This year I have volunteered to host the family Christmas festivities, for the first time entirely on my own. This endeavor has really inspired me to fast track my home renovations to be completed by the holidays.
I have already completed both bathrooms and the outdoors but biggest undertaking is the living room. My home is a tri-level and the living room was originally a basement. It has been a good 10-12 years since the living room was last painted, decorated or given new furniture.
The blue living room (yes, blue) had to go. Luckily I had a few elements working in my favor. The blue carpet had been replaced with beige carpet 2 years ago, and we have wood paneling and new brown lazy-boy recliner. I had also recently purchased those great dark brown lamps I mentioned in a previous post.
So really, while this room is large in area, it simply needed paint, furniture and a few new accessories. I had already been saving for new furniture so I simply needed to find a set I liked and the accessories to go along with it.
After 3 trips to the furniture store and handfuls of paint samples, the furniture was ordered and I now had a two week window to get the painting done and the old furniture out! The last time the living room was painted, we hired someone, and it took them an entire weekend. Making a time estimate based on the previous time, I was anticipating at least one whole weekend for painting, but it only took me 6 hours. I rock!
Once the furniture was in, I spent several lunch hours at Bed Bath & Beyond, Target and JC Penny's searching for the perfect throw pillows to accent my decor. I ended getting the 2 brown pillows at Pennys, the red ones at Target and the purple ones at Bed Bath & Beyond. The toss pillows that came with the furniture were infused with blue, so clearly they could not be used.
The other decor items consist of framed family photos in great new wrought iron frames displayed on a new bookshelf with other vacation souvenirs. The walls will be decorated with artwork I purchased in Paris on vacation several years ago. I need to purchase one additional piece of wall art and a new HDTV, and that is it!
Everything is complete, except of course hanging the art on the walls and installing that new TV!
