RE-modeling: My New Living Room Part 4

I had posted about remodeling my living room and promised an update so to keep my word, here is a living room update. You can see Part 1 HERE, Part 2 HERE and Part 3 HERE.   The big changes are 2 seagrass rugs, a zebra skin rug, a vintage midcentury modern bar set and a decorated mantel.  I have new chairs that I am having reupholstered and I need a chandelier so there will be more, but here is where the living room is currently.

THE LIVING ROOM THE WAY THE PREVIOUS HOME OWNERS HAD IT.

THE LIVING ROOM THE LAST TIME I POSTED. 

LIVING ROOM TODAY.  As per Reba's suggestion, I got 2 seagrass rugs to divide the room into 2 distinct sitting areas.   The rugs were a good deal from Amazon.  The vintage bar set is also new to me, as in bought 3 days ago.  My friend, Martha, spotted it in an antique store in Blanco, Texas and insisted I buy it.  I loved it, too, but I hesitated because I already had crystal decanters out that I liked.  Martha brought up how well this set would go with the midcentury modern touches that I am trying to add to my otherwise traditional, verging on frilly older stuff.  Martha was absolutely right.  I love the brass stoppers and the lucite tray.  It replaced a silver tray with crystal decanters that we had just put out recently.  The crystal decanters were very pretty, but had an overall feminine feel.  Since I am trying to be more gender neutral in my decor, I like that the masculine, Don Draper-esque air of this bar set will offset the feminine crystal figurines and bowls it sits among.  Thank you for insisting Martha!

OUR NEW LIVING ROOM WAS A STORAGE AREA FOR OVER A YEAR.

THE LIVING ROOM SOFA AREA THE LAST TIME I POSTED. 

THE LIVING ROOM SOFA AREA TODAY.   The coffee table and rugs I wanted are above.  Kinda funky, right? I know, but I think it is fun and bold and that is what I am trying to go for.  And again, I wanted it nothing like my FORMER YELLOW LIVING ROOM IN OUR FIRST HOUSE which I felt had gotten a bit old ladyish.   I wanted youthful.  I hope that is the feeling this gives.   A chandelier has to come next.  I bought the lucite coffee table on Ebay from a mega seller called Southeastflorida  and I couldn't be happier with my table so I thought I'd give him a plug.  The lucite coffee table was $320 plus shipping which is a great price if you've shopped around for lucite tables.  Although it was well packaged, the coffee table came in with a slight scratch and as soon as I emailed the man from South East Florida about it, he promptly replied saying he had already called FEDEX to come pick up a new table and it would be at my door in 2 days - and it was!  No muss, no fuss.  The zebra skin rug was a bigger decision. We debated whether to go faux or do a cowhide rug dyed like a zebra rug or go with the real deal.  I feared the real deal would be a bit creepy,  but my husband really liked the idea of one and so we went for it.  I am happy to report that I don't find it creepy as I feared I would.  I know it isn't for everyone, but I live in Texas so animal skin rugs are not too big a deal here. 

A TOUCH OF MIDCENTURY MODERN.  I like how the new bar set picks up on the gold trim of the mirrored chest.  I am also pleased because I think it will also go with the new chairs I bought to go by the fireplace.  The chrome legged, midcentury style chairs are in my hometown currently waiting to be reupholstered.  They came in black leather and I want to have some blue velvet slipcovers made for them.  When they arrive, I will update once again my living room remodeling saga.   I hope I have a chandelier for the room by that time.  If you have any ideas on my light fixture, I am open to suggestions. I wanted a drum shaped gold leaf chandelier, but because I have low ceilings (8 feet), I cannot get the one I wanted because it would hang too low.    I considered making one, but I am not sure how to go about doing that. 

THE MANTEL LAST TIME I POSTED.

