Not Again!!! (Part 2) The Living Room

The 'BEFORE'..I forgot how bad it looked!

The 'After'  

I didn't put any pictures on the wall as I wanted to get some new ones. I hadn't finished 'decorating' this room and the curtains weren't up yet.

Oh my...I'm afraid daylight pictures would have looked worse than these night time shots...by far!

Exactly one year after renovating the kitchen and dining room we decided to do the living room. It was a dark dingy room that had ugly termite eaten panelled walls (hubby bought it before we met) worn out old red carpeting ugly stone fireplace and to top it all off it had a popcorn ceiling with sparkles which my husbnd loved!! We tore everything off the walls and wired then insulated and sheet rocked. The ceiling we scraped and then put up beadboard and made a coffered ceiling which took my poor hubby 3 weeks to make and the two of us 3 days to paint. He swore he'd never do it again but the other day he looked at our kitchen ceiling here on the farm and said..'a coffered would look nice in here.'!!! I don't think we'll follow through on that idea but the beadboard and crown molding would be nice. Please keep in mind that my husband works nights and split sleeps so all this work get's done in a very tight time frame. The room went from dark and dingy to bright and cheery. I would have liked wood floors in that room but we decided to just do carpet but it was a textured rug so I liked it. We put in two new windows and an octagon window and completely redid the front of the fireplace. We also put tile from the door in the garage to the french doors that led to the screened porch. That helped with the 'traffic'. Anyway...I hope you enjoy the before and afters. Sorry there's only two 'befores' but you get the idea of how dingy it was. PS...the wall color isn't as bright as these pics show...not by any means!

Here's a few pictures of the work being done. There's that good looking 'contractor' again!

The bead-board and frame for coffered ceiling going up. This was the easy part...it was putting all the crown molding in each of those 'squares' that was the pain! Another layer of 2x4's went on top of these ones to get the depth.

The finished ceiling.

Was it worth all the time and effort. We think so.

'The Thinker'

The handsome 'contractor' trying to figure how he was going to make my fireplace drawings into reality. I though I could smell rubber burning when I took this picture!

Working on the upper 'surround'.

The fireplace detail. This fireplace surround was made with scrap wood and a few little extra's thrown in for good measure.

The finised surround. I painted and then 'highlighted' the fancy bits with some watered down acryilic paint so the details would stand out. Don't think I had done it yet in these pictures.

Carpet sample.

The finished product was much lighter than I really wanted but I was sick of a dark room so I got used to it pretty fast.

We had a lot more furniture in here shortly after these pictures were taken.

Ok...well call us crazy but about a month after we finished the renovations we made the decission to SELL and move to the country. Yes....after all that work. We painted the bedrooms and cleaned out the basement and put the place up for sale. The house sold within 7 hours the first day it went onto the MLS. The first person to see it that day with the realtor (our sister in law) came back that evening and bought it. From there we moved to the Victorian and 9 months later to this old farmhouse. Best move we ever made.

Now we get to do it all again!