Living Room Tour

Hello! I wanted do a home tour of our city apartment! I will break down the projects I did for the rooms in later posts. 

When we moved in last May, we realized we had a BIG room to work with for our living room. It is literally, a huge room. This room alone is bigger than our last apartment in Virginia! (We measured.)

I wanted to split the room up a little to make it serve two different purposes. A definitive entryway and a living space.

I loved the color of the walls, but was looking for a really colorful pop to contrast the slate colored walls. 

I chose a vibrant coral for that pop of color! 

My curtains are actually sheets! I scored these amazing sheets at Christmas Tree Shoppe and realized the color was a perfect match to my entertainment center color.  

Remember these guys? I found these Sea Fans at the antique shop in Virginia last year. I simply switched out the green paper for white. 

I found that coral pillow at Kirkland's on clearance for around $5. 

These coffee table tray was a Target find on clearance after Christmas. It was $12. I am thinking of giving it a fresh coat of bright yellow paint to throw in another color. 

 I also found those Mercury Glass Candles at Target. They smell amazing! The scent is Island Moonlight. 

Our furniture is from Wolf's Furniture. We wanted large deep furniture to bring the room to scale. 

This is a chair I often end up sound asleep in...

 These chairs are chairs that I re-did in the summer. A total of $5 for the both of them! 

The chevron rug was a big time steal from RugsUsa.com. I got the largest size, a 7'10"x10'10" for $88 during a Memorial Day sale. 

The electric fireplace was a craigslist find. I simply gave it a fresh coat of white paint. It was around $60 and has been keeping us toasty and cozy all winter. 

The coral tin artwork was actually green before. I had my sister do a sort of white wash paint to to it give it a new life. 

The mirror was from my mom. She had bought my sister a vintage bedroom set and this mirror came with it. My sister already had another mirror so I took this one and just painted it gold. It fits perfectly and makes the room appear even larger. 

I wanted to add another dimension of texture so I picked up these little cuties from the dollar section at Target and just hung them with some twine. 

You can read about my entertainment center project here.

I love this piece so much because it really grounds the room. 

I have a slight apocathary jar obsession. I like to fill them with different things for each season. 

Most of the accessories were freebies from a family member cleaning out their attic and the books are all from Salvation Army. A few coats of white and gold spray paint can give anything a new look! 

Anytime I see a neat coral piece on sale somewhere I try to buy it, since my living room has an understated nautical theme to it. This fun coral piece was on clearance due to a chip in the back. 

 So that's my living room! It's very cozy at night when the lights are dim and the fireplace is on. My hubby and I love cuddling up to watch a movie or eat dinner. 

If you have any questions about anything in the room, please let me know! I will be doing a break down of some of the DIY projects in the room shortly. 

Mercury Glass

So I made a trip to Target recently and got some pretty fun stuff. I realized my candle supply was running low. I had pretty much all fall candles. Pumpkin spice, hazelnut and ect... I wanted something fresh and sweet for spring. I also realized my desire for a new ipad case!

I found some adorable mercury glass votives in the candle isle and picked up two. Then I spotted a larger mercury glass votive with a candle inside. The candle scent was called island moonlight. I am officially in love with it! I came home and told my hubby that this is what I want my life to smell like! I liked it so much I got another island moonlight candle for my kitchen.

I also got a great deal on this ipad case! Originally $29.99 marked down to $8.98.

Before I bought these, I owned absolutly no mercury glass. I love the vintage effect they add to my somewhat modern space.

I also love the way my coffee table tray now feels so cozy. It makes me want to snuggle up and watch movies, and never leave the couch.

 

 

 

Getting back on the Blogging Bus

Hello. I'm back! After a long delay in blogging due to a move, a new job and just the general busyness of life, it's high time to get back on the blogging bus. I've still been rolling along on the DIY projects but have been missing blogging about them to share with you!

To ease my way back in, I'm starting with an easy DIY I did a while back. I found a killer deal thanks to my mom at Sal Val Aka Salvation Army. We found a table and chair set but only wanted the end chairs which meant breaking the set. We asked a guy working there if we could and what the price would be for the two end chairs with arms? He said, "Um, sure. How about 5 bucks?" I said, "5 bucks each?" He replied with, "Nope, 5 bucks for the pair." SOLD!!!!

