House Tour Part Three: The Living Room

I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving with your families. Mine was spent with my extended "Navy" family and it was pretty great. I'm a lucky girl to be blessed with people that care about me and welcome me into their homes when my hubs and family can't be around.

Don't forget to submit a recipe to What's Cookin' Good Lookin'. We've all been busy with Thanksgiving, but it's not too late!

Now onto the tour!

When we're home, the hubs and I spend 90% of our time in the living room. It's a really large room that boasts beautiful dark hardwood floors and is in the center of our lower level. It's easily the hub of our home. I've tried to make it a light, airy, and inviting room but the decorating is still not quite done. We've come along way though...shall we take a look?

Here are some pictures from our inspection. Disregard the decor, it was the previous owners and we're not here to judge their furnishings. Different strokes for different folks. I would like you to take note, however, that there was no overhead lighting in the room, and the door in the corner was blocked with furniture. The previous owners never used that door. It leads to our laundry room which is also attached to kitchen. Did you notice the dirty white walls and dirty cream trim? It was the only room in the house that did not have dark blue molding (you'll meet that later this week) and desperately needed a paint job.




Now, here's a doozy- check out the mantle and built-ins (score!):

Are you digging the magenta parchment paper? Neither were we. How about the broken cabinet doors? Nosiree.

Another issue we had with our living room was that it was cut off from the rest of the home:

On the other side of the wall with the desk is the kitchen. That wall was begging to be torn open. Let's rephrase, the hubs was begging to tear that wall open.

So, our issues with the living room when we moved in:
1. No over head lighting
2. Yucky paint
3. Yuckier pink paper
4. Closed off from the rest of the home

Ready for what we did? Take a peek:

The first thing we did when we moved in was install overhead lighting (hired the pros for that). The room felt cave-like without it. I know not everyone is a fan (hehe) of ceiling fans, but the hubs and I love them. They help keep our house cool, so they're fine with us!

Now for the fire place, the very first thing I did when I walked into our home after closing was rip off the pink parchment. Thankfully, it came off so easily! We also removed the doors from the bottom of the built-ins. I love, love, love built-ins and am thankful we have them. Excuse the dog crate by the way, that's not part of the decor.

Now for the big stuff:

Check out the breakfast bar that the hubs (and friends) built. I think I've told you before that I was a little wary, but I'm so glad I let the hubs have his way with this. He was so very right. It completely opens up our living room and makes life and entertaining that much easier.

And there you have it, our living room. There are still things I want to fix up, and I am dying to tile the first place with glass tiles, but we'll get there.

Stay tuned for a tour of our dining room and to meet the infamous dark blue trim. Warning, it's not pretty!