The Living Room: Before and Afters

This post will feature only our before and after photos, I will follow up with the 3 other big projects that were included in this room which are:

1- Carpet removal and wood floor sanding and resealing: http://hammersandhighheels.blogspot.com/2010/06/living-room-removing-old-carpet-sanding.html

2- Building our fireplace mantel: http://hammersandhighheels.blogspot.com/2010/06/living-room-building-fireplace-mantel.html

3- Mounting a flat screen TV into a brick fireplace: http://hammersandhighheels.blogspot.com/2010/06/living-room-mounting-tv-to-brick.html

So to start, he is our first 'Before' picture, this was actually that original picture that was in the home's MLS listing. Note the carpet and BEIGE walls... if you look at a lof of our before pictures, the WHOLE HOUSE WAS BEIGE!!! Not even good neutral beige, this was that pinky peachy beige... just bland! Another challenge, since this was the only large common space, we knew we would use it as a TV room, so where would it go? The only logical space was on the fireplace, which created another challenge with the cords, DVD player, sound, cable, and of course our beloved video games (admit it, you still love old school Nintendo, and I kept my collection of Super Nintendo and N64 games!), and this isn't a very big room, so we had to be creative with the space for our furniture and decor. So again, the Before....


And After! We removed the icky carpet and refinished the wood floors (separate blog), mounted TV, and Alex built a new mantel, which is perfect for picture frames! We got a large hutch that stores our TV electronics, the cords run inside our mantel and under the baseboard trim, so we have plenty of room for all our DVD's, games, cable box, DVD player, etc. Such a good purchase, it again is IKEA, don't knock it, you can get good stuff there! It was a pain to put together and weighs probably twice as much as I do, but our living room wouldn't have been workable without it.

Here is another 'Before' picture, this taken from our little sunroom on the other end of the living room. Obviously this was after we moved in and our remodeling chaos had begun, so excuse the mess.

BAM!!! How gorgeous!
And the last 'Before' picture, this is taken from the dining room into the living room. Rocco was investigating some painters tape at the time, he found he LOVED tape during our rennovation process, every room we painted we had to keep him away from the tape or it would disappear!

Tada! So much better! Really is home sweet home now!

PS- we just linked up to the Lettered Cottage's Linky Party! Link Up!