Our House: Living Room Update

Remember what our sad little living room looked like?

Here's a reminder:

Yuck.

Well, a few bucks later, it looks like this:

It still needs work, but we're both a lot happier with it. The Mister's parents are coming to visit us in a few weeks, which was what inspired us to get off of our asses and make the room look presentable.

I bought the rug on sale from Urban Outfitters a few weeks ago for our bedroom (remember this inspiration board?) but it didn't look as great in real life as it did in theory. So I tried it out in our living room and ended up really liking it. In the words of the Dude, "it really tied the room together."

So then, I went to Ikea to find some stuff to hang on our walls. I found this baroque-inspired mirror for a steal, and bought some simple black frames to hang some black and white photos, collage-style, behind the couch. It's a bit skimpy, so I think I'll pick up a few more of them this week to fill out the wall. The deep orange pillow covers are actually too big for our pillows, but I really like how they pop against the olive-y brown couch, so I'll grab some larger cushions when I pick up the frames.

I rearranged all of the junk on our credenza so now it's actually organized, and although you can't see it on the wall on the right-hand side, I took a piece of vintage burnt-orange print fabric that I had lying around, put it in a black frame (a larger version of the frames behind the sofa) and hung it behind the credenza. It ties in with the orange pillows and the bold black bits all around the room.

The floor lamp behind the sofa is a temporary but necessary solution until we find a lamp we really like. I've had that lamp since college so it's old as hell, but it still works and while it's fairly ugly, at least it's plain ugly and not tacky ugly, right?

Anyway, we're really excited about what less than $200 could do to perk up the room. I can't wait to paint the walls and the credenza and replace the coffee table. Then we'll be cookin' with gas!

(Oh, and the ugly blanket on the couch? A necessary evil because someone likes to lick his paws and leave wet spots all over everything).

Our House: The Back Deck

One of my biggest regrets of the summer is that we were too busy to fix up our back deck. Summer is basically over and we haven't spent any time out there.

Here's what it looks like now. It's a big honkin' mess.

We need to weed the crap out of the surrounding areas (we're going to put a vegetable garden in there next year). We have to sweep all the pine needles off of it, haul all of the junk to the curb, pressure wash the wood, and re-seal it.

The furniture was left there by my mother. She inherited those chairs from my grandparents; they're from the 1940's. I think that they are amazing and I want to refinish them. I found this before and after on Design Sponge for the same exact chairs - check it out - but my mother claims that ours are so rusted out that they'll just disintegrate when we try to sand them down. I'm not sure, though. I think I need to consult an expert.

That old grill was left here by my mom as well, and it doesn't work anymore, so we just need to drag it to the curb and replace it with a nice one.

So here are my plans.

Whaddaya think?

Our House: The Bathrooms

Our new place has one and a half bathrooms, a powder room downstairs, and a bigger bathroom upstairs that is accessible both from the master bedroom and the hallway. Both of them need some work.

The powder room will be one of the easiest fixes. It needs a coat of paint, knobs for the cabinet, and a new light fixture. Easy peasy. But check it out:

It's not a good photo, but can you see that wallpaper? It's freaking metallic. Also...

It is hung upside-down, you guys. Upside-freakin-down.

It's on there good, too. Instead of ripping it down, we'll probably prime over it and paint it. I'm thinking a dark color with bold, white accents. Maybe like Dragonfly by Benjamin Moore:

Now, the upstairs bathroom, well, that needs a whole lot of work. Unfortunately, It's going to be pricey, so we'll probably wait quite a while until tackling it.

First of all, the toilet, shower, and both sinks are all that gross "harvest gold" color that was all the rage in the 70's. And the sinks are chipped.

Instead of ripping out and replacing the whole shower and tub, we're considering getting a shower liner, something very simple and white. And buying a new toilet and sinks shouldn't cost too much, but it's the installation that gets pricey. I wonder if we could do it ourselves?

And, as you can see in the photo above, half of the bathroom (the half with the sinks, counter and mirror) have the same disgusting periwinkle carpet that disgraces our bedroom. Instead of ripping out the entire floor, I think we'll just clean the hell out of the tile to try to get it sparkling white, and then rip up the carpet and replace it with FLOR tiles.

We do have a giant mirror/medicine cabinet, though, which is nice.

So here are my eventual plans. Let me know what you think!

Our House: The Dining Room

First off, I promise that the dining room isn't nearly as terrible as the living room is. But it needs some work.

