Living Room Transformation

It's hard to believe that Christmas and New Years have come and gone, and tomorrow we will be back to work.  Having the past two weeks off has been great, but not restful!  We started our holidays with a few small jobs before Christmas, like painting some doors, changing out light fixtures and hanging drapes in the dining room.

Then the real work began on Boxing Day.  Our plan was to paint the living room and finally get rid of the tulip wallpaper.  Here's a reminder of the space we started with. 

Our 1st visit

Tiny doors in a giant room

The day after we moved in

 We had been considering removing the doors between the living and dining rooms.  The shelves were a bit odd and the doors seemed too small for the space.  It just didn't feel right.  So we took a giant leap of faith and started tearing down the wall.

The room feels so much more open, and the dining room is so much brighter now.  It was definitely a good decision.  The hardwood flooring went right underneath the wall and there are spaces where large pocket doors would have been originally.  We're hoping to find a pair and re-install them someday soon.

Since we would be making a trip to the dump, it only seemed right to also rip up the carpet in the dining room at the same time!  

Shiny hardwood under the carpet!

  

And then the priming and painting began. This is a big room, with lots of trim to paint so we recruited some help.  We seriously could not have done it without our friends Amy and Janice and my brother Ryan and sister-in-law Tami.  They're painting machines!

We spent a lot of time thinking about how we could mount our television over the fireplace and not see the cords and cables.  My brother even cut some holes, only to discover solid brick behind the plaster.  But when we accidentally removed the top of the mantle we discovered a piece of wood that we were able to drill a hole through to feed some electrical and cable.  

We then installed some panel molding above the fireplace, with a removable piece that hides all of the wires going up to the television.

We still have small touches to finish like adding mesh covers to hide the dvd player and cable box in the mantle and painting the tile around the fireplace, but the room is mostly done now.  I'm sure the tulips were a big hit back in 1985, but they won't be missed today!