Project 2

more tan paint...

When we first looked at this home as a rental, one of the things that stuck out to me, in a good way, was the paint colors.  There was a monochromatic pallet of tan, beige, and cream on the walls that I could make work with my existing furniture (a far, far cry from the pink marble, carpet, tile and light fixtures in one of our rental homes in CA).  And really, moving into a home with a real color pallet and not renters white is a huge plus.

Fast forward three years.  We are now the home owners (YEAH!!) and I am far, far less in love with the paint scheme.  Particularly the tan.  With my chocolate brown sofa, it made the living room look smaller than it really was and cave-ish.  It's actually been a very hard color to work with since my sofa is huge and dark.  

But not anymore!!

The Builder and I spent out first two days of a our three day weekend scraping down the heavily textured walls (a huge pet peeve for us both!) and toning down those tan walls.  With the vaulted ceiling, this was no little project.  It also meant taking down all the decor and electronics.  A chore all in it's own.

left - old paint
right - new paint

With the walls freshly painted, we also decided it was time to change up the layout of our furniture.  We had put our flat screen TV over the fireplace when we moved because, well, we thought it would look best there.  And then we tried to maneuver our large, u-shaped sectional every way imaginable to make it work with the TV placement.  Eventually we put the chase lounge in the corner and lived with it like that for the past year or so.  

We've never been happy with it.

So last weekend we finally decided it was time to look at some other placement options for the TV.  At first I thought I wanted it on the big blank wall on the left side of the living room.  But again, that didn't work well with the sofa for how it's built (and getting rid of the sofa is just not an option at this point).  After much deliberation, we've determined The Builder is going to have make the matching media console that goes with the cabinet that he built last year.  No more TV on the wall.  But once we arranged the sofa and end tables based on where the TV will eventually (because it's temporarily back up on the wall over the media cabinet) the room flows beautifully now and seems so spacious.  

Ready for the update?

So we're not quite done in here.  As you can see, we haven't put any of the artwork back up the wall behind the sofa.  That's because I want a gallery wall, and I'm still working on the layout.  However I did get the artwork over the fireplace, so we have a start!  It's so nice to see my sofa back together they way it was designed to be.  This seating really works best with our large family.

I still love this rug I bought at Country Door a year or so ago.  I only wish I had bought the next size up.  The colors are so pretty in this room though.  And since we're not changing the tile (which is crazy cold in the winter months!) a rug is really a necessity.

I've been contemplating paining the bricks on my fireplace.  I don't know, I'm still on the fence about that.

Right now you can see the TV is back on the wall. This is the media cabinet that The Builder made last spring, which I LOVE. The plans came from Anna White's site, and there are plans for a matching media console, so it's one of the next building project we plan to tackle.  For now, the TV works here.  It's no higher than it was when it was above the fireplace.  I did hang the curtains higher to take advantage of the vaulted ceilings. I'm clearly going to have to buy new sheers because they are ridiculously short now that I've raised the curtain rod!  I'm fairly certain Ikea sells sheers this long as well, so I need to stop by after work.  I want to modify the turquoise colored curtain panel to have a decorative border.  The solid just looks blah to me.  Again, another project.

Loving this big blank wall!  I won't be putting the shelf back up.  It's too short now that the sofa is using all of the space.  It also collected an enormous amount of dust bunnies.  I've got lots of gallery wall layouts pinned on my Pinterest board, so I'm confident I can get this wall looking how I want.

Sorry for the dark photo on this one.  I didn't realize I had turned off the overhead light!  If you're sitting on the sofa, this is the view.  When we take the TV down, the cabinet will get moved back over to the left.  But for now, this is the best spot for the TV, and I don't want the cabinet not centered under the TV, so this is where it is for now.  My basket tower is crying out for an update!!  The dark colors just don't work anymore.  Yep, another project...

I'm also contemplating track lighting in here, since task lighting is next to impossible.  The Builder isn't thrilled about this, but this room gets dark in the late afternoon, even with the lighter color, and I would like more directional lighting than the ceiling fan offers.  Houston is HOT in the summer, so there's no way the ceiling fan light is coming down.  But additional light is really needed.