We bought our home in 2005, after renting for 18 months, and when we moved in, we painted every single room. Most rooms were a light blue that skewed "baby blue," although it didn't look that way when we picked out the paint. My husband's home office (his Man Cave, if you choose to call it that) is a gorgeous Crown Royal Purple. My home office is a warm beige. The living room was a bold blue, like the blue on an American flag. The hallway was just a neutral warm off-white/ivory.
Fast forward twenty years (to 2021), and all of the rooms are still the same color! You just get used to what you have, and making changes becomes harder and harder as you live in, and fill up, your spaces. But at some point last year, I decided that I wanted to paint the living room and buy a new couch, an honest-to-God Living Room Set so that the loveseat matched the couch and it looked like a magazine. A little Donna Reed? Maybe... but we got more than 15 years out of our slouchy Big Lots couch and I wanted a new one!
So I started looking, narrowed it down to a few choices, then dragged Hubby to both Badcock and Ashley to sit on the finalists. As we sat on our choice, we began to talk logistics... when did we want to get them? How much would they cost? Should we paint first? And then... He suggested that since we were moving furniture anyway, we should get new carpet.
And damn, he was right, but what a can of worms this became! See, a few years ago, we had to get a new AC system and new ducts, which meant that we had to drop the entire ceiling of the house in the hallway. We never really finished repairing it, just putting up the drywall and mudding the seams. A new AC vent had to be cut into the living room ceiling, and the old vent (in the living room wall) had to be closed up. We got as far as closing the old one, but the new one is still just a hole in the ceiling.
So as I realized that, if we were going to paint, if we were going to get carpet, I needed to fix all the other little things in the main house! Just off the top of my head, we had to:
- Get rid of the old stinky loveseat (Clover had some recent incontinence issues)
- Texturize and paint the hallway ceiling
- Patch over the old AC vent
- Remove crown molding in the living room
- Paint the hallway and trim
- Paint the living room and trim
- Paint the dining room and trim
- Paint the ceilings in living room, dining room, and hallway
- Mount the TV and install cable management
- New carpet in living room, dining room, and hallway
- New furniture (couch, loveseat, and ottoman)
- New window dressings
- New entertainment center / storage / tv area
Now, to do this, I needed the use of my daughter's old bedroom. The plan was to move a lot of the old accent furniture (like side tables and such) into her room, to reuse it as a Guest Bedroom. However, Hubby decided that he also wanted to re-do his home office (I did mine a few years ago), so he started moving stuff out of his room and into the guest bedroom - his idea was to move everything out, re-do his office, sort everything in the guest room and bring it back in. My idea (and how I did my re-do) was to sort as I moved so that when I was ready to put my office back together, everything I didn't want was already gone, either in the trash or donated. Basically, he created extra work for himself and completely blocked me from doing what I needed to do. After nagging him about it for months, he realized that my way was better, BUT DIDN'T MOVE HIS STUFF, le sigh. So now, I have a guest room that is full of my daughter's old furniture, and Hubby's office stuff, with no room for me to do what I need to do! I gave up on the original plan by June and just barreled ahead with getting done whatever I could get done.
We took the stinky loveseat out to the curb, and repurposed the loveseat that was currently in my home office, moving it to the living room for extra seating. I spent a day finishing and texturing the ceiling of the hallway. I spray painted the old, weirdly-sized AC return vent a nice bright white so that it looked clean and new. I used some spackling compound to texturize the classic 70s wood paneling on the AC closet (you can see where I over-texturized the grooves in the paneling, but it still looks better than before).
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| AC Closet Wall and Repurposed Shelf |
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| Old Hallway w/Old Carpet, testing Paint Colors (we chose the 2nd one) (Hubby's Office to the Left, Guest Room Center) |
Once I got the paint, I spent the next day or so absolutely transforming this hallway. It was a small area, so it was easy to do, and the payoff was inspiring. I was able to camouflage a lot of dings and dents in the walls, and I used a tiny brush to paint straight lines where there was no crown molding, giving me a crisp delineation between ceiling and wall. I repainted an old shelf that I had in my bedroom with leftover tester paint (the top color in the photo, above), put on some Contact Paper to hide some damage, and it fit perfectly in the little nook by the AC closet. then I hung up a new coat rack, and two picture ledges from IKEA and filled it with photos. These shelves also do a good job of hiding the old doorbell chime box, which doesn't work any more.
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| It already looks so much better, even with this nasty carpet! |
The AC closet has a louvered bi-fold door, and I still need to paint that, as well as the two bedroom doors and the bathroom door; I plan to do the same color as the walls, with white trim, similar to the door you see a few photos above.
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| That skinny bit of wall is just begging for some photos! |
The hallway stayed as the only thing done, as summer turned into fall, and I was just running out of energy. I wanted it done, but life (and his stuff) was getting in the way.
Around my birthday, I had some time - and some energy - so it was time to work on the Living Room. I decided to just completely remove the crown molding from the wall that used to have the AC vent in it. It was the only wall that had molding anyway, and when they installed the vent (back in the 19-whatevers), they cut into the molding, and there was no way I could fix it. So, I pulled it out and patched up the damage. I pulled down the 20-year old mini-blinds. And then I worked my magic with this gorgeous blue-grey paint. It just felt so refreshing and transformative! I spilled a bunch on the carpet, but fortunately, we would have new carpet soon, so who cared! Again, I went around the edges of the wall with a small brush to really cut in and create that clean separation between the wall and ceiling. (Update: Over the past few months I'm realizing that I never did a second coat of paint, lol! Some of the dark blue is starting to show through, and I'll probably have to run a roller over the walls again in a year or so... Lesson learned, don't be lazy!)
