Tag Archives: living room redo

I’m excited.  Tomorrow the new chair I ordered for my living room is coming!  Can’t wait!

For the past few months I have been very slowly re-doing my living room. I will be posting before and after pictures when it’s all done, but I just wanted to give you a small peak at what it looks like so far:

(Forgive the blurry picture!)

This is the one room that gets used the most, and is seen almost immediately upon entering our home but it has been my least favorite room in the house. 
In addition, in my effort to spruce it up a couple of years ago, I had a complete decorating disaster.  And, worst of all, I paid someone to help ruin it!  Aaarrgh! 

So finally, last summer I had the walls painted to cover up part one of said disaster.  (Hubby was willing to hire a painter so I had to strike while the iron was hot!).  I chose a darker color than I usually go for because this room is two stories high.  It had always been a light ivory color which made us feel like we were in a museum.  It  felt cold and I wanted it to feel cozy.  This color is called Valley Hills by Behr.  It appears blue but it is not blue…it’s really a slate color. 

This picture from Pottery Barn was my color inspiration:

It felt like a good blend of my husband’s style and my own.

I’ll confess that I’ve had help with this room.  First, my good friend Jean, who is a graphic designer, helped me with the paint color.  This woman knows color.  When she picked this paint sample I thought she was nuts.  But when we painted a large sample on the wall I liked it.  A lot.  But, I was a little afraid to go this dark.  I had commitment issues. Obviously, I got over it.

It didn’t help that we had tons of brown leather furniture.  Have I mentioned that my husband likes leather?  And cowhides!  Needless to say, I was more than ready to update the living room and I knew I would love the paint color if I lightened up my furniture.  It was time.

I was still a bit scared (and it didn’t help that my husband was not in favor of fabric) so I hired reinforcements in the form of Holly Mathis.

This girl can decorate! Her house was just featured in Texas Live magazine.  I’ve got to go get this issue!

Anyway, here’s the mood board she created for my room:

We emailed back and forth a lot and made a few tweaks off of this plan.  I started earlier this year and I’ve been slowly chipping away at it.  After my new chair comes tomorrow I’ll still have a few things left to do but I’m definitely on the home stretch.  So far, I’m totally stoked about the changes and can’t wait for it to be done!

Here’s just a few more sneak peak views:

I will get over my embarassment of the “before” status and will show you the biggest improvement to the room soon.  I’ll be so happy to have this re-do complete!