Living Room Fun!

 I still sit in shock that we bought a house 6 1/2 years ago.  When we bought this house, Ethan was 2 and we were slowly outgrowing our 2 bedroom upstairs apartment.  This house was not my most favorite of all the houses we looked at, but we loved the area of town, the school our son would attend and quite honestly, my best friend lived (and still does) 2 minutes away by car.  Our very amazing realtor and my husband kept reminding me of the potential of the house, because it was hard (at that time, I wasn't watching a ton of HGTV shows!). 

Our home is a 1966 Headliner home.  It has 3 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms and a living room/dining room kitchen and family room.   Our kids share one bedroom and we use the other one as an office/craft room. 

Today, I share with  your our front room.  This is my favorite room and it took a long time.  We don't ever do a project without the money to do it.  We aren't going to go into debt to make our home amazing, but we do want to have a home that welcomes you in and makes you feel comfortable.  

 This is how it looked when we first moved in.  All the windows had already been changed out to Dual Pane (another one of the selling points to this 1966 home).  The white paint was old and had scuff marks all over it (you can't tell in the pictures. . . it wasn't that pretty!).  It was also really hard to arrange our furniture with the layout of the room.   And that carpet (yep. . . it's orange!)!  Eventually our sectional couch moved to the family room and for awhile there were just book cases in here.  When we hosted Bible Study, we sat on the floor.  It really wasn't comfortable.  Oh, and the drapes came with the house. 

In Spring after we moved in, we painted as many rooms as we could.  The walls just screamed, "paint me!"  And paint is super cheap (compared to other projects).  It was also 6 years ago, when painting crazy colors was a little bit more trendy than it is now.  Even so, we painted it and Jon picked the color and it is wonderful.  A year later, we bought the couches and chair and then last summer, we redid the floors.  Our home, I think, will always be a work in progress.  I don't mind.  

I think one of my favorite parts of this room is the collage wall.  It took awhile to talk my husband into it, but once he saw my vision, he started hammering.  We still have a few things to add here and there, but generally, this is our finished room.  I can't wait to show you the rest!

Sources:
Paint:  Midnight fog, by Valspar
Couch, chair & ottoman: Ektorp, by IKEA
Bookcases w/glass doors: Billy, by IKEA
Expedit: also IKEA, but now they have the Kallax, like this one
Flooring:  Costco's Honey Maple Laminate Flooring
Coffee Table and End Table: Hemnes, by IKEA
The side board and shelves are all Target.
Rug, Nate Berkus for Target (no longer available, but the small one is)