The following weekend, I did the dining room wall (only one wall is paint; the other three are wood panels) and all the baseboards and trim work in the whole space. That is what made me feel old... I'm not flexible enough to sit on the floor for hours painting baseboards, you guys! The weekend after that, I painted the ceilings, and WOW!! Either they previous owners never painted the ceilings, or it wasn't white to begin with, but the contrast between the old ceiling and the new ceiling was drastic! Between the new walls and new ceiling, I was beginning to get my "Magazine Cover" feeling.
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| The difference in ceiling color is amazing (left is old, right is new) |
At this point, I realized that if we wanted to have everything done by Christmas (which was the original plan), we had to get moving. I went out in the beginning of November to shop and settled on a local company. They guaranteed me that they'd be able to have it installed before Thanksgiving. That didn't quite happen, but we had finished just a few days after. So, I had to pack up everything in the Living and Dining rooms, including taking everything off shelves - and as many of you know, my dining room is basically an extension of my kitchen; it's a huge pantry, and place where we drop our stuff. So for a week, we just had boxes of dry food in our bedroom, lol! The installers were absolute beasts. They moved everything out of the living room first and put it in the dining room so that they could install the living room and hallway. Then they moved everything from the dining room back into the living room, putting it right where I told them to put it (I didn't have to move it again). When they finished the dining room, they put everything back where it belonged. I'd estimate they were there for about 6 hours. And you guys... the difference was ah-mah-zing. Going from 20+ year old Berber carpet to this thick and luscious carpet just made my whole body sigh. Why didn't we do this sooner? I just wanted to lay down and make snow angels. When hubby got home and felt it, we knew immediately that we need to save up to do the rest of the house! So that's a big project for 2023 or 2024... Maybe after he finishes his own DIY project! (Future Lazy Lady here, in June 2024, to report that nothing has changed, with regards to his project...)
For the three spaces (carpet & padding), including removal of old carpet, moving furniture, and installation of new carpet, we paid $3500. Good deal? I don't know. Am I happy with my carpet? Absolutely!
So, finally, FINALLY, after a year, I could finally order my new living room set! I got a couch, a loveseat, and an ottoman. I paid for the expensive delivery service, but it turns out that that didn't mean that the guys would take our old stuff! We still had to take out our old stuff. Pissed me off, because that was the whole damn reason we paid extra! I'm too old to be moving furniture, lol. But we got it out with no strained muscles or stubbed toes. Delivery and 'installation' of the new furniture was very easy, and we were chillin' on our new couches within an hour. They're less "schlumpy" than our older couches, but that's what I wanted. Nothing a throw pillow can't fix! I wanted a cleaner, modern line, and I think these fit the bill nicely. And they're a dark grey slate color, so if we spill food on them (and we will), it won't show. And when Clover scratches the hell out of (which she will), we also got the Protection Plan so we can get it fixed.
But we're not done yet! Now it's time to address the windows. I ordered some custom-sized black-out roller blind shades, and picked up some sheers and valance curtains from Amazon. I originally bought some "mod" looking curtain rods, too, but I couldn't install them all the way to the ceiling like I wanted (not enough room to slide onto the mount), so I spent way too much at Home Depot for some curtain rods (in the end, though, these feel much sturdier, and they're much prettier). We did the blinds first, which was both easier and harder than expected. We kept getting the measurements wrong, and having to take the brackets down and fix the spacing. Then we realized we put one of them on upside down, so we had to take it down, flip it around, and put it back up. Doing this screwed something up and it didn't roll anymore! (We reached out to Blindster after Christmas and got a replacement). After that, we hung up the curtain rods, and put on the curtains, and damn if our living room didn't look GOOD! We plopped onto the new couch, put our feet on the new ottoman, and called it a night!
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| Even Clover agrees that everything looks good! |
My big hope was to show off all my hard work to both the Kiddo and to my mom when they visited for Christmas. We ordered our new living room set and it was delivered just a few days before the holiday. Unfortunately, mom never came over (there was some DRAH-MA attached to that...), but the Kiddo loved all the changes!
After the new year (now in 2023), we got the new blind from Blindster delivered and installed, and I picked up a few Kallax shelves from IKEA. I wanted to do a 1x4, a2x4, and a 1x4, but when I bought them I ended up with three 2x4s.
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| Original plan - room for TV to wall-mount in the middle |
I think it worked out, though, because it makes the TV area a little less symmetrical and interesting. The additional 2x4 (since it wouldn't fit on the LR wall, which was the whole reason I was using 1x4s to begin with!) now lives in our bedroom, holding random stuff. Back in the living room, I got some drawers for the Kallax, as well as some big bins, and (when they're back in stock), I'll pick up some shelf inserts. I have tons of storage that I honestly don't know what to do with! Two bins hold throw blankets, one bin holds DVDs, one for cat toys, one for a little carpet cleaner (a must!) Probably half of the drawers are still empty, which is great.
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| There's a planter next to the hallway now, as well as some fake flowers on the shelf |
I found a great round tray at Pop Shelf to hold some fake flowers, and to soften all of the angles of the living room, and I've discovered that I can keep plants alive! I have a handful right now that I'm keeping alive, despite being nibbled on repeatedly by Clover.
At this point, it's just a matter of "floofing" the place... We need to hang up pictures and art, and put up a few more lights. I bought a big pendant lamp from IKEA but I need to call an electrician to fix the outlet that doesn't seem to work (it's always something around here...) Maybe a few more picture ledges from Ikea?
Until then, here's some Before and After photos!
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| BEFORE: Dark, heavy, cave-like AFTER: Bright, airy, calming (even with fewer lamps) |
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| BEFORE: Bright blue, beat up, sad AFTER: Serene blue, fresh, cheerful |
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