Our House: The Living Room

I couldn't handle all the beige that was our house when we closed on it.  I had a pretty clear vision of the house that included hardwood floors, white trim, and replacing just about everything I could manage.  We have a pretty open floor plan and I wanted things to flow between the rooms smoothly.  I have to be honest in that a lot of my decisions were last minute because they had to be made right then.  I wish I could say I had a detailed plan and everything chosen well in advance but trying to do a full scale renovation in 8 weeks while working 65+ hours a week (oh and planning a wedding) I was pretty much at my limit.

**Photo Disclaimer, I feel like I should apologize for my photos.  These were all taken for my personal use with no thought that I'd ever be sharing them.

The Living Room and Loft before:

We knew that we wanted hardwood or engineered hardwood though out the entire first floor of the house and it really boiled down to which of them I could get the best deal on through my contractors.  So engineered it was.

Installing the new floors required removing the existing baseboards and I couldn't justify paying someone to reinstall the old baseboards I didn't like.  So a much taller slightly detailed baseboard was decided on, and since we were doing the baseboards we figured we might as well do the casing as well.  The combination of the new trim and painting it all white made the most immediate impact on the appearance of the house.

Our painter sprayed all the trim that was to remain in place.  Paint used was Sherwin Williams ProClassic colored matched to Benjamin Moore's White Dove.

You can see the doors propped up along the wall for painting and part of the new marble surround going up around the fireplace here.

And the photos taken the day before we moved in:

I can't really call these the real 'afters' of these spaces.  I've done more work since these were taken and probably still have more to be done.

The walls were painted Benjamin Moore's Revere Pewter (in Sherwin William's ProMar 200 flat).  The floors are Mannington....Hickory in Natural I think.  The ceiling fan was my husband's request.  When he initially brought it up it was with the question "Can you deal with it?" because he knows how much I dislike ceiling fans in general.  I actually really like the fan and can't imagine the room without it.  Pretty sure my husband loves it because it's the first thing that people comment on when they walk in the door!