Let me remind you of the awkward layout of our living/dining room combo:

And here it is. I took this photo with my back to the living room side of things.

Again, I couldn't be bothered to straighten up before taking these photos. I suck.

By the way, how cute is my dog?

Anyway, all this really needs is a coat of paint, a new table and chairs, a new light fixture, and some curtains. That table and chairs used to belong to the Mister's parents. He ate every childhood meal at that table and I think he's kind of emotionally attached to it. Too bad, darling. That thing is outta here.

You can't really see the hideous light fixture in this photo, so I snapped a quick one with my phone.

This is me every time I look at that cheap, tacky monstrosity:

The bar cart was a super-cheap one I ordered from Amazon. It's not beautiful, but it's simple, it's small, and it gets the job done. Someday, I'd like to replace it with something vintage and industrial like what Emily from Cupcakes and Cashmere has, but that's on the back burner for now.

Someday you will be mine (Source)

Anyway, the plans. I'd love to replace the table and chairs with an awesome teak Danish modern set like one of these, but that's not in the cards or in the budget right now. So we'll probably start off with a cheap but simple table and chairs.

We never eat at the dining room table unless we have guests. We eat at the coffee table. So the dining room table has become my office (yay for blogging while watching TV). I will stash the lappy upstairs when people come over, but I've come to accept that, 99% of the time, my crap will be all over the table. And that's okay.

What's not okay is all the junk we temporarily stuck on our windowsill and never moved. It's just become a catch-all, and it gotsta go.

I'm okay with relocating the knicknacks, but I need a good place for my printer. Maybe I can make some kind of box to cover it up with, and then I can uncover it only when I need it. Has anyone ever seen anything like that?

On a positive note, I love our floor-to-ceiling bookshelves in the dining room.

But I'd love to paint the back of the shelves like John and Sherry of Young House Love did with theirs.

Source

Here's what I'm thinking, sticking with the same color scheme as our living room, since it's all in the same place:

What do you think? Any suggestions?

Our House: The Living Room

It's time for another glimpse into our embarrassingly un-stylish (for now) home. You were all so helpful when I asked for suggestions and advice for our bedroom, so I'm asking for more suggestions on the area in which we spend the majority of our time: the living/dining room area.

Today, I'll focus on the living room half, and tomorrow, the dining room.

Our biggest challenges with the room are:

• It's an awkward size and shape which makes furniture layout really difficult
• Our couch is way too big for the room and there's nothing we can do about it
• Our budget is small. Like, small.

This is the awkward layout as it stands now (it's not to scale but I think I eyeballed it pretty well). The room is very shallow and very wide, and there are things like an ugly catty-corner fireplace, sliding glass doors, and built-in bookshelves which make it impossible to place furniture there.

Every single piece of furniture in the living room is old as hell, except for the sofa, which is brand-new. I really wanted a sleek, smaller sofa that looked something like this:

source

But one of these wouldn't work for the type of lifestyle we lead: the type of lifestyle that involves the three of us (the Mister, the dog and myself) all sprawled out horizontally while watching hours and hours of Netflix. We needed something big and comfy. So, we measured our space and bought a sofa on clearance at a store that was going out of business.

The couch is giant. And it's comfy. I love sitting on it. But I hate looking at it. It looks like total crap in the room. First of all, when we saw it in the furniture showroom, it was charcoal grey, which is exactly what I wanted. I swear to you it was grey! But it must have been the lighting in the room, because when they delivered this behemoth to our house, it was an olivey greeny browny taupey color. Not grey at all.

And secondly, we measured wrong, and the couch is too big for the room. It awkwardly butts up against the ugly fireplace. I'll show you:

You'll notice that I didn't even bother straightening up before shooting these photos for the world to see. How embarrassing.

Anyway, see how the sofa is about 8 inches too long and covers up part of the fireplace? We're not sure what to do about that. There's really no other place to put the sectional, so it's got to stay there. And we can't return it. Instead, we need to work around it: the size and the color.

Let's address some other aspects of this pain-in-the-ass room. 

The credenza (is that a credenza? I'm not sure what else to call it. A sideboard? I don't know). We just inherited it from my mother. It used to be my grandparents', and  my mom was using it for the last 10 years or so. I actually love that thing. For the first time ever, we can put all of our DVDs in something. I always hated having them all on display, so I love that this thing is big enough for all of them. I think that it's sort of ugly as is, but it has amazing potential. My plan is to paint it black, but I might do something fun with the front of the doors.

