A Mini Makeover For The Living Room

Our living room is small.  And, although there are two windows it is also dark because of the surrounding porch roof.

The previous owner used this space as a dining room so the darkness probably didn’t matter much but we chose to use it as our living room because, well, it had a heat source.  Or, at least the space for a sufficient heat source.  And, it had the potential of being cozy.  What was previously used as a living room (and is now our dining room) is larger but there was no heat source in there  and meant we would’ve had to add one somewhere because, let me tell ya, it gets mighty cold in there during the winter.  brrr!

With the days getting increasingly shorter I decided it was time to try and lighten up the living room a bit and make it a bit more warm and inviting since we’ll spending more time in there during the winter.

Here is the before…

Dark walls, dark ceiling, dark floor, dark window trim and neutral furniture not arranged very well.

My first project was painting the window trim and the trim around the shelves.  I had to use three coats of Kilz to cover up the hunter green.

Then, I rearranged the furniture pieces, moved the existing picture, hung another one up, relocated the wooden ‘ladder’ from our bedroom down to the living room and hung an off-white quilt on it, relocated the milk can and brought in a crib that was left here to use as extra seating.  I also moved the curio cabinet that holds my antique glass ‘hens on a nest’ pieces and my Lilliput Lane houses I started collecting every time I went to England (many years ago!).

Here’s what the living room looks like now…

The crib bottom was in pretty rough shape.

CountryBoy took the grinder to it then I primed it with Rustoleum metal primer then spray painted it.

It was also missing the back and front pieces so CountryBoy made a back for me out of some scrap wood.

We did have to buy a mattress and a few throw pillows for it but I really like how it turned out and it will provide extra seating and a place for any young’ns to sleep should we ever get some young visitors!

I still need to make a slipcover for the mattress but I have plenty of this striped fabric from when I recovered my patio furniture in Florida.

Also, still left to do is remove the border on this wall and choose a paint color.  But, I’m in no hurry to tackle those right now as I really don’t have any idea what color I want to use.

For now, I am enjoying the coziness and the few warm touches.  When a paint color hits me then I’ll get to removing the border and painting!

Here  are the before’s and after’s again…

It’s nothing fancy and still dark but the white window trim, light pillows and quilt help give the space the appearance of being brighter.

Several people suggested painting the wood walls.  Gasp, I just don’t think I could do it.  These are rough cut boards with the gorgeous saw marks on them and I just don’t want to cover those up.  We also like the ‘cabin-look’ they have. One thought we had was to paint the ceiling in between the rafters.  That’s quite an undertaking and the jury is still out on that idea.  I’ll let you know if that happens!