We could not believe we snagged such an awesome deal! They have beautiful lines and I couldn't wait to get them in my living room!

They needed a fresh coat of paint but I think they have neat lines.

These things had been recovered quite a few times, but I decided to just leave the white cushion for now. After cleaning it up a bit of course

I simply removed the screws from the bottom to remove the seat from the chair.

Then I gave them both a good sanding to get off all the dirt and most of the old paint.

After sanding, I gave it a few light coats of white spray paint. I used a paint that is meant for furniture. Once I let it dry, I noticed a crackling had occurred. I think this happen either form humidity or because the wood was not accepting the paint.

This meant re-sanding all the spots where the cracking occurred.

Blah!

Once finally sanded, painted and dry, I brought them into my living room where my cats discovered they are obsessed with these chairs.

This was before I attached the seats back to the chair body.

They each have their own to sit on.

This was before I attached the seats back to the chair body.

 

Coral Cabinetry

Hello Darlings! I have made a few adjustments to the blog since my last post. I decided to go for a cleaner more streamlined look. I'm sticking with a white background right now just so that the posts are easier to read and so I can make each post a bit wider.  I don't have the width constraints I did before.  So today's post has been a long time in the making! This project has been done for about a month now, but I am finally getting around to posting.  We had lost our camera charger and cord in our move from Virgina, but finally have found a replacement!

So when we first moved in, we quickly realized that we had on ginormous wall to fill, so I knew we would need a very specific entertainment center. 

I didn't want to wait forever to find one because we where really ichting to get settled in.  We went to a great place around here that sells second hand furniture.  Over the years, my family has found a lot of great steals there. 

We came across a 3 piece bookshelf/entertainment center. Each piece was priced separately but I talked the hubby into buying all 3 pieces because I knew this was the one! 

 The whole thing came out to be a little under $300, but I know it's something that we can take with us when we move and separate the pieces if we need to depending on the size and space of the different places we live. 

The whole set is solid cherry wood.  

This is the center unit. 

 

 And these are the two side cabinets.

 

 

I decided I was going to take on the tedious task of painting the whole set a bright white.  Painting solid cherry wood white, easy right? 

WRONG! 

This is the center cabinet with one coat of Kilz primer.

 I used a foam roller and very high quality paint brush for the whole project.

Here are all of my pieces with one coat of primer. This took about one day. 

There were a never ending about of shelves to prime and paint, both sides of! 

For my next step of painting, I used Color Place interior semi-gloss paint. This stuff is great. It goes on well, and it's easy to clean.

  

The white paint took about 4 coats before all the cherry was completely covered.  I let each coat dry a full day and night in between with fans blowing on them so they could cure completely between each coat.

Needless to say, this took...awhile. Remember all those shelves? Yeah, all 12 of them got 4 coats on both sides too. 

I then taped off the back of each of the book shelf pieces. 

I then used Behr's Youthful Coral for the back of each of the bookshelves for a pop of color!

Here are the backs of each bookshelf with the coral. I think it helps to make this bookshelf a little more Happy!

Then I had this great idea to stencil the backs of each of the bookshelves in this Moroccan tile.

Turned out to be a wee bit sloppy.

And this loveliness right here? Yea, um this took me  4 hours. And that's only like 12% of what needed to be done, if I was going to go through with it.

 

See? I decided it was going to be too busy anyways, knowing that I wanted to put things on the shelves. 

 

So, although I literally shed a tear after all that hard work, I painted over it.

After all the paint has cured up nicely, we moved it out into our living room. I put the shelves on and started to play around with how I wanted it to look.

Here it is with all the shelves in. There are also 2 more shelves in the cabinet part. 

Someone was pretty stoked to have a cool little place to hang out in.

So after fussing with the shelves and getting them just right, it was finally time to accessorize!

(P.S. I had to rip my husband away from precious Xbox time to get this picture. That's why there is a wire hanging down. Nothing I could do about it. It COULD NOT be unplugged! So yeah.) 

I will show how I accessorized everything in my next blog post!