{pretty, happy, funny, real} Living Room Paint Before & After

~ Capturing the context of contentment in everyday life ~

Brought to you by Like Mother, Like Daughter

{pretty} & {happy}

Happy New Year! My Christmas present to myself this year - painting the living room! Trying to get it done before Christmas gave me a good deadline to work with. :)

Here is a reminder of the "before." The wall colour was very blah to me, and the furniture too dark against it.

BEFORE:

Now, with a new coat of paint, some furniture rearrangement (and a few Christmas decorations), I present…

AFTER:

The colour is "cool breeze" by Benjamin Moore. I decided to go with something blue (my favourite colour) in my only south facing room. "Cool" isn't the first word I would use to describe it though. I find it calm and elegant. It has hints of green and grey in it which make it quite inviting. (The photos don't quite do it justice.)

 I think it makes all that white trim really pop!

 I think it also works well with my inherited brass lamps and various gold framed pictures.

 It does make the room feel spacious when you're in it.

I haven't put the picture back up yet on the big wall. I'm trying to decide between that and a large gold-gilt mirror I found at a garage sale. I have a few other little things to put up around the room to finish it off that I haven't got to yet.

So there you have it! Painted blue on almost the darkest day of the year. (Sorry, Auntie Leila!) I'm looking forward to living with it in the different seasons to come!

{funny}

Cats sure know how to do contentment!

{real}

I haven't done a thing to take down the Christmas decorations yet. They are just so pretty!

Holidays can be so tiring… :)

Wishing you all the best for 2014!


~lg

{pretty, happy, funny, real} on February 21

~ Capturing the context of contentment in everyday life ~

Brought to you by Like Mother, Like Daughter

Thanks to everyone who made suggestions about my living room! I haven't made any big changes yet, but a few bits and pieces are coming together...

{pretty}

This may be a bit odd for a {pretty}, but I think it is!

I've wanted this exact cupboard in my house for a long time. Almost three years, actually. When we first moved here, it was in the old shed, sitting on the dirt floor, covered with cans of oil and other manly sorts of things. I kept asking Micah to bring it in for me, but I don't think he took me seriously! Finally, in the fall, he brought it in to the basement to dry out and fix up. The bottom of the thing had to be cut off because it was rotting, and we considered adding new wood in its place, but in the end, we just left it and added a shelf at the bottom for stability and usefulness.

It is naturally distressed, as you can see. And I love it. Furthermore, it has helped me realize that something has been missing in my living room - a place for pretty things! I'm not sure it will stay in this exact location, but for now, here it is, making me happy.

{happy}

I'm also {happy} with a weekend furniture find for the music room/library!

I purchased these wingbacks in excellent condition for an excellent price. Yes, they are pink, but are part of a larger vision for the living rooms that I'm working on. (And that is Micah's fabulous homemade cat scratching post in the background...)

I love how they create a nice cozy seating area under the chandelier.

Slowly but surely, I know I'm getting somewhere!



~lg

{pretty, happy, funny, real} on February 14

~ Capturing the context of contentment in everyday life ~

Brought to you by Like Mother, Like Daughter

{pretty}

Arden's teaset

Watching Daddy throw wood down the wood chute off the pantry

{happy}

I stole a few moments to myself at lunchtime and went out for a bit of a walk. (One of the blessings of having a husband who works from home!) Though not sunny, the day was mild, and I was happy to wander about the property.

{funny}

Fur in motion!

{real}

Since we got our new old kitchen stove, I haven't had a place to hang towels in the kitchen. The current ones I don't mind draping over the cupboard doors or through drawer handles, but I wanted a place to hang the dirty things to dry. This week I found the perfect spot!

Eventually, this part of the house will need to be prettied up. It's a door
(which we cut in half!) off the pantry which leads down to the furnace room.
We always leave the top half open because of the window,
and this is where the wood chute is. 

Now I can just reach over the door and leave things here to dry where they won't be seen! Micah found the towel rack in the basement. (Part of the odd assortment of things we inherited with the house.)

~

And as an aside, I'd like to say Sukie's living room looks lovely! I am in the midst of figuring out what to do, furniture-wise and paint-wise with our two adjoining living rooms, so it is inspiring to see someone else making things work. I came across this picture in one of my copies of The English Home magazine, and I think it would be a lovely look for our music room/library!

Speaking of second hand furniture finds, I have my eye on a few items on kijiji that I think could potentially work! Stay tuned...



~lg

{pretty, happy, funny, real} on January 31

~ Capturing the context of contentment in everyday life ~

Brought to you by Like Mother, Like Daughter

{pretty}

The morning sun, my daughter being creative. . .

