The Living Room Chronicles. Step 1: Move In, Hang Art

Welcome back to The Living Room Chronicles! 

A couple of weeks ago I introduced you to the living room we met when we bought our current house. 

Today, I am going to take you through Step 1: Move in. Put in whatever furniture we had. Hang art.

My mom came to visit us not long after we moved into our house. Apparently, I had not taken any photos of our house after we moved in. Luckily, my mom takes everyday photos like we are at Disneyland. It was around Easter and she had an egg hunt for Scott and I. That is why there are pillows thrown all over the place. The floor is super messy because we were in the process of ripping up that carpet. The random dog is named Lawrence. He is my brother-in-law and sister-in-law's dog.

Look at that beautiful Camellia tree!

I would rather not have shown you this flattering "throw candy in my mouth" photo. But it is the only one I could find that really showed you this side of the living room. 

This was all still in the process of being set up. We were still in the "pile everything into a room and try to make it work" phase. 

Here is Grandmama hanging out with Lawrence. 

Easter Egg Hunt time! 

After this initial stage, we:

• changed the gross carpet to bamboo flooring
• hung photos and art
• added curtains
• decorative pillows
• painted the console table and made it a "skeleton table"
• got a more appropriately sized coffee table
• added some floor cushions

We have 6 more steps to get us to the finished product. But, let's go ahead and take a look.

The After Photos!!!

Now, let's talk about the steps that got us there!

7 Step-Diddy-Do-Das for you:

Step 1: Move in. Put in whatever furniture we had. Hang art.

Step 2: The Craigslist deal of a lifetime

Step 3: New coffee table

Step 4: DIY remote control holder. A tiny, tiny step, but we are still calling it one.

Step 5: Should we change out the fireplace?

Step 6: The plant table and the plants

Step 7: Finishing touches

A New Chair For Cora

Scott's parents gave us an old child sized rocking chair that used to belong to Scott's grandparents. I love it and I knew Cora would love it. It just needed some TREAT.YO.SELF. fixing up love by my good bud, Mrs. Spray Paint.

We also have some wonderful adult sized rocking chairs and a PORCH SWING from Scott's grandparents. We never put the porch swing up in this house which was a big mistake. That thing is awesome.

Here is a photo of my lovely sister and I enjoying it at my last house back in the ol' decade of 00s. What do you call that decade? The choices will be presented in list form below.

• The Aughts (Scott's name for them)
• Double Oh Agents
• The First 10 Years of Awesomeness
• Getting Ready for 90 More Years
• The Zero Heroes
• T Minus 99

I had a throw a random list in for you. None of those titles are really grabbing me. This list may have to make a reappearance after some time with the think tank.

One more random thing. Look at the crazy storm that was rearing its' ugly head while we sat in that fancy swing.

OK back to the the ROCKING party!

Here I am carving a duck pumpkin for Halloween back in The Aughts. Check out those awesome rockers in the background. 

Those are the chairs that used to live with the porch swing, and our buddy, "lil porch swing" at Scott's grandparent's house.

I did a little spray painting with my favorite shade of green and here is how she turned out.

Perfect and I didn't even have to break out the sand paper.

Here is Cora enjoying her new chair. 

I had been outside working on a little painting project and I came inside to this scene. Scott was playing the ukulele and Cora was hitting/ eating her sticks. It was one of the cutest things I have ever seen.

Dining Room Oak Party

Oak cabinets and I are not really pals. You may have figured that out from the post that I wrote about ugly 80s cabinets (the ones with the good lookin' oak trim). The beautiful, wonderful house that I moved into four and a half years ago came flying some serious oak cabinets! We will start our oak tour in the dining room. It came equipped with a sweet wet bar straight from the 70s with all the oak you could ask for.  The top was a strange, orange vomit color with random swirls.

Hello my new pal Glidden Gripper.  It is a primer that you use on slick surfaces and it really grips.

• I lightly sanded the cabinets
• Painted on the Gripper
• Then painted black over the Gripper

Now, it is a lovely home for my board games.

The other big change in the dining room was changing out the spot lighting used for the previous owner's sword collection to a more appropriate chandelier.

I found a chandelier that I loved. The only problem was that it only came in bronze. So, I spray painted it black.

I bought the table from my favorite store- Craig's List.  It was painted a similar green to my walls.  So, I primed and painted away.

Then I added three green table runners (my mother in law had sewn a ton of these for my wedding and I was happy to reuse them) topped with three bamboo table runners, and some cool napkins from Target.  I bought a couple extra napkins and framed and matted them because I loved the pattern so much.

The black and white art was a construction DIY. I was painting a baseboard and I had it resting on my knees. It kept leaving long white stripes on my jeans. I do not like waste but I do like random lines on canvas. So I grabbed a  few canvases and quickly painted them black. Then I laid the baseboard on top of the canvas and let the mess I was making on my jeans turn into art.

I hung the art on the wall and decided it needed a little something else. So, I painted a rectangle of green that was a couple shades darker than the wall color and hung the art back up. Tada! Instant framing!

My mother in law sewed the valance for me out of a shower curtain.

And that, my friends, is what I call the dining room oak party!