THE MANTEL TODAY.   I am pretty excited to have a mantel to decorate for the seasons again.  Sharing my Easter/Spring mantel was actually what got me to take pictures of the living room.  I found it hard to decorate for Spring with this living room color scheme because most of my Easter stuff is cutesy pastel stuff and I didn't think it would go with the style of the room.  I had a few ideas of what I might be able to do, but I ended up going with butterflies.  My husband bought me 3 wood folk art looking bunny figurines pulling carts from Wisteria.  I decided they were ok for this room so I used them as my centerpiece.  Then, when I complained of being uninspired, my husband suggested butterflies would go with the eclectic and colorful style of the room.  My husband can be very helpful when he wants to be.  I took that idea and ran with it. I dug up some old butterfly prints that I meant to sell in our garage sale, but forgot about.  They were in gold frames which goes with the mirror already on the mantel.  I also saw that Michael's had butterfly magnets at 4 for $1 and single fabric butterflies for $1.50.  I bought some of those and spread them around. I pulled out some old cards with butterflies on the cover and placed them in gold frames to fill out the display.    I like how colorful the display turned out.  I am also happy because I don't think it is too cutesy, but it is still whimsical which I enjoy.

A COLORFUL TRIBUTE TO SPRING. 

CLOSE UP SHOT. 

WRITTEN BY ELDAROSE

Our Western Tables Settings can be seen HERE

You can see Reba's Easter Table with Vintage HandPainted Eggs HERE

A Peter Rabbit Themed Party is HERE

A Christian Cross Bead Craft for Kids (Great for Easter Playdates) is described HERE

LINK PARTIES:

RE-Modeling: My Living Room Part 3

MISSION IMPOSSIBLE, ALMOST ACCOMPLISHED.  7 days ago, I accepted a challenge organized by other bloggers to tackle my biggest project and I decided to tackle my living room which has been a storage room since we bought our house over a year ago.   If you're interested, Part 1 is HERE and Part 2 is HERE.   Above is how my living room looks today.  Confession Time.  I didn't finish painting. I still need to do touch ups every where.  Painting a dark color requires a lot of coverage/painting, but the big set back was a bad paint color match. Originally I was buying the paint at Lowes since they said they had the formulas for Benjamin  Moore's paint.  I thought I'd save myself time by buying the paint there instead of making a special trip to the paint store.  BIG MISTAKE!  I painted most of the room (yes, the second time this week since the first color SW Byzantium was too light) with Lowe's color match for Down Pour Blue and I was very disappointed.  It wasn't nearly as dark or deep as on the color wheel.  My husband agreed, but thought maybe I just needed another coat since we were painting a dark color over a light one.  Also to try to make it work, we decided we'd go darker on the trim and use Benjamin Moore Old Navy to help bring out more of the dark hues in the walls. I went to the Benjamin Moore store to buy the paint this time and OH MY GOSH.  The Down Pour Blue paint color from the BM store was TONS darker. 

CLOSE UP OF PAINT DIFFERENCE.   Sorry, my camera's flash was too harsh and I cannot figure out how to correct for that, but this pic gives you an idea of the color difference between Lowe's color match supposedly with the BM formula and paint bought directly from a Benjamin Moore paint store.   I thought I was saving time by buying my paint at Lowes, but I ended up losing time, because I painted most of the room only to have to paint over it again once I got the right color paint from BM.

HOW THE LIVING ROOM LOOKED WHEN THE PREVIOUS OWNERS LIVED HERE.  The walls were a light blue.  As I said in previous entries, we have been using the room as a storage room until this week when I took up this challenge.

