The Living Room Chronicles: Step 5: The Fireplace

Yes, this is about to happen again. I am about to show you how I spent WAY too much time with the program Paint a few years ago. Pretty much anytime you notice that I have altered a photo in anyway it is through the super high-tech program, Microsoft Paint, that comes with every computer and most people don't even open.

This time, I was doctoring up photos of living room potential. I drew out a few floor plans and then I went crazy drawing different plans for our fireplace.

You had better believe that I am not going to let all of my hard work on Paint go to waste... no no no! I am going to share it with you fine folks.

Our living room is super duper long. So, trying to figure out a furniture arrangement was not the easiest thing in the world. I came up with a few choices that would work with the new fireplace situation. Do you want to take a look at a couple of them? 

I thought so!

Things are probably only going to get more interesting from here. So, buckle up!

Who likes that squirrel hanging out in my window?

Ohhhh I learned how to take the sea legs off my drawings and straighten things up.

And get ready for these... things get a little fancy!

It isn't over yet! I took a photo I found and stuck my fireplace idea in.

Which one did we choose?

None of them! We ended up taking so long with the master bathroom remodel that we just left the fireplace alone. Also, Scott and I were both somewhat indifferent about whether or not to change out the stone wall. Some people thought it would be a crime to get rid of it. Since we weren't 100% we just left it as is.

But things have definitely changed since the last time we took a look at this green machine. It turned cream! It has officially been de-funkyed. No more lovely Asparagus Green by Behr.

Now, it is "cut a chunk out from behind the refrigerator and have Home Depot paint match that color because I ran out of paint and like a dummy I didn't keep the paint can." Have you ever head of that color? It is a lovely one.

The blue stuff around the fireplace is painter's tape. And, the green patch will eventually become cream colored.

We are still trying to decide if the trim around the fireplace should be white or the color of the wall. What do you think?

Next time I have a completely fascinating post like this I will save it until the weekend, but give me a break- we have 3 days left until photos are taken for our house listing. 

Just 2 steps left until we can check this Chronicle off the list!

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

Step 2: The Craigslist deal of a lifetime. New Sectional Sofa.

Step 3: New coffee table (Step 3 Introduction found here)

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

In case you can't wait the 3 steps we have left to see the finished product. Here it is:

It is birthday season!!! Happy Birthday to my GRANDMA and to Suzan!

I hope you two have spectacular birthdays!!!

ps I was still learning how to dye my hair when this photo was taken... hence the reason for the orange hair.

The Living Room Chronicles:Step 3: New Coffee Table

Heyyyyy you crazy people! I knew you couldn't stay away from the world of coffee tables and pallets!

If you remember correctly, 2 living room posts ago, I showed you the best Craigslist deal this side of the Mississippi River! After my new sofa showed up I knew I was in need of a new coffee table.  The only ones that I could find to fit the space were black or white and I really wanted a wooden coffee table. I tried to think of ways I could make a coffee table myself, but you can't really use a coffee table made out of cardboard and I couldn't figure out a way to make one out of old kitchen cabinets. So, I turned to the most logical thing I could think of... shipping pallets. They were almost exactly the same width I wanted. 

So, I went on Craigslist and sure enough someone was selling them. He also happened to be selling them not far from my favorite fabric store (Mary Jo's) and right around the corner from the only drive in movie theater near Charlotte. Did you put together what happened next? I talked Scott into turning the pallet party into a fun trip.

When we went to pick up the pallets I went a little overboard and bought as many as would fit in the car. The wood was pretty unique looking to me and I figured I could use them for all sorts of weird projects. We stopped and picked up some lovely fabric and then headed to the drive in movies in totally packed car that smelled like a lumber yard. 

When we got there we realized that we could not recline our seats even the slightest. Who wants to watch a double feature sitting as straight backed as you possibly can. So, with all of our new drive-in neighbors watching and secretly judging us we unloaded pallets until we could recline a little.  Then we had to prop a pallet against the back door so the trunk wouldn't be up the whole time (that would have been against drive in rules). The whole thing was pretty awesome.

The next day I started playing around with how I was going to put this beautiful table together.  

I was trying to keep it simple. But he said he would help me turn it into a legitimate table. I gave him a drawing of what I was hoping for and sent him home with some pallets. 

Apparently the wood was really dry and the nails that were used to keep the pallets together were rim shank nails (not good if you are trying to get them out and keep the wood in good condition). Because of this he ended up using most of my pallets just to get the necessary wood out of them. It turns out that my simple plan changed about 100 times and required him to completely take apart the pallets and rebuild them. It would have made a lot more sense just to buy new wood. I bought a cedar mail post to use for the legs. My awesome handy man spent many frustrating hours and finally returned with my very unique new coffee table!

I sanded it, stained it and polyurathaned it and put it in the living room.  It was perfect.  It was better than what I had envisioned!

