Honestly we bought the house thinking this was only going to be a 5 year home. I wanted to make some improvements and move on but the longer we stayed the more we wanted to do.

Before picture was taken during inspections before we bought the house.

The first room you see is almost as important as the curb appeal. It is what draws you enticing your curiosity. In our house that would be the living room. When we bought the house 9 years ago it felt very dark. The fireplace that should be attracting your eyes was not the focal point.

Painting

Our starter home was painted a Trenchcoat Khaki for the neutral but this entire house was a shade of yellow inside and out and needed a face-lift from that color family. We decided to be different and go with a gray…this was before it was popular.

First we painted our foyer/hallway a silvery gray and HATED it but found a color called Driftwood that actually blended the khaki and gray depending on the lighting it may look more of a beige.

Next was our living room, we noticed some cracking in the walls but not the settling types of cracks. These were more like dried paint blisters. We did research and tested the paint for lead with these instant result lead paint swabs.  After the swabs indicated no lead paint we began scraping the pealing paint.

Then the fun job of mudding and sanding. We have only noticed this issue in 4 rooms but the living room was 2nd worst.

Painting helped give the room life, especially the fireplace. We brought in a Allen + Roth rug to tie in the mix of browns and blacks. Color accents were added into the decor to allow for easier and less expensive changes.

Furniture

We moved from a 1200 sq ft house to a 3600 finished sq ft house. At that time we didn’t have furniture to fill it. We were also on a tight budget.

Fast forward 8 years and then we have 2 growing boys and a baby. Most of the time Mark and I are in our upstairs living room while the boys are in the basement. But there is a lot of time that we all try to sit on the couch together…that doesn’t work well with a love seat.

We finally decided to bite the wallet and purchase a new couch and chairs to fit all of us. Now we have plenty of room to settle in for our bedtime stories. With a bigger couch it also meant that we needed to get rid of our armoire. It only held board games and our hard drives so it didn’t need to be so big anyway.

We ended up purchasing a cabinet from Ikea that fits the space perfectly. Mark altered it to install cooling fans while keeping all the electronics hidden.

The other big change we made was installing new windows. The windows before didn’t keep a good seal and we couldn’t open the side windows due to being caulked closed. What a HUGE difference! It is much brighter and while we haven’t had many warm days to open the windows yet there have been a few. It is nice to have air moving through the entire house instead of bypassing the living room.

Somethings take time to find just the right fit but it is worth the journey.