A living room tour.

I posted my "before" living room pictures when we first moved in, but other than the mantle, I never got around to showing you the finished room. I was in "crazy person work mode" unpacking and getting things done before house guests arrived (it was nice to have a "deadline"--I have since lost all motivation to finish other rooms in the house) and then the last two weeks have been a whirlwind of family.

I figure since we are on the edge of the country and on the way to absolutely nowhere, most of our friends will not be traveling this far north. So I'll give you a virtual house tour starting with the living room. Just pretend like we are drinking Iced Chai lattes in front of the fire and watching our children torture the dogs:)

The before:

And after a coat of paint and our furniture all moved in:

I decided the living room was not the place to experiment (not to mention my green couches limit my options) so I played it safe and painted the walls "Luminary Gold" by Sherwin Williams. It's a color I got from my mom--most of my parents house in South Carolina is painted this shade--and I've used it before so I knew exactly how it would turn out. Then I painted the trim "Clean and Crisp" by Kilz.
My real challenge was how to make the room feel smaller and cozy. I wanted to arrange the furniture without wasting too much space and still make use of the fireplace while simultaneously being able to watch TV. I didn't want a formal living room, so we put our TV in here.
The view from the foyer:And the view from the porch (you can see the dining room beyond--I haven't done a thing in there yet). I inherited this piano from my parents when they moved last summer. They stored it in Columbia so it was waiting for us when we moved there. It was built the same year as the house--1900--and fits perfectly in our new living room. My grandparents bought it in Germany for my mom when she was 10. It's the piano I learned to play on (as well as most of my siblings), and hopefully Skylar will too. My sister Nicole broke her arm playing it with her feet when she was 6. (If you know her, that won't surprise you in the least).

Making the curtains was my least favorite task. I have a thing about curtains. I can never find what I want in a store (at least not at a price I'm willing to pay) so I almost always make my own. Not because it's fun, but because I like my curtains to go all the way to the floor, and the cheapest way to get what I want is to do it myself. I also like to hang my curtains rods higher than the window, but in this case they were already hung and it wasn't worth changing them.

Usually I slap them up, but this time I decided to do it the right way and line them. Ugh. It took all of my free time (and some of my sleep) for 5 days to finish eight 9 foot panels. I loved the fabric sample in the store, but I kind of panicked when I hung them on the window and realized it was a whole lot of pattern. In the end I think it works because everything else in the room is solid colors. (The fabric is from Joann's, on sale for $6/yard).

Eventually we'd like to find a bigger rug, but for now the one we already have is better than nothing. We'll see how cold the floors are in the winter.

And that concludes the living room tour. All we need are a few friends on the couch, but we're still working on that one:)