Living Room Reveal
Well friends, we did it! We bought our first house in April of 2018, an adorable Tudor built in 1938, and then renovated the crap out of it. And thankfully, we didn’t have to touch our sewage lines to make that phrase literal.
If you’ve been following along since we started in May 2019, you might have already seen a lot of the process, but if not, here’s my first (and only) blog post I wrote about during the process. Yes, yes, I got really behind because I was working, and when I wasn’t working, I was working on our house, and when I wasn’t doing either of those things, I was resting my aching body and soul. I’m going to go into more of the dirty details of this renovation, but for now, we are going to stay in “HGTV” mode where it only takes you the time to read through this post to believe that renovating your house is super easy, and ANYONE can do it. And for the disclaimer, I truly believe that anyone CAN renovate their house, but it’s more of…”do you have what it takes”, and “are you REALLY prepared for what’s to come.” That sort of thing.
However, in order to not overwhelm you, and also to give you time to process the time, money, blood, sweat, and tears that went into this house, I’m only going to reveal one room at a time—giving you a moment to really take it all in, ya know? And I mean, really, this is also for my benefit too because now I get to gab on and on about this renovation and my beautiful cozy house.
OKAY! Here we go, the part you’ve been waiting for: The Before & After Pictures (cue orchestra, cue curtain…)
BEFORE
AFTER
BEFORE
AFTER
BEFORE
AFTER
What we accomplished:
First up, pretty obvious one, we opened up the big load-bearing wall, put an LVL (or in other terms, a nice thick beam) to hold up the loft and the roof. This made the space WAY more open!
The walls and trim have been repainted. The walls are Sherwin William’s Belgian White, and the trim is Florescent White. (These are also the same colors we used throughout the renovated part of the house).
We sanded and re-stained the original hardwoods. I had a hard time choosing which stain to choose, and ended up going with no stain at all. We just put a poly-coat of the top of it that highlighted the natural white oak tones.
We updated the fireplace. First, we water-sealed it as rain was coming down the chimney and causing the paint to peal from the outside. Then, we built a frame around the existing fireplace (so technically it’s a little wider and deeper now). After that, we wrapped it in shiplap, and did our best to highlight the original structure of the arched hearth. Finally, we gave it a couple nice coats of Sherwin William’s Obsidian paint, and updated the tiled hearth floor.
We added recess lights as well as updated the light fixture.
The ceiling has better support beams in it now as the house wasn’t originally built to carry a load in the loft (or what used to be the attic before we bought the house).
We also updated/added insulation to the ceiling so that it exceeds codes. (Gotta make it cozy!)
We ran all our TV wires behind the fireplace (since we were building the frame out anyways), over the ceiling and down the walls to have everything organized neatly in our media console.
Lastly, we added roller shades to our windows.
BEFORE
AFTER
What’s left:
I’m planning on stripping the paint off our beautiful arched front door and getting it back to its natural, juicy wood tones. Then re-staining it, but I am still determining the wood tones. And finally, I’ll add some new hardware to it, but planning on keeping/restoring the original brass door-knocker on the front and the brass ball-tip hinges.
I’m leaning towards building a floating mantle below the TV, and staining it the same color as the front door.
As far as the decor goes, obviously, I’m still in the process of putting those final touches on it. I want to put some curtains on the windows, find some sweet spots for my plant babies to live next to the windows, possibly get some new pillows for the couches, and hang a HUGE painting of a mountainous landscape (that’s still underway) to go above the media console.
AFTER
AFTER
AFTER
Part of why I took these pictures without EVERYTHING done is because I want to show the reality of updating a home. To put it plainly—good things take time. You don’t have to have everything all together. I was never really good at “faking it ‘til you make it.” I would much rather tell you that I don’t like my pillows, but nice pillows, really nice ones, are crazy expensive ($50 to $100+), and I just haven’t found the perfect ones yet. And yeah I would love to have my door be done and all my projects for this room to be finished, but I was getting really overwhelmed towards the end of our renovation and just wanted to fully live in my home again. I needed a break and some time to enjoy this dream of mine I’ve had since I was a young girl. We accomplished SO much, and there’s something really rewarding about not only looking back at all the things you achieved but to slowly chip away at the remaining dreams you have yet to achieve.
I’m planning on writing another post about how I designed this room, but for now, I’ll give you a short and sweet secret. When I do my online shopping, I’ll take a screen shot of an item I’m interested in, and create a mood board to see if all the items look cohesive together. I created MANY of these, but the one I settled on is this one below. I’ve made links for all the items you see in case there’s something you like.
I hope you guys love the room as much as we do. It’s definitely VERY cozy, and I spend most of my time in this room, one, because of our super cozy couch, and two, because of all the natural light from our gorgeous windows. Let me know in the comments below what you guys think, or if you have any other questions about the room.
IF YOU LIKED THIS POST, YOU MIGHT LIKE THESE TOO
As much as we love our master bedroom, it’s had a hard time keeping up with the demands for our routines and livelihood. I’ve been looking at a new vision for our room by implementing just a few changes to round out the final design for this space.