Category: BLOG

LIVING ROOM MAKEOVER – BEFORE & AFTER

Published on by Terrie2 Comments
Hello Friends!  Welcome back to all my Decorate & More friends. If you are visiting for the first time, thank you so much I hope you will continue to come visit me.

Boy oh boy, has this been a long process?  It seemed like this makeover lasted a good bit longer than I would have thought. It was so worth the time and effort, it is beau*T*ful.  It is as pretty as her kitchen makeover. (I think anyway).  Today, I am sharing a “Before and After” transformation.  I’ve been busy with a few transformations around here at my house also, but that will be another blog.  I wanted to share her living room first with you, however it isn’t totally complete yet. She ordered a concrete square coffee table that has been back ordered, of course.  She has a few things to add to the room, such as something for the wall and a piece of furniture to hold the TV components.  But, the most part it is done.

A little story before we jump right into the project.  She had a picture in mind on how she wanted the room to look, like all of us we start with an image and work from that.  She found the perfect furniture, which had to be ordered.  That was great, we can start doing the painting and what we needed before the furniture came in.  First thing….sell her old furniture.  Piece of cake, within a week or a little more it was sold and cash in her pocket.  Well, maybe not in her pocket because that weekend we went shopping.  $$$  We didn’t find as much as we hoped, but with the internet, soon we found just about everything.  Now the labor starts, with painting walls, refacing the fireplace, hanging wallpaper, a new light fixture and doing all the clean up it was finally time to dress the room.  One month later…it was finished.

There is so much to this project.  I will try to break it down as best as I can without over killing it.   If you are not one to look at photos, this might not be the blog to look at.   I just picked out the best photos to post.  I have many, many more. ha! 

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LIVING ROOM – BEFORE

Here is the room before we cleared it out.  I don’t think it looks bad at all and was truly cute.  It just wasn’t what she wanted.  She wanted to make it blend with the other two rooms that we just made over.
First, was tearing into the fireplace.  It had nothing wrong with the tile, it just wasn’t the color she wanted.  One night after work, her and I rolled up our sleeves and starting demolishing the tiles.  It really wasn’t that hard just a lot of muscles.  I did end up hitting my thumb a couple of times instead of the chisel. OUCH!  We made it another night to get the old mortar off the concrete slab.  We had to put up new fireproof drywall around the insert.  Her and my son-in-law did that without me.   My husband and son-in-law cut the new marble tiles and we all had a part installing the tiles.  It was a messy job for sure.  It turned out so pretty, for a bunch of amateurs.

Next thing we did was paint the walls.  We used the same color for the walls as we did in her kitchen.  I can not tell you the color because we custom mixed the paint ourselves.  I can tell you it is Behr paint.  We mixed a gray with white until we got the right shade of silver gray.  Painted the baseboards, doors and trim white.

Now, time to apply the peel and stick wallpaper to the two walls.  She first wanted the self adhesive brick tile, but that was very expensive.  She thought about regular wallpaper, but I turned her away from that.  Using wallpaper in the past myself,  the outcome of taking that off would be a disasters if she takes it off down the road.  I read up on the peel and stick and thought maybe this would work.  The cost of the single roll was CRAZY.  So….as you can believe when we started to install it, I was a bit (no, a lot) nervous.  Yes….me nervous.  That was expensive and I wanted it to be just right.  It actually went on nice and smoothly.  I would not hesitate recommending anyone to use it.  It made a huge statement to the room.

There were a few things that we had to paint to match her color theme better.   The light fixture was one.  She ordered it from ebay. It was a wood tone with black and rust metal.  She wanted gray tones.  It is a beautiful piece, but a lot of painting to each little detail.  We both love how it turned out.  It made a huge part of the transformation for sure.
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She could not find any art work that she liked.  Oh, she found some but man oh man, was the price outrageous.  So, we decided to do another custom made project.  We got some canvas boards and paints and started designing.  They both made the room complete.  
So here is the room after it is all dressed up.  So happy how it turned out.  She loves it so that made it all worth wild.
Hope you enjoyed the new space. We love the faux brick walls so much and the room actually feels larger and brighter.

Stay strong and stay blessed.
​                           Terrie