Home Tour: Formal Living Room.

First up on the post-renovations home tour, I showed you our powder room.  Next up is the formal living room.  I also refer to this room as the "sitting room" because I tend to refer to our main TV room as the living room.  Regardless of what you call it, this room is currently my favorite room in the house for any number of reasons.

Just to set the stage here, when you are in the entry way, this room is directly to your right and the formal dining is to your left.  Since it's one of the very first things guests see when they come in, I wanted the room to make a statement.  I decided early on that I wanted to stretch my comfort zone a bit and go bold in this room.

This is a picture of the room from the real estate listing.  It may be bold in its own right for different reasons.  (Obviously, we have slightly different taste than the previous owners.)

We started with a blank slate (well, a yellow slate actually).  And here's how the room looks today.

One of the reasons why I love this room so much is because it came together so easily.  I didn't really have a vision for the room when I started (besides bold choices and mixed prints), which is different than I how normally decorate.  But for whatever reason, my lack of a plan totally worked in this room.

I knew right away I wanted jewel tones in the room.  Every time I considered something else, my mind went back to jewel tones.  Then one day, Justin and I were at High Fashion Home and they had furniture displayed in various mock-up rooms.  One of the rooms was fabulous with a deep teal color, and as soon as I saw it, I knew that was the perfect color for the space.  Thankfully, the employee knew what color it was (Benjamin Moore Stained Glass).  And that's how the wall color was chosen!

We had the Ethan Allen chairs that were in our old living room recovered in a neutral linen.  Since the walls are darker, I wanted the main furniture pieces to be lighter.  You can't tell from the pictures, but the chairs have a subtle pattern on them and tie in nicely with the couch, which is from Macy's.  I may recover the vintage ottomans (a craigslist find) at some point, but I am currently digging the rose pink.  I am also considering painting the lamps (a Homegoods find) that are sitting on the end tables (another craigslist find, blogged about here), but haven't been able to commit to a color quite yet.  In the meantime, the tan color is working just fine.  And see that awesome vintage brass pharmacy lamp?  I got 3 of them on craigslist for $25 total -- yes, all 3 for $25!  

The "brass" shelves are an Ikea hack that made its way around the blog world (i.e. the Vittsjo shelves spray painted gold).  It's probably not a great solution for something that's getting a lot of use, but these serve only one purpose: to look pretty.

The shelves hold all kinds of goodies.  Some highlights are my grandfather's books; Justin's grandfather's books; an antique print from a Paris trip; some other vintage finds, and of course, some Target gems.

It took us three tries, but we finally nailed the rug.  Surprisingly, this was really the only element in the room Justin had a strong opinion on.  He was definitely on board with the leopard, but he was pretty picky with the look of the leopard print.  Thankfully, he has excellent taste, and we found a carpet that we both loved and had them cut it to specific dimensions for the room.  It totally makes the room.

While I was taking pictures of the room, my two favorite helpers/modelers were assisting.

When we moved in, this room had no overhead lighting.  We added 4 recessed lights and a center fixture by Visual Comfort, which I have loved for a long time.  The overhead lighting makes such a huge difference in the space.

So, I think that's about it.  Did I miss anything?  One thing is for dang sure . . . this room has come along way from the floral couches it started with!  

House Tour: Living Room.

How was your weekend?  I worked for a good part of the weekend (boo), but we got away today to go to some open houses.  Nothing we loved, but at least got a feel for some things that are out there.  

In the last installment of the home tour, I shared our kitchen.  Next up is the living room, which will round out the rooms on the second floor (besides the powder room, which I am guessing you don't mind skipping over).

This is the view to the right as you come up the stairs.  Our living room is open to the dining room.    

You can read the details of the wallpapered bookshelves here.  I didn't really think about it when we first bought the house, but I really love having the built-ins.  Accessorizing them is a constant work in progress, but it's fun.  

We completely redid the fireplace when we first moved in.  It was seriously awful.  Looking at it now, you would never know that at one point it was covered with ugly brown tile.  And the ottomans are the solsta footstools (now on sale for $14.99) from Ikea that my mother-in-law recovered for us.  You can read about that transformation here.

The color of the walls is Behr Country Club.  As you can see, it totally changes color depending on the light.   

You can see better shots of my Cocoa & Hearts painting in this post.  I also recently got these Dwell Studio pillows from Joss & Main for the couch.  Riley is helping me model them . . . such a ham. 

I used to have a fabric covered canvas over on the wall where the frames are now, but I was in the mood for a little something different and thought it was a good opportunity to display some art that's been sitting in the closet.  And speaking of hams, look at Zoey over there on the stairs. 

Most of the art came from etsy, but a couple of them came from Homegoods and a local resale shop.

Next up will be the third floor!  Hope y'all have a wonderful Monday!

Update: Cocoa & Hearts Painting.

Remember how I mentioned we got a fabulous painting from Cocoa & Hearts here?  We hung it in our living room behind the couch.  In case you're curious, click here to see what we had hanging on the wall before the painting.

