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Before and After: Living Room Decor

Here you see my living room on moving day paired with the current decor. Notice the luxurious furnishings and spectacularly beige ceilings in the before pictures. I wish I had a close up shot of the electrical outlets for you, but trust me… they nasty. 

Entry way display

For this section of the living room, I wanted to make a “landing pad” for when I come home from work. The bookshelf belonged to my grandmother and the geometric shelves came from Target. A place to toss my keys and sunglasses comes in the form of a handmade basket from Liberia, a gift from a wonderful man in my life. The basket on the bottom shelf hides a bunch of crap that isn’t cute enough for blog photos.

The seating area

Okay, this might be one of my favorite “vignettes” from my living room. It could be due to the fact that these couches were my very first “big girl purchase”. The vintage looking, wire mesh sided end tables were trash picked from my neighbor before I moved, and the carpet and ottoman are wayfair.com purchases. This room was massive and overwhelming when I first moved in. It is really long and kind of awkwardly shaped. In order to put the TV on a wall and be able to see it from the couches, you need a relatively large TV. This led me to my other design challenge… the massive blank wall with no window, door or half-wall.

Vast wall of doom: aka entertainment center

No dinky TV stand here folks, I needed some serious furniture to make this wall work. But I was on a budget. I went to Pinterest and found tons of pictures of these all white, gorgeous entertainment centers built in around magnificent fireplaces. It was decided, I had to make this happen. After lots of research, online shopping and mood board making (check out my post on mood boards ), I had a solid plan including Ikea bookshelves, an electric fireplace from Hayneedle.com, and my extensive knik-knack collection. And yes, if you have a keen eye, you will notice my TV is being held up by books… I’m working on that… sort of.

Overall I am pretty pleased with how this room turned out. I spend a lot of time in here, sipping tea on the couch curled up under a blanket or watching way too much youtube. If I had a few spare dollars, I would probably install hardwood floors, but that will have to wait.

~Sarah

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Creating a mood board for your space

 

After spending hours cultivating specific room decor boards on Pinterest, I realized I still didn’t have a clear idea of how I wanted my house to be decorated. I found that the best way to figure out how I wanted to design my rooms was by making mood boards. For mine, I found that Publisher, PowerPoint or even Word worked just fine.

I started out by taking screen shots of items I knew I wanted, or already had to use, for example a couch or TV stand you love. Next, I positioned them into the “room” and blocked in wall colors and a general floor color to get the “vibe” of the room. From there I went to my Pinterest boards and found room pictures I liked and cropped parts of images that had elements I enjoyed and placed them into my mood board in a general layout that was easy to visualize.

I had seen pictures of big white entertainment centers that housed a fireplace and fell in love with the clean yet cozy feel, so I looked up some IKEA shelving and found an electric fireplace from Overstock.com that I liked, grabbed screen shots of those and pasted them in, it helps to pull the whole look together. The TV, carpet and chair were pieces I already had on hand, so this helped me visualize the “wall unit” concept with my existing furnishings.

After making edits and finding an overall design I liked, I started shopping for pieces that reminded me of the items on my board. I like to shop second hand or discounted if possible, so I wasn’t likely to find exact matches. Still, I ended up with something similar to the original design. I love the way it turned out!

For before and after pics,  click here!

-Sarah

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Three ways to make your home feel like new construction.

 

About a year ago, I made settlement on my quaint one story condo. The floor plan was everything I wanted and the price was right. I had thought about looking for new construction but knew that my budget wouldn’t allow it. And knowing myself and my DIY tendencies, I knew with a little elbow grease, and some hired help I could get this place looking ship shape in no time. These are the first three projects I did and MAN did they make a difference!!

Project 1: Replace grimy old outlets.

OK, here is where the Best Father of All Time award comes in. As a housewarming gift, my dad replaced Every. Single. Outlet in my house with brand spanking new ones. And let me tell you, this alone made me feel like I had purchased new build. Call me crazy but there is something so satisfying about fresh, white outlets. He swapped out most of the light switches too!

Project 2: Replace cheapy, flat apartment doors

Six panel interior doors. These stylish hinged beauties are the stuff of dreams, at least my home décor obsessed dreams. When I moved in, before me stood two doors. Behind door number one, I had the plain jane, distinctly “un” paneled doors that led to each bedroom, and behind door number two I had the terrifying, squeaky metal bi-fold doors that led into most closets. I hated all of them. Only one got to stay, her name is Lou, she’s the louvered door on the utility closet. She was kept for her function, and not her beauty.  Back to the point, I had my uncle come and replace all the doors with six panel wooden doors, and the closets all got “six panel” bi-fold doors (except for one, but that’s another story… hint: it’s a barn door!!).

Project 3: Paint all of the things

Here is where my patience as a new homeowner was tested. A few weeks in, my uncle (different uncle… I have a lot of handy people in my family) came and helped me paint the ceilings in my family room, dining room, kitchen, hallway and master bedroom as a housewarming gift. This alone made a HUGE impact because the previous tenants, or original owner decided a dingy shade of cream was a good choice for a dimly lit first story condo’s ceilings.

Now that I had a taste of what it’s like to have fresh paint, I wanted more! But quite frankly didn’t have the time or energy to paint the walls myself. To paint a picture, it took me 5 hours to paint the living room trim and one wall. This is when I threw in the paint covered towel and called my uncle to talk schedules. After patiently waiting a few months he was able to come paint some walls! I focused on the master bedroom and the living spaces (kitchen, hallway, living and dining rooms). This helped immensely! Having fresh clean walls and ceilings really helped make this place feel new and entirely my own. I know this one is the oldest trick in the book, but it really does work wonders! Its relatively inexpensive, can be done yourself (if you have better patience and a steadier hand than me), and is completely customizable.

So that’s it. Might seem silly and straight forward, but I would not have believed the transformation this place went through with just these three steps. I have since done many more fun projects, but that’s a story for another time.

-Sarah