{happy}

Our first try making homemade paint! It wasn't an ideal consistency, but Arden didn't know the difference. (I may have messed it up by adding the dish soap before the cornstarch mixture was cooled down, which made it bubbly instead of smooth.) Anyone have any good recipes for homemade, washable paint?

And here is Jack at 9 months - he is growing fast, and is such a happy little boy. 

{funny}

Jack and the cats!

We recently acquired two new cats from the humane society. (Our dear Scratchy went to cat heaven back in September, and we figured it was time for a feline presence in the house again.) They pulled on our heartstrings with their "Mommy and Me" program, in which you buy a kitten and get the mother for free!

Arden loves the cats (and they put up with her attentions very well, I might add!), but Jack has also taken a keen interest in them.

Here he is crawling over to the mother cat, Milly.

And here he is  crawling as fast as he can after the kitten, Pickwick!

Pickwick. When I first saw him I thought he looked like he'd had a jar of
black ink spilled on him! I simply had to give him a literary name.

It's so nice to have cats in the house again! Two feels just right, and these are lively without being crazy. They were strays and had been in the pound since November, so I think they were grateful for a home. We are happy to have them!

{real}

I am at my wits' end with the living room. Maybe it's cabin fever, I don't know, but I am just so dissatisfied with it. It's never really felt like me. I've been able to arrange second hand furniture and bits and pieces of things in every other room in the house, but this one is just not coming together. (You can see its various versions over the last three years in these posts.)

I moved the furniture last night so that the couch isn't blocking the traffic and view from the main door. But this room has three doors, which makes it quite tricky for furniture arrangement.

This is the view from the door we use to enter the room most often.

The couch is now on the far window wall, instead of facing the window as you come in the room. I like how it opens up the room. That organ, which is currently being used as a tv stand, has to go! It's too dark and big for this room. I have to figure out another tv option that is also babyproof! One of the other issues is that the far corner is the only place we can put the tv (due to the cables and location of power outlets) if we want to keep it in this room.

There are so many doors! Any ideas for furniture placement?

This room, and the adjoining music room, also desperately need a coat of paint. But how do I choose a colour?? I don't want to pick the colour based on these couches. I find them too dark and busy, especially at this time of year, so I am thinking of putting our other old set (currently in the basement) back into the room. But I struggled with finding a paint colour to go with them too.

View into music room. 

Since taking these photos this morning, I went to town and bought a big, neutral drop cloth. I am going to experiment with the drop cloth as a couch cover on our other set of couches. Then I can add colour with other fabrics and cushions, and maybe paint the walls a colour I like! I don't know if it's going to work - it might look a little rumpled. But at this point I am willing to risk rumpled to see if I can get a look that I feel at home in! Any thoughts? Ideas? Suggestions? :)

~lg

music room shuffle

The "music room" in our house has gone through a number of versions in the two years since we moved in. It has been a storage room, a throw-all-the-stuff-I-don't-know-what-to-do-with room, an extra guest room, all the while housing our musical instruments and most of my books.

I decided it was high time to get it together in a way that I liked so we could open the doors from our regular living room and make it part of our liveable space. One day when Granny was over we decided to just do it!

I don't really have any before pictures, but the piano used to be on the outside wall with the octagonal window - not the best place for it, especially since this room gets rather cold in winter. My main goal was to get the piano to a more comfortable location, and we worked everything else around that.

After the big shuffle (and it was a big job to move all those books!) I am quite satisfied with the results! I took everything out of the room that I didn't want to be there. Now it feels lovely and peaceful and liveable.

The view from the main living room into the music room - now I'm happy to leave the french doors wide open! The shelf you can see from here houses music books and my other "nice" books, including my LM Montgomery collection.

There's one of our pump organs that we got for free! This one actually works, though I rarely play it.
The chair is a recent kijiji find, and the rug is from a family member. I have yet to put up curtains,
but I have a lace pair somewhere that I think might work in here. 

The piano used to be on this outside wall. I moved 2 out of the 3 shelves over to this corner. These are all my theology books. It bugs me to no end that that octagonal window is not centred on that wall!!
(That is one of our old couches. We moved the big couch from the set to the basement.)

The piano's new home on the inside wall, with other musical instruments. I love having this big picture over the piano!  Now I just need to get the piano tuned...

The view from the music room into the living room. 

I still need to pick a paint colour for both living rooms. That flat white primer in the music room is just not doing it for me. I kind of like the colour in the living room, but there's only one coat of it, so it could use another to make it richer. Any suggestions for something that would look good in both rooms? Though the rooms are south and west facing, the windows are so small that I'm afraid to do a darker colour, especially with the current living room furniture.

Overall, though, I'm quite happy with the rearrangement, and now it feels like we have a much bigger living space! The music room also feels more like "me" now, which is also important.

So there you have it!

~lg