Last we saw of the living room the wall came down (which still needs to be spackled), we painted the room white and hung frames on the large wall with the intention of adding some sort of art. Well they hung on the wall empty for a while. I’m nothing if not speedy 
while I decided what to put in the frames.
Can we talk about the Living room for a second? Specifically, adding a few new colors back in. I love the new white walls and frames we put up (even though they still don’t have anything in them) but I kind of got sidetracked on finishing off the room when we spontaneously decided to remove the wall one day. We love it and there is still the whole thing of fixing the sheetrock and adding in a few moldings to contend with.
Back when I first painted I put together this mood board that I thought would work well in the new space. I’ll save you some time from clicking over because I’ve completely scrapped that idea. Although I still really do love that light. That’s what I kind of love about mood boards, you “live” with a few items together before committing to them. While it was good it just wasn’t making me feel excited to get started on it. I took that as a sign to scrap the whole thing and start over.
Wanna see? I’m loving this one a whole lot more.
Anyone want to see some walls taken down? OK good, because that’s what we have for you today. A 14 foot opening where a wall used to be. It’s was a lot of work on Bryan’s part and a lot of cleaning allergy inducing dust in every nook and cranny of the house on my part. But after the dust has settled it was soo worth it.
It’s changed the whole feel of the house.
If you remember we started with an off center doorway and cutout that helped to open the room up a bit but it still felt somewhat outdated. When we took the wall down we were left with some electrical that needed to be moved around.
Fortunately for us Bryan’s Dad (a former electrician) came by to help Bryan move the wiring. It was a big job and took them most of a day to get it all moved and back together.
What was left was a couple of 2 x 4’s holding up the wall. The old owner had cut out almost all of the supporting posts which was king of scary to see.
We put up a brand new header which involved all hands on deck (including mine). We held the beam up and we slid it into place and slid the old supports out.
It’s amazing what a difference the lack of a wall can make. The whole house feels larger has a more open modern. It’s completely changed how the house looks and how we feel about the space. We still need to replace some sheetrock and will add some molding to finish off the opening soon. I can’t wait.
PS: Did you spot the dresser in the kitchen? It’s standing in for an island to help us visualize if we’d like one there. The verdict’s still out on how big the actual island will be but we love the idea of adding one there. We’ll keep you posted on the progress.
Yesterday I had great intentions of filling up our new Ribba frames in the Living room with some art. I had all the supplies and it was going to be a quick project to bring a little color into the space. Then Bryan and I got to talking, he wanted to start a project and asked me what I really wanted to do next in the house. In my infinite wisdom I said I wanted to open up the Living Room cutout into the kitchen….I was half joking, never imagining we’d start something like that on Sunday afternoon.
But let’s back up for a second so you can see what I’m talking about. So you see the opening to the left, it’s off center in the room and really causes some major traffic flow issues. To get to the living room you need to walk, through the kitchen, past the table, bumping into chairs along the way . We’ve wanted to open up the wall for a while and create a more open floor plan. It’s been on the to-do list forever, just waiting for the right moment.
Here’s another view from the Kitchen (ignore the dresser, that’s leaving soon) as we started moving furniture around. See what I mean by the doorway being off center? The traffic flow was annoying. The cutout was nice because it helped to keep the living room open. But the whole design felt very 90’s to me. So right after that picture was taken this started to happen…
Yup that’s right the wall is coming down!
After an hour or so of demo and a TON of dust it looked more like this.
We found all kinds of things in the wall that you should never find, like a hidden outlet that was never disconnected stuffed up above the cutout. Along with a mess of other structural issue like supports cut out of the load bearing wall etc. Oi!
We finished up 90% of the demo late last night and made sure it was all safe with no live wires so we would have to worry about Nikolas until next weekend when we can start putting it all back together. Ah I’m so excited, this is probably the single biggest thing we’ve done inside so far.
It already feels so much more open and natural, and the best part is there no more awkward flow. Three cheers for a good demolition project to end the weekend. I can’t wait to see how it all turns out. This should be good.
Good news! I finally finished the curtains for our bedroom makeover. Bad news, I haven’t taken any photos yet. But let me tell you They Look MA-VA-LOUS! I promise I’ll take pictures over the weekend and share all the details on how I made them.
But what we did do was do a little bookcase shuffle from room to room this past weekend. Since moving Nikolas from his crib to a big bed, the bookcase that was in his room just didn’t fit there anymore, So out it came to the living room.
Since we finishing up our new mantel and hanging the TV above the fireplace it’s freed up a bunch of floor space where Nikolas’ cute little baby wingback chair has been hanging out until time/budget allows for us to get some real life adult size chairs to throw into the mix. You can see all the super duper ugly before and during photo’s here, and a peak at how it all came together just in time for Christmas here.
Just in case you’re not feeling all that clicky today here’s a picture how it used to look. Of course you’ll have to look passed the giant tree in the middle of the room, it’s not always there we just bring it out for special occasions…you know like Christmas
It’s a simple switch and one that I agreed to after B’s suggestion that we swap at the table for the bookcase. I have to admit The bookcase is already proving much more useful for for storing and displaying all types of things including books (I know shocking) trinkets, vases, art and a couple of baskets of toys.
Not only do we have some of the smaller toys placed in baskets on the shelves. But we also moved his basket stash of living room toys right in between the bookcase and his chair. It has proven to be a lot more useful here since now he can easily get to all his toys rather then when they were stashed out of the way in the corner. Of course when company comes it’s easily all thrown back in the pile which is a bonus because then it looks like a living room instead of a a playroom with 2 minutes worth of tidying up.
Another perk that I wasn’t really counting on was the extra space for displaying all kinds of pretty things out of the reach of little hands, fingers and toes.
Of course, as usual we still have a bunch of tweaks and changes before we can call this side of the room done-ish. Right now we’re calling it a work-in-progress. Over time I’d like to look for some nice occasional chairs to add to complete the conversation area…probably in a beachy, watery vibe like rattan. I’d like to figure out how to conceal or move the cable boxes all together so they’re not so in your face ad tame those cords we’ve got going on.
All in good time my friends…all in good time. So has anyone else been doing some furniture shuffling lately? Have you figured out a way to conceal those nasty looking cable boxes from view or how to tame those cords. I’d love to hear any ideas!
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