Livingroom Make-over

From the day I bought this house, in 2003, the ceiling and walls in this old house have needed attention.

(Cracked plaster and paint on ceiling and walls)

(ceiling)

Our old 1966 wood-frame house has needed a good, over-all make over and the time has finally come...  I bought the house as-is, so it has beenup to me to do any updating and repairs, etc... I just never got around to doing aything about it, 'til now.  These are "Before" pics...

The "old living room"  (Before pic)

This is what the living room has generally looked like for the past 7.5 years.  I've rearranged a few times, but as you can see, the room is more of a rectangular shape and it's sortof hard to situate furniture with such an odd area to work with.  Now, I'm sure that one of HGTV's design stars could come in and totally move everything around in a way that I've never even thought of before but ...well, that's not likely to happen, so...  

(View from Front Door)
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First thing we do (and this is what started the whole thing) we pulled-up the filthy, stinky old carpet! (Can I get an Amen!??)  And we uncovered the original wood floors.  Why the previous owners ever covered them up is beyond us!  Sure, there's a few problem areas but, they sure are purdy!  Well, they will be, once we get 'em all cleaned-up and polished! ;)
This is our hero, Jimmy!  He gets all of the handyman stuff done around here for us, and then some!  He's awesome!!!

Here's the floor that was hiding under that hideous carpet!

And, so begins the scraping of the walls...  They were in desperate need of a makeover!

...Tatum even helped... When most kids easily get bored after 5 - 10 minutes, not my Tatum!  She was a hard worker!!

We scraped the ceiling and the walls for WEEKS!  (well, that's how long it took us, since I was only motivated to work on it, on the weekends)

Lola was a BIG helper, too!  She was there to OVER-SEE the entire project! :)

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OK, so for 7.5 years, I fought over what colors I would paint the living room... 'Never could settle on anything... Until it came right down to it, and we were ready to PAINT!  And I walked right up to it.  It was as if the color was calling my name... "Hey, Shelly!  Look!... Over here!  Pick me!  Pick ME!" (LOL)

And it was like angels singing, "Aaaaaaaaaah"... Tibetian Orange.

I must admit, the color freaked-me-out a bit, at first.  I didn't know if I liked it... It was WAY dark.  But, we kept painting...

Again, Tatum was more than willing to help... I didn't have to twist her arm at all!!

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Yea, so, the orange was too much for the entire room, I concluded.  I just couldn't see it on all four walls, so we went back to the paint store.  And, Voila! ~ We agreed on and picked-up a gallon of "Arizona".

We did two walls in the orange and two in the yellow.  It didn't take long to get used to the new colors!  Bright and vibrant ~ That's how I like it!  Jimmy, if he doesn't like it, doesn't say so... He just pretty much goes with the flow.  We sortof have an understanding... He's got say over the outside projects and I've got say over the inside!  ...'Cept the exterior paint colors... I'll definitely have a say in that! ;)

Ok, the walls are now painted.  The ceiling is painted ~ Oh, and we used an "antique white" instead of the traditional white, on the ceiling ~ So now what???

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