Living Room 'Blah' Update Part Two: Finishing Touches!

Ready for Part Two of this little redo? (click here for Part One)  I know I am!  After adding window treatments and a few finishing touches, our Living Room is sooooo not feeling blah anymore!

 I had to show a comparison to all the other 'befores' of our Living Room.  Alex and I felt kind of proud or a sense of accomplishment when we compared it to how the Living Room looked when we moved in.  Crazy right?!?!

Of course the paint, flooring, and DIY mantel were the BIGGER changes which lead us to here...

But now the room looks totally refreshed and really we only did three things:

1. Added window treatments

2. Changed the color scheme a bit with new decorative pillow covers (DIY ones!)

3. Moved around the furniture

In Part One, I detailed how we made our own DIY curtain rods from wood dowels & brackets and I am happy to now show you the full look!  What do you think?  Looks like..... a curtain rod right?!?   Again, the rod & brackets for the three windows only cost us $33.77!

For the pillow covers, I was loving the new shades of blue Restoration Hardware featured in their Small Spaces catalog... but I certainly wasn't going to pay $49-$59 per pillow cover.  Instead, I popped into Joanne's and found the perfect shades of blue fabric to make some pillow covers the DIY way. 

 I picked up about two yards of fabric, one yard of navy blue and one yard of a light blue. Luckily, the navy color fabric I found was just a remnant and only cost $2.50!  The lighter blue fabric was $6 for the yard. So, although my fabric isn't Belgian Linen, my pillow cover fabric totalled just $8.50! Nice!

I took the fabric home, measured up the pillow inserts for each cover, and starting cutting the fabric.  Then it was time to start sewing! (click here for a tutorial on pillow covers) I made six covers with the two yards of light blue & navy blue fabric along with some faux linen like fabric I had at home (see photo on left- those pillows reverse to the linen-like fabric).

 I know they are just solid colored pillows, but I love how they turned out! The blues added a subtle pop of color our living room desperately needed!

Our last little change was moving around the furniture, specifically our broken up sectional couch.  I think I mentioned sometime before that the configuration our sectional worked in the condo we lived in previously, but sadly not our current home.  So, it's not ideal but still a nice couch and someday we'll get new furniture.  Anyway, we had the chaise on the right side of the room before....

 And swapped it with where we had the love seat part of the sectional.

 Here's another 'before' look to illustrate the furniture move...

 I think this layout looks better and it actually gives us more seating room, bonus! 

 Who knew those simple changes would make such a difference?

I think our Living Room has been cured of the blahs!

So what do you think?

Are you digging the changes?