little bit. The rain isn't great for business, but he has had some inside jobs and figured it was a good time to get some stuff done around the house too. We are hoping for some nice days so that he can get to all of the outside work that he has lined up for the summer.

When we first looked at the house, we knew we weren't fans of the half-wall paneling that ran along almost every wall downstairs. It was nice paneling but the look just wasn't our cup of tea. So we threw it on the list of things that we would love to update one day, and put in our offer. There it sat untouched until this past February when Dan discovered that we had decent sheet rock behind the paneling. He decided to rip off all of the paneling and repair what needed to be repaired underneath. We were thankful that he knew how to do the job.

The living room was definitely the hardest part of the downstairs. We discovered after ripping a few panels down, that many of the panels were glued to the wall throughout the living room. This left some nice chunks of wall missing and some work for Dan to do. Thankfully, whoever put the paneling up either ran out of glue, or discovered that it was not a great idea before they got to the dining room. That part of the house should go more smoothly than the living room did.

So here is what the living room walls looked like back at our very first showing: 

(I wish that I had taken better before shots but this will have to do. I have learned my lesson.)

Excuse the quick blur job I did on this one.
The realtor's car and license plate were right outside and I just thought it would be smarter for privacy reasons to blur it. 

It was very dull and basic, but a good price and perfect for the baby!

Below are some in between shots. The paneling was still up, but we had painted the top part of the walls. I am a neutral color kind of girl. Something about them seems relaxing and comfortable. I loved this blue and was so sad to see it go. I knew we had to use a brighter color on the walls, but really wanted to try this blue out first. Hopefully, one day we can put in some more lighting to brighten it up a bit! Maybe something like this on each side of the large window.

Here are some in progress shots...

I spy a baby hand...

Those pictures were in February. You would think that after five months, I would have picked out a color. After all Dan had all of the hard work right? Even with the help of pinterest, I could not decide on a color for this room. I thought that yellow would be the perfect color to lighten things up. After a lot of thought we narrowed it down to a creamy sunny yellow like this, a soft beige like this, and a neutral grey like this. It turned out that I absolutely loved the yellow but it just didn't feel like me. The grey won out in the end because I felt that it would really lighten everything up, while keeping things neutral, and relatively easy to decorate with.

So after some major skim coating to get everything nice and smooth, a coat of primer, some fresh white trim paint, freshly painted doors, and two coats of Sherwin William's "Pussy Willow" we are very happy with the results. Here are some After shots of the room...

If you are wondering why there is hardly anything in the room,
 we were just about to shampoo the carpets and had moved everything out. 

I can't wait to have a nice camera so that I can take better shots of Dan's work... and awesome pictures of Logan man too of course. ;) Our next big project in here would be replacing the floors. We would love to go with a nice hardwood floor throughout the whole downstairs. I like having carpets upstairs and in the bedrooms, but we would love to update the floors downstairs when the budget allows for it. I will keep you updated as we do more wall work in the dining room.