Now, you can check out that pretty pallet paradise in its new home:

The 7 Steps That Made My Living Room:

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 3 Introduction found here)

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

The Living Room Chronicles: Introduction to Step 3: New Coffee Table

Things are getting crazy around here again. It's Thursday and there is a post up! Let's just call this an introductory post. I want to prepare you for the awesomeness that is going to happen in tomorrow's post. I will just tell you that it involves a car packed full of shipping pallets at the drive-in movies about 5 years ago.

I was in the market for a new coffee table and I went looking high and low to find one. But, it turned out that finding a reasonably priced 36" x 36" wooden coffee table was impossible.

I checked out a dozen or more thrift stores in the area and went to town with Google.
The closest thing that my Google-mania produced was an Ikea coffee table that was just the right size, but only came in white or black. It is now on sale for only $99.99!

Ikea has since come out with this beauty of a coffee table for $199

Here are the rest of the coffee tables I found that inspired what I came up with and will reveal tomorrow. Or... surprise ruiner... you could just check out the after photos that I posted at the end of this post. Remember that this was before the days of a Pinterest-infested world so the inspiration pictures were pretty stinkin' hard to come by!

This is before the day that the world decided to use shipping pallets to make every single piece of furniture in the world. So, I thought I was pretty clever coming up with the idea of stacking a few pallets on top of each other to make a coffee table. I don't know how to make furniture (despite the awesome benches that my BFF Mali and I made in about 5th grade. You had to sit on them at just the right angle so they didn't collapse). So, I consulted with my Handy Man Extraordinaire. He thought I was more than a little bit crazy, but he agreed to do the job. 

I will continue this thrilling saga tomorrow!

Do you want to check out all of The Living Room Chronicles steps?

Here you go!

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 3 Introduction found here)

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

The Living Room Chronicles: Step 2: Craigslist Deal Of A Lifetime

Welcome back to The Living Room Chronicles!

I will keep you enticed by telling you a story about a crazy deal from Senor Craigslist.

Actually, this isn't just a crazy deal from Craigslist. This is Step 2: THE CRAIGSLIST DEAL OF A LIFETIME. I may be exaggerating just a bit, but it was a pretty darn good deal.

OK, follow me here. It gets a little tricky.

Charlotte became my home almost 7 years ago.  I moved into an old duplex in an awesome part of town with my husband to be and his roommate.  At the time, they had an orange corduroy couch with wood paneling.  As you might imagine, it was, by far, the ugliest couch I have ever seen. And, to top it off, it sagged like you wouldn't believe.  Lucky for me, he had a matching arm chair. When you sat in it, it would explode in every direction and practically throw you off the back of it.  There were permanent grease stains where your head goes on both pieces of furniture.

It had to go... everyone knew it.

So, one fortunate day I was looking on Craigslist and came across these two couches for $100 total!  I called immediately and went to pick them up that night.

Here's a Christmas photo from 2007. The couch Scott is sitting on is one of the two welcome, non-grease-stained additions.

Here they are after we set them up in our current house.

They were only a few years old and didn't have any major stains or tears.  

We immediately threw out the arm chair and listed the wood paneled couch on Craigslist.  Someone came and bought it for $85.  It was insane.  I wish I had a photo of this couch.  It is hard to believe that something that ugly and gross existed. It was even harder to believe that someone else would want to own it.  

Fast forward 2 years.  I decided it was time to upgrade our couches.  I will spare you the spreadsheets, templates and ridiculous amount of research that I did to finally land on a sectional made by Ikea. 

Here is our Karlstad sectional configuration. I found this photo from my Google image searches. It was taken at an Ikea showroom.

I did a lot of measuring and remeasuring- there was definitely a template or two drawn. 

In the end, ol' Karlstad the sectional fit perfectly into the living room. No exaggeration... if it had been a quarter of an inch bigger it wouldn't have fit. So, it was time for my Craigslist couches to hit the hay.  

I listed them at $300 total. That was $200 more than I paid, but I was pretty sure I could sell it for that. I also said that if it was picked up that day I would sell them for $250. The emails started coming in! One lady went crazy for them. The only problem was that she said she got paid the next day and wouldn't be able to give me cash until then.  Are you starting to think that this might be turning into one of those Nigerian scams where you get a bizarrely written email telling you how much they love your item. And that if you send them some money they will pay double what you're asking. It's not.

So, back to the story. I was willing to wait a day for her to pick them up. She asked if I would be interested in a trade.  Let me tell you... I am ALWAYS interested in a trade. She could have offered me a pair of size 5 roller blades with a wheel missing and I would have considered it. Luckily, she had just traded her last pair of 2 wheeled roller blades. So, she offered me $100 cash and her 32" HD flat screen that was only a year old. Her husband worked for a Best Buy type store and got a good deal on it. As fate had it, I had just started looking for a flat screen about that size or smaller for my bedroom. She arrived, made the trade. And we were both very happy with the deal. A deal had been made!

If you think about it... I had two nice sofas for about 3 years for free and got a free TV out of it!

Quite the Craigslist deal!

Here is my new Ikea sectional.

The old coffee table didn't fit. That is why Step 3 is a new coffee table!

And now, I will share the After Photos with you.

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

7 Step Aerobic Steparinos 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