Living room finally looks lived in

We've been working hard at making the house into a home. And while this post mainly focuses on the things we've done to the main living room, we've also touched a few other areas.

A few weeks ago we spent a day doing yard work. The yard was full of leaves (and it's even worse now!) and we decided that some of the front bushes needed to be trimmed up so you could actually see our front stoop from the street. They were overgrown and didn't make for very good curb appeal. The yard is far from where we want it but just these few small changes made a big difference. At least to us.

So overgrown and out of control

Taking a break from digging up dead bushes

Much better.

Now on to the living room. The most change has happened in this room in the past few weeks. The first thing that we did was paint the tv stand. We originally bought it from an antique store down the street and knew that eventually it was going to evolve. It had a big drawer on the top and a cabinet on the bottom and was a chocolate brown color with this old timey travel paper modpodged on the top. Not the best look but good bones. First step to making it a good tv stand was to take out the drawer and turn it into a shelf. We drilled a hole in the back for cables to go through and got a piece of MDF cut to size at Home Depot. Next was picking a color. After tossing out a couple ideas, we landed on going with a turquoise color. We picked up a couple color swatches and taped some options to the stand to see what color worked best. The winner: Blue Jewel by Behr. The next weekend I got to work on the transformation. The hardest and longest part was actually taking off the stupid modpodged paper from the top. Two coats later and some new hardware and we were done!

And for comparison sake

Next up, an area rug. The room felt more like a space that we just hung out in rather than an actual room. But with an area rug in there we knew it'd feel more homey and warm - it would definitely become a room. We'd be on the hunt for one at a reasonable price but we needed an 8x10 and knew that finding a good quality rug for until $300 wasn't going to be easy. Then I stumbled on RugsUSA website and saw that they were running a 65% off sale on select rugs. I knew exactly the color and style that I wanted but finding it was difficult. It seemed like every rug I clicked on that fit the criteria was sold out of the size we needed. Go figure. And then I saw it - it was perfect - and less than $200!! It took about 2 weeks go to be delivered but when we finally got it down, we were in love. It was exactly what we wanted and instantly transformed the room

Two other minor updates were putting up different curtains and finally getting something hung on the wall above the couch. We knew we needed some color and landed on a picture I took of the Colosseum during our trip to Italy. Since the wall is big, we had it printed as a poster, 24x36 in size and got an antiquey looking frame. It is just what that wall needed.

Ignore the blurriness

Here's what the living rooms looks like now with all these updates:

Oh, and that bench. We love it. Scored it at a salvage store in Chattanooga on our way up to Nashville for a wedding. It lives under the bay window for now, but eventually it will move to the foot of our bed.

One last update. We hung some pictures down the hallway. Back in early October, we bought a calendar that had really need watercolor paintings of cities and places in the US. We bought it with the intention of framing some of them and that's just what we did. We picked out 4 and hung them down the hallway and it looks awesome.

It's amazing what small changes like these can do. The house is slowing progressing and starting to feel much more like our home. We have some other ideas for the living room, especially for the spaces next to the tv and behind the couch (built-ins anyone?) but for now, we are happy with how far the house has come in just a short amount of time. Our next big project will be painting the two spare bedrooms. We finally picked a color and bought the paint, so now we just have to find the time to actually do the painting. I think that might be a Christmas break project.

Lazy Gray by Sherwin-Williams

While we're waiting to find time to paint, we're on the hunt for a new dining room table. We actually found the most perfect set over the weekend at a furniture outlet, but of course it was sold and they didn't have any more in stock. I also found a great set on Craigslist but somehow the seller didn't put any contact info in the listing so I have no way of getting in touch. I stalk the listing multiple times a day with the hope that they've updated it, but so far, no luck.