My living room was one of the first rooms I did something to when I moved into this house almost 8 years ago. The room was painted sea-foam green and I had it painted a soft yellow with a darker yellow trim. Surprisingly, the paint went with the already existing, but somewhat dated, drapes, so I let them be. I was sure I would soon replace them. Yeah, that didn’t happen. The floor was also covered in wall to wall brown shag carpet. A friend and I removed that about 4 years ago now (I think). Other than that, and a few different furniture configurations, I haven’t done much else to the room since then.
During my recent painting spree of upstairs bathroom, stairs, downstairs hallway and more, I decided I really wanted to paint my living room to match what I had done upstairs and in the downstairs hallway. Everyplace else was so fresh and bright the living room had been feeling a little dark and drab. So I added it to the makeover list.
In the process of taking down the curtains to prepare for paint prepping, I realized how much I really liked my deep window sills with the inset wood on the sides. I also realized how the curtains had been hiding a lot of that, so I decided no more curtains! I also finally removed the wood grain contact paper the previous owner had put on the sills (this woman really, really loved contact paper. It’s everywhere in the house). My Mom and a heat gun helped with that, and it came off pretty easy, but also left the window sills pretty sticky. Some Goo-Be-Gone, scrubbies, TSP substitute and elbow grease and a lot of the stickiness was gone. Several coats of clear polyacrylic and they are as good as new!
After prep and caulking, the thing that took me the longest was painting the windows and window trim. I think the end results were well worth all of the time though. The trim is Behr paint in Swan Wing and he walls are Behr paint in Ostrich. My surround sound wires, which are hidden above the crown molding, used to run down the wall behind my curtains, the curtains hiding the mess. I installed a wire chase next to the window by the t.v. and painted it the same color as the wall and it worked out perfect! I also had to go around and lower all of my base boards, as I had never done that after removing the carpet. Nothing in my house is level, so there are a few areas where they don’t touch the floor, but I don’t think it looks too bad. Maybe when I re-finish the floor I can put in some shoe molding that will hide the gaps.
Lastly, I put in some Levolor cordless cellular shades in place of the previous curtains and metal blinds and I love them! They give me privacy and let in a beautiful amount of light into the room. I also put the same blinds in the downstairs hallway window. I also had to re-hang all of my artwork. I had hung it too high before, so I tried hanging it 57″, but it was just a little too short for me. I went back and changed it to 67″ and I think it’s perfect. Here are the before and after pictures!
