BJ's Tidbits: Living Room Redo

Our living room was getting a little, ah, old. We've been in the house for 16 1/2 years and had never painted any of the walls except for a couple of the bathrooms. Handyman had stripped the wall paper off of the walls in one of the bathrooms and the other one had once been a closet and the old laundry room. When we bought the house the walls seemed very dark to me since we had antique white walls in every room in our prior home. But lately we were getting the urge to go a little darker. I wasn't really sure about it, so handyman painted the bonus room first so I could see the color on a larger scale. It turned out that I really liked it. Below you can see the difference - the wall on the right is the old color, on the left is the new color.

Then there was the couch & recliner that were bought on New Year's Day in 1997. They were getting tired looking and need a good cleaning. The love seat that had been in the living room was recently moved to the cabin. We had bought a couple of really comfy chairs a while back and even though I like them, I was a little concerned with matching them.

We found a new couch at an Overstock place here in town. It's an Ashley Furniture couch and they still sell it in the store, but we got it for about half of their price. I wasn't certain that it would go with the chairs so the fellow let me bring a pillow home to check the color. We really liked the colors together!!

The coffee table never was quite what I wanted, but there were elements of it that I did like. I didn't like the little spindles at each end or the scallops, but I really liked the turned legs and the handy little drawer. Handyman has removed the part that I don't like and is rebuilding it so there will be a flat table top and he'll keep the drawer. Yeah!!!

The green table to the left of the sofa was a little odd ... I liked the basic design of the table. I found it at the church bazaar. One of the church ladies had painted an antique table with green crackle paint. I kind of liked that, but then she had painted purple grapes on the top of it. I tried to hide that the best that I could with chotskies, but it took up so much of the top, I never could quite cover it. It was also kind of rickety -- it wobbled quite a bit. Handyman had told me from the beginning that he could tighten it up. It's in his workshop now being glued, tightened, and repainted. I should have it back soon.

I'm still looking for a chair to replace the little mauve swivel rocker. It doesn't look too bad, but I'm ready for a change there too.

I'm also looking for material to make new window treatments. I'm hoping that I can figure out exactly how to make this. I think it is so neat looking. I won't replace the mini-blinds with the shutters since we almost always leave them open anyway.