RIGHT NOW.  This is how the living room looks as of this afternoon.  While we still have touch ups to do,  we did a lot in a short period of time considering that we had to work this in around our other activities (school, work, church, parties, home work, etc.).    The gold trumeau mirror over the mantel is new.  I've been watching ebay for one and I was even considering making one when I saw this one listed on Craigslist for $50.  Yes, you read that right.  If you've been in the market for trumeau mirrors then you know what a steal this was.  I pretty much raced over to buy it as fast as I could.  A young woman's grandmother died and she was selling off all her antiques for crazy low prices.  She said they weren't her style and she already had her house furnished.  None of the other things were my style either or I would have bought more. I was very excited about this Craigslist find.  The gilt scones are antiques that Reba had left over from her house remodel and gave me to use in mine.  The fireplace screen is relatively new. We found it at Tuesday Morning.  The framed oil paintings are from the living room in our old house.  The frames on the side wall are a mix of old and new.  Last night, I got into a panic because I knew there was no way I was going to have the living room close to done for the challenge, so my husband swooped in and helped and made me feel so much better. He painted the base boards and crown moldings with a primer and then with Old Navy.  Then, I showed him how I wanted to make a picture wall by re-using some of our old frames and filling them with new stuff like maps, play bills and black and white photographs, but hadn't had time to find something for them.   My husband went to his study and started going through all his old stuff.  He is a serious packrat and normally I give him a VERY hard time about it but it came in handy last night.  He came up with play bills for broadway shows we went to, maps of cities we lived in, old photographs and a bunch of other cool stuff to fill our frames.   He also found his bathroom hall pass from Kindergarten (it is over 30 years old!) that he kept for some reason.  I died laughing.  I am telling you now, it is going up on our wall some place. LOL!  And not only did he come up with the stuff, but HE HUNG IT UP FOR ME.  HE DID THE DESIGN HIMSELF! I was so tired and I wasn't sure how I was going to handle the window since it is not in the middle of the room.  We have 87 inches on one side of it and only 70 inches on the other side.  My husband fixed it by making the wall art design asymetrical and going low so the window is just another form on the wall.  He is so BRILLIANT! That is why I love him. :D 

OUR LIVING ROOM 6 DAYS AGO.   As I said in my previous post, this was actually an improvement over how our living room has been for the last year.  We cleared out a lot of boxes to get it to this point. Yes, I know. YIKES! The color on the walls was the Sherwin Williams blue we decided was too light.

LIVING ROOM TODAY.   As I mentioned in the other entries, the sofa was in our old house.  It is a really nice quality sofa that we found at an estate sale when we were first married and we had just recovered it before our move so I wanted to keep it.  This decorating direction was directed around keeping it basically.  The gold lamps are new. I got them from Wayfair. They are Minka brand. They just came in today. I am definitely keeping them.  I love how retro they look.  The wall art is a mix of old and new. Some of it hung in our old house, but a lot of it is the result of my husband giving me material to put in frames.   I plan on buying a rug.  I am going to do an entry on that choice soon.  I am sorry to say I found a glass and metal coffee table and end table set on Craigslist that I wanted to buy, but the lady called me yesterday and said that she had listed the tables for too little and she was sorry but she was going to withdraw them.  I was, of course, a bit disappointed to not get the tables, but even more so, I was unhappy because I was hoping to have them by today for pictures.  Hopefully, I'll find some soon.  When I have my rugs, my coffee table and my new chairs in, I will definitely make a post on the living room so you can see the final reveal.  

LIVING ROOM 6 DAYS AGO.   The sofa wasn't really placed anywhere.  We did consider putting it on this wall under the window, but I think my husband and I both were more set on placing the sofa under the window at the end of the room.   However, that meant we had to figure out how to arrange the furniture to handle this weird high window.

PICTURE WALL TODAY.   Please excuse the blanket under the mirrored chest, but it is very heavy and I couldn't remove the blanket without help.  The mirrored chest is new.  It was a great buy at Last Call, the Neiman Marcus outlet here in Austin. This photo is mainly to give you an idea of how we handled the high window that is not centered to the room. The asymmetrical art work placement, especially the long horizontal art piece under the window, help make the window just another shape on the wall which is what I wanted.  Also I am really loving the chest there.  It breaks up the room into 2 distinct areas and that frees us up to do a second seating group in the other area. 

GOT IDEAS?  There isn't tons of space on this side of the room, but I definitely want to place some seating here. We have 2 BIG arm chairs that I thought of placing in front of the fireplace with a cube between them, but now I am not so sure.  I also really want a modern blue velvet arm/lounge chair with chrome legs.  If you see one for a good deal, please let me know. 

WRITTEN BY ELDAROSE

Updated 02/02 MY FEATURE ON THE BEST MOM BLOGS you haven't discovered yet is HERE so go find out what you've been missing out on!

The Challenge link party that got me started on this project:





OTHER LINK PARTIES I WILL JOIN:





































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