Several weeks ago I had multiple half done projects lying around the house. Well as I started to get the house clean and ready for guest, these unfinished projects were getting the best of me! So instead of being rational and taking it one at a time, I decided to DO ALL THE THINGS at once. Along with that came pretty much redoing our entire front room area. It all started with a pillow! I made the mistake of falling in love with a pillow at Home Goods and before I knew it I walked out with 11 pillows! 7 too many if you ask Eric, he now believes he will be attacked by pillows anytime he sits down on a couch! Well though the pillows went with some of the stuff I already had, for the most part they change the theme and feel of the room....which led to needing to change EVERYTHING in the room. So since we were already painting the guest bedroom furniture and the chairs, I figured why not paint everything!! Well that set us on the path to a whole new living room!
Couches Before
Couches Now
When Eric and I first got married we just bought a few cheap pieces of furniture at Ikea so that we had SOMETHING to fill the apartment. Well at the time I didn't think I liked white and I liked dark wood. Well Ikea has white, a light wood and basically a black as there options for the stuff we looked at, so naturally we went with black! I really don't mind it even now, but after I saw the guest bedroom white and bright and clean, I decided I really love that feel! Plus I wanted to head in a much more rustic direction in the front room and that theme really works best with browns and creams anyways and that's the direction we decided to head.
So the first big step was to paint our black entertainment center white! This was Eric's job and he did it beautifully if I do say so myself! We really tried to use stuff we already had. Was painting the cheap laminate black furniture the best idea? Probably not, but we knew we didn't want to go spend a bunch of money on new stuff until we are in a bigger and more permanent place. I tried to pick a theme and colors that I know I will want later,so we will still use all the elements, but we also know that once we are in a house we will want to buy nicer and bigger stuff, so we decided to make what we had already fit the theme we want! This way we don't buy another piece of furniture just to last us a few more years. We are at the point of the next time we really buy furniture we want it to be THE furniture that matches and lasts a long time! So we are making what we already have bridge the cap for the next few years!
Since the entertainment center took a few days and Eric had that under control, I decided to tackle the walls! I really HATED what I had done on the walls previously! It never looked quite right and it look way too cluttered! I did it a long time ago when we first moved in and had no money. So all I had was a bunch of random sized dollar tree frames that I just plopped on the wall wherever to try to cut up all the white boring walls.
This is what I had up on the wall
before just to have SOMETHING on the wall. I don't have pictures of one
of the walls on the right of the window (I forgot to to take a
picture.) These pictures are also a little old and I have the Simons
sign below the mirror before the makeover.
So I took everything down and went to work. I painted a lot of the frames either a cream or a sea grass blue. Then I distressed them. Some of them I left brown but for the most part I changed a lot of them. I did buy a few new ones from Hobby Lobby to have different shapes. I even took down the mirror we had that was a dark rubbed bronze and painted it cream! When we move somewhere that we can paint, I definitely want to have grey walls and then all this cream will stand out even more! Then I mixed up a few of the items on the wall to give it more dimension. I felt super vain having SO many pictures of just us, but that was all we had. So I filled one frame with broken jewelry I arranged and one frame with some fabric! I tried to have some variety to break up all the pictures.
Here is the after!
Pretty great huh? Well at least I think so!
I changed things up on the side table and FINALLY got a lamp!
Before
After
I then had one more wall I needed to tackle and I really wanted to change things up. First I really wanted to do something with a pallet like this
but the pallets Eric brought home from work were too big for the wall. Then I saw these on pinterest
Eric had found some old fence pieces in the garbage and saved them for me! I decided to paint some of them and then use my silhouette to cut out a quote of our choice. We choose this quote by Winnie the Pooh "If there ever comes a day where we can't be together, keep me in your heart and I'll stay there forever." I got busy cutting come vinyl with my silhouette and then put it together! I'm pretty happy with the end result
I do need to go back now and touch up some of the vinyl because it decided it didn't like to stick to this wood, but that's okay.
The last project we had that we finally got finished was the entertainment center. I redid a few things on top, but am not done. I want to change it up a bit still, but needed to get it finished and just used things I already had. We also took out the shelves at the bottom and I found baskets instead. Then Eric mounted the TV on the back boards instead of just sitting it there on the stand.
Before
After
After
I'd say for a small budget and for just making over items we already had it looks pretty darn good! I do still want to get a new rug since the one we have was super cheap one we found on sale at walmart. I really like these rugs
And the other project I still have to do is the curtains. I have these blue ones already but they are kind of boring, and the blue I'm going for now is a little lighter and more mint. So I want to sew some new curtains like these
I think I'm leaning towards the one of the left with the ruffles going vertical, it's not so busy as the one one right.
I'll have to update you when I finish these projects, but I might just wait until we are in a new place to do anymore for now.
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