Here's the new and improved living room wall . . .

(How sweet is Zoey posing for the picture?)

I love it against the darker wall color.  It really just shines in there.  I may have to turn the couch around so I can sit and stare at the painting instead of facing the TV!  

The colors and movement of the painting are simply stunning. I love the gold streaks in it that shimmer.  When I received it in the mail, that was the first thing I noticed.

It's definitely my favorite part of the room now.



Hope you all had a wonderful weekend! I'm glad to be back home, although there aren't any cookies on my nightstand here!

Guild Shop Chandelier.

Remember the chandelier from the Guild Shop I previously blogged about here and here?  Justin hung it this weekend!  I originally was going to hang it in our entry way, but after thinking about it some more, decided there may be better places where it would be more visible.  So we cruised around the house looking for other options.  Justin actually came up with the idea to hang it where we did.  And he was totally right -- he's a keeper!  He hung it on our second floor in the little area between our kitchen and dining room (and right outside of the powder room).  Here's the view of it as you get on the second floor.

I love the touch of glam it adds to an otherwise boring hallway.  In case you're curious, that archway over there to the left is where the powder room is.

This is the view from the opposite direction looking into the dining and living room from the kitchen.  If you look closely you can see Justin lounging in the living room admiring his handiwork.  (It's like a game of Where's Waldo without the red stripes and glasses!)  And for the record, our kitchen is not sherbet green -- the lighting wasn't ideal.

We ended up just replacing the candle covers and adding some more crystal prisms (there were quite a few missing).   There's now a mix of the old crystals and new ones, but since I was able to find nearly identical crystals online, you can't tell the difference.

{Side note: see those flowers in the background by the mirror?  I recently went to the dentist to get my first-ever cavity filled and was pretty nervous thanks to a terrible wisdom teeth removal experience.  Justin had a gorgeous bouquet of tulips, hydrangeas, roses and lilies delivered to my office before I went to help calm my nerves.  Super sweet!} 

But back to the chandy . . . as Justin said, "it's pretty baller to have a chandelier in your hallway."  And I couldn't agree more! 

Hope you all had a great weekend!

Wallpapered Bookshelves.

I previously blogged about the wallpaper panels in our master bedroom.  Well we had some leftover wallpaper that I couldn't let go to waste, so I decided to "wallpaper" the bookshelves in our living room (they needed a little sprucing up).  I put the word wallpaper in quotes because I didn't actually use wallpaper paste.  Instead, I just used double-stick tape to adhere the paper to the bookshelves.  I wanted a more temporary solution and, so far, it has done the trick.   

Here's the before:

And the afters:

Taking a closer peek, I received these super cute owl banks/vases from my in-laws for my birthday.  I am using them as bookends for my fun penguin classics.  And thanks to a birthday present from my friend Lauren, my collection drastically increased!         

Also, a while back, I posted about a great bookshelf here and mentioned how I loved the ginger jar.  The very next day, my mom spotted one at HomeGoods and picked it up for me!  Thanks, mom!  I was originally planning on putting it in our master bedroom, but decided I liked it better in the living room.    

Now the bookshelves aren't quite so boring.  I definitely feel like I got my money's worth with just the one roll!  What do you think? 

Where I Blog.

Kate over at Centsational Girl is having a "Where Do You Blog? Party."  I decided to join in the fun because I've enjoyed taking a peek into where other people blog over the last couple of days.

The spot where I do most of my blogging isn't overly exciting -- it's the couch in our living room! 

Even though we have a home office, I sit at a desk all day and stare at a computer, so I like being relaxed on the couch with my laptop.  Most evenings Justin has his laptop out too on the couch and we are both working (or blogging -- me, not him). 

Ottomans.

We have been looking for relatively inexpensive ottoman cubes for extra seating in our living room for some time now.  There were never any that were the right size with a fabric we really liked.  So we decided to check Ikea for some options.  We found the Solsta Pallbo ottomans for only $19.99.

So they went from this . . . 

To this . . .
 

 To this!

Of course the plain white cotton covers didn't do much for us.  Instead, we found some fabric we liked at High Fashion Home, and I enlisted my mother-in-law to sew slipcovers for them.  This isn't the first time she has recovered ottomans for us (you can see her previous handiwork here).  She added a little foam on top to make them a little taller and voila!

Didn't she do a wonderful job?  They turned out just like I hoped and were obviously a much cheaper option than something like this from Pottery Barn.


Here is a close up of the fabric:

The cubes are great and it's nice to have some extra seating that's easy to move around when we have guests over.

Memories: our fireplace.

When we first looked at our current house, we were horrified by the fireplace. It stuck out like a sore thumb and certainly did not jive with the feel of the rest of the house. Not deterred by a renovation project, Justin was willing to take on the task of redoing it.

Here it is when we first bought the house:

During the tear-down phase . . .

I was very impressed that Justin knew how to put up drywall (evidently he learned how on a mission trip when he was a freshman in high school):

Here we are testing out the granite with the mantel we ordered online:

Here's the final product:

Much better if you ask me!