It’s been TEN MONTHS since I filled you in on our remodeling progress. TEN! I know you’ve been lying awake at night, panic-stricken because you don’t know WHAT’S GOING ON?!?! HAVE THEY PAINTED?! HAVE THEY GOTTEN CARPET?!
And I’m sorry about for leaving you hanging, but you can stop making a big deal out of it because I’m about to fill you in.
Meanwhile, if you’re new here, you need to know where we left off in our remodeling saga, because the last time I updated there was carpet on the roof and a certain spouse getting all bug-eyed about it, so click here to read that. Go ahead. Click. I’ll wait.
There are few reasons I haven’t posted any remodeling progress in a long while, and all of those reasons may or may not be related to how after 2+ years of marriage I’ve learned that we disagree on more than where the couch should go. (Like, three things total. Don’t be alarmed). First, scrambled eggs; one of us makes them perfectly, the other one likes their scrambled eggs wet like snot. I won’t say who.
And then paint colors. I believe that you should paint, repaint, and paint some more until you find your SOUL MATE paint color that will COMPLETE YOU and make all your dreams come true forevermore; hubby believes you pick ONE PAINT COLOR AND COMMIT TO IT UNTIL THE DAY YOU DIE. Even if it turns out to be a color that looks TOTALLY different than it did on the card and you HATE IT and every time you are in that room you curl up in the fetal position and cry, TOO BAD. YOU MARRIED IT AND YOU’VE GOT IT FOR LIFE, BABY.
And preferably (in hubby’s opinion) that color should be pretty much Transfiguration White. ***Please don’t make that color, Sherwin- Williams, because then I’d have to live with it.*** Because BRIGHT and LIGHT. And speaking of light, I want blinds and blackout drapes. And LAMPS. Cozy. Ambience. All that. I want to snuggle up in a dark and cozy room and be all cozy and snuggly and secure.
And he wants our house all bright and lit up, like you know when you drive up to a gas station at night and all the fluorescent lights are all crackling and humming and it’s so bright you can see it from space?
Yeah. He wants our house lit up like that.
It’s just a lot of pressure, you know? Committing to ONE paint color we can BOTH live with from now until THE RETIREMENT HOME? I’M SCARED AND INTIMIDATED. So sometimes you do what’s in the best interest of marital harmony and put the remodeling on the back burner.
BUT I just found out that my beloved best friend Sherwin-Williams wants to WORK WITH ME on some painting projects… which I am totally doing backspin cartwheels about… AND SO IT’S BACK ON! We drove to my happy place (Sherwin-Williams, of course) Saturday and brought home ONE OF EACH PAINT SAMPLE COLOR CARD and went NUTS taping them EVERYWHERE!
OK, not really.
Just a few dozen. Light grays, mostly, because the next project we’re about to complete is our LIVING ROOM. Can you BELIEVE we’ve lived with decades-old aged and yellowing paint on the walls for ALMOST A YEAR? It’s the longest amount of time I’ve lived with hideous ugliness, well, except for… nevermind. But FINALLY, miracle of miracles, I think we’ve on the verge of choosing a color we can BOTH live with.
Our living room presents a challenge for lots of reasons, the greatest of which is that since we married a little over two years ago, we both had junk and baggage from the past that we wanted to lose, and START OVER with our own style, keeping the BEST stuff from both of our worlds. And merging our two styles into ONE is challenging to say the least, but I think I finally narrowed it down to a lil’ something called RUSTIC VINTAGE COTTAGE GLAM WITH A TOUCH OF 50’s RETRO. It’s a real thing; just look it up on Pinterest if you don’t believe me.
As a disclaimer, we’ve both had pretty living rooms before (check out this post to see them both…) but this isn’t one of them, so without further ado, here’s our TEMPORARY living room, BEFORE the makeover…
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First of all, let me show you these great lamps I scored at Tuesday Morning! I eyed them for several weeks and loved them and DROOLED over them, but they were $50 each… and that wasn’t in my uber-thrifty budget. Trying to do this house remodel for as close to zero as possible, ya know? We have a WHOLE big house to do. So anyway… I was making my usual Tuesday Morning bargain-hunting rounds and spotted my lamps… WITH A YELLOW CLEARANCE STICKER. For real. They came to less than $8 each. Score!
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And there’s my homemade January mantel art! Yep, I made that. Found a board… painted it Annie Sloan Chalk Paint Duck Egg Blue… and scrawled on it with a white Sharpie marker. I had planned to take it down after January, but baby, it’s still dang cold outside.
Glittery silver pine cones are perfect for January. Or until this Polar Vortex ends and I change this cold-looking stuff out for something else.
These candlesticks I found on the clearance table at Dillard’s. Vase, Southern Living at Home a LONG time ago.
And there it is… my January mantel. Or my First Quarter of 2014 mantel. Whatever.
Drapes… custom made for my last house. I like them but they’re too fancy for the room I envision, so they won’t be staying. And they’re hanging too low. But they’re there (temporarily) because of my room darkening, blackout-drape fetish (see above). The rod came from Tuesday Morning and it might stay. Who knows.
…. which is the color in the middle above. And I want to paint the ceiling that Sea Salt color on the bottom left… and hubby does not agree because you can’t really see a paint color with all the fluorescent shop lights he wants to hang from the ceiling. So we’re in negotiations on that right now.
Umm…. when we moved in, there were nails already in the wall. This stuff went on these nails (to get them off the floor) and it’s been hanging there all crazily ever since. #thingsthatdrivemecrazy
Map of Wales I got on my college graduation trip with my mom… keeping it, just probably not right here.
Southern Living iron thing… keeping it, not sure where.
Very cool mirror I found at Ross… definitely keeping it. For sure not right here.
This room has just been hanging there in a big state of paralysis… but no longer.
This sarcastic Oreo-covered baby? Keeping her. And that chair; I love the color and fabric, but the style doesn’t go with the picture in my head, so the set of two of them will most likely get bumped up to an upstairs room eventually. Or sold. Who knows.
And just to clarify, when I say “the set of two of them,” I mean the set of two CHAIRS. Not the set of chair + baby. Because I’m keeping the baby. I said that, right? Unless you catch me on a morning after she woke me up at 3am, then she will be much more likely to get bumped to an upstairs room. Or sold. Who knows.
And there’s my fireplace wall. I’ve already painted that… Dover White from Sherwin-Williams is my trim color of choice.
This coffee table... my very first purchase (from Canton) for my very first apartment back in 1996. I was trying to go all Shabby Chic with quilts and rustic stuff and whatnot back in the day, and all these years this table still fits with the room I want. Love it.
The floor under it? Keeping it… but not. It’s covered with some sort of wax or yucky brown residue here and there that NO MATTER WHAT I’VE TRIED (everything) it will NOT come off. I think I’m gonna have to rent one of those industrial floor stripper thingies and strip the top layer of brick off. Definitely in the top 3 THINGS I MUST DO TO THIS ROOM. That floor is ugly, y’all.
This is a better picture of that floor. I’ve spent HOURS on my hands and knees scrubbing this thing, used every kind of chemical known to man, and baking soda, bleach, every kind of floor and carpet cleaner and a carpet shampooer on this floor and IT STILL LOOKS LIKE THAT. But I’m not done yet….
I do have plans for a rug too… I have the ONE all picked out already.
I see a bunch of Southern Living accessories I have. I love your somewhat traditional/whimsical style.