Want a better look? Of course you do.

Moving on...

The coffee table doesn't hurt my eyeballs or anything, but it is completely unremarkable and cheap, and I don't like how the color works with our sofa. I want something much smaller and black.

I hatehatehate that giant mirror behind the sofa, but I think that it makes the room look a lot bigger than it actually is. I'm afraid that when we take it down, the room will look like a closet. A closet jammed full of too-big furniture. That framed poster behind the sofa is one of the Mister's prize possessions. We just hung it there for now because there was already a hook on the wall. We'll probably move it to the guest room at some point. And that teeny clock was just something that we temporarily put up so that we could see what time it was while we waited for the real clock, a.k.a. cable box. And we never took it down.

There are also ugly vertical blinds on the awkwardly placed sliding glass doors. We need to replace them as well. I'm thinking simple fabric curtains that match whatever color we paint the walls. I want them to blend in, not pop.

That messy end table is just a catch-all for all of our junk. We'll replace it soon. And that purple chair isn't usually up against it. I think I moved it to vacuum and never put it back.

But let's talk about that chair. There are actually two of them, and they're pretty awesome. Like the credenza, these were passed down from my grandparents to my mother to us and were made sometime mid-century. Also like the credenza, they need work. The shape is perfect but the colors are all wrong. I'd love it if the wood was stained a bit darker or greyisher (shut up, that's a word), and the purple upholstery just isn't doing it for me. I'd love for them to be black or a brighter color. I hear that reupholstering anything is super-expensive, though. So we're not sure what to do about them. I'd like to keep at least one of them in the room, though, because the dog loves them. They are the perfect size for him to curl up in.

Speaking of the dog, that's also why our couch is loaded up with blankets. He likes to burrow under his blankies and we spoil the crap out of him, so half of our sectional is really for him.

The carpet? Well, I'd rather have hardwood floors, but the carpet is clean, in good condition, and neutral, so I'll let it go for now.

Anyway, enough photos of our out-of-date and messy room. Here are my plans for an update:

We'll play off of the color of the couch and accent it with deep orange and lime green. We'll keep the accents small and black and the walls will be a light greenish-grey. Or greyish-green. Whatever. I haven't decided what I'd like to hang on the walls yet, but that'll be easy. And I'd love any suggestions on how to update that ugly-ass fireplace for cheap.

Have you ever struggled with furniture placement in an awkwardly shaped room? How did you deal with it?

Coming up tomorrow: the dining room. It's not as bad as this, I swear.

Our House: The Bedroom

While I have somewhat of an eye for fashion, that talent hasn't translated very well into interior design.

But, actually, I think I have good ideas, I just don't know how to execute them. 

The Mister and I recently bought my mother's old house, the house I lived in when I went to high school, the house that my mother bought in 1990 and barely changed since. Besides new carpets in the downstairs and a new coat of paint in the master bedroom, the house was exactly the same as when I moved out almost 20 years ago. Before we moved in, we redid the kitchen, but that's a post for another day.

We don't care too much about the extra two bedrooms, but we really want to fix up the living/dining room, the bathrooms, and especially the master bedroom.

Here's what it looks like now. Please keep in mind that we haven't done a single thing to the room besides bring our stuff in.

Celery green walls. Barf. A carpet that is somewhere between lavender and periwinkle. Double barf. I do love our quilt, though.

I have this old rocking chair that used to be my mother's when I was a baby. For the sake of full disclosure, I'm showing you what it looks like in its usual state, i.e. covered in my clothes. Don't judge me.

The Mister's ugly old dresser is in the corner, along with a $5 mirror that I propped against the wall. My own dresser is in my walk-in closet, which is a story for another day.

But here's a peek. Again, don't judge my mess.

Using my limited Photoshop skills, I put together a mockup of how I'd like the room to look.

 Most of this can be done fairly cheaply. Paint is cheap and easy, and we can paint the walls, chair and dresser. We can score a mirror, rug and bench for a few hundred bucks. We can make a headboard out of a piece of wood and a coat of paint.

But the floor. The floooooooor. We just don't have the money to get rid of that heinous carpet right now, so we'll need to live with that for another year or so.

And for now, I'll dream of the day when our bedroom will look like this.

What does your bedroom look like? And do you have any suggestions for ours?