Living Room - Dining Room furnished TA DAH!

 Come in! 

Welcome to our living/dining room. 

Or the Grand Banquet Hall, as we jokingly called it when we first saw it with drywall up, because it looked like a very huge, long hall.  But now that it has furniture in it, it's not bad at all.  It's actually my favorite room!

When you walk in to our home, this is what you see from the foyer.

Keep in mind I have not put anything on the walls yet.  That's another story for another time. 

There were a few things I knew I wanted for this room.  One thing I did not want was green furniture!  I'm just tired of it.  I had green furniture in the other house all over the place.  HOWEVER....when your Mom asks you if you want this couch, because they are going to get rid of it....and you are just not up to making one more decision, even about furniture....

you go with the green, peeps!!!

And I have to say it is the most comfortable couch I have ever sat on, and bonus...it makes into a bed!

and double bonus...it matches this leather chair perfectly, that we bought off of my friend Leslie.  Our original thought was to put this chair in our bedroom, that looked huge without furniture in it...rooms have a way of doing that.

The other thing I knew I wanted was a piece of furniture in this corner by the table to set stuff on when entertaining.  (Pay no attention to the sewing machine on the floor.  I had pillows to make and I am not quite ready to put it away.)

And I also knew I wanted a sitting area. 

So here is where the fun began.  My friend Teresa came over one Friday around 2ish and did not leave until 11pm-ish!  You see, I have furniture and stuff stored in the basement, pole barn and garage from our other house.  Stuff I've collected for 20 years.  And in our other house, I had two living/dining rooms, and a sun room....so I had a lot of furniture.  However, I sold the couch and chair because I was SO TIRED of it! 

Teresa and I had this room full of different pieces of furniture,

 We would haul a truck load of stuff up, then take what didn't work to the pole barn,

moving stuff this way and that for hours....and we finally got it right!

Here is the sitting area with the covered cushions.

 

The idea with the pillows were to use a bit of green to match the furniture, but incorporate some pinks and blues.  Which are my favorite colors, and to give this furniture a cottage style.

 I have this theory that I've used for a long, long time.  You can incorporate any color with the colors God used to create the earth.  Think about it.... browns (dirt, trees), greens (leaves, grass, bushes) blues/whites (sky).  What color does not go with brown, green, blue, white?

I think the table to the right needs a lamp. 

As soon as I dig through some of the boxes....

 One thing I always visualized by the couch was a nice big grand buffet.  But here's the thing...this blue piece of furniture was our tv stand for awhile at our other house, and I always loved it.  And this upper piece of shelves I bought at an auction (which was my friend Leslie's stuff) and those two pieces on top of each other looked great.  But, by hanging the shelves on the wall, it gave me more 'countertop' space to put stuff on while entertaining.  I don't need a grand buffet!

(keep in mind the decorating is not finished.  Maybe this winter)

Dave ordered these shutters from Lowes.com 

 Another thing I wanted was a pathway from the foyer to the den (or what Mom calls the library-which is through the French doors)  I did not want to have to weave my way through furniture to get from one room to the other. 

I know...the pics look the same.  I just couldn't decide.

So here is the finished room from one end...standing in the den.

Here is the view from the couch...

 or just standing at the window looking out...

Here is the view from the door that leads to the porch. 

This door.... 

This porch... 

I'm a summer person and I like a lot of light.

You can see why this is my favorite room in the house.

Cindy

PS.  I also want to thank my sister Theresa, for helping me move the table up from the basement and the leather chair out of the den.  They were heavy!  We also moved a smaller buffet type of furniture out of the den into the foyer.  Dave had a hernia, and he couldn't lift without being in severe pain.  Thank you sister! 

Living/Dining Room TA DAH!

So...I didn't want to start on this room until after Easter.  We had just finished the mudroom, and office area, and we were having Easter at our house.  So, we waited until the first of April and got busy.

 

First we cleaned out the room really well.

And we decided to start with the ceiling.  We had a hard time trying to decide how we were going to paint these tin ceiling pieces.  I went to Sherwin Williams and they said I would need paint and primer.  We would also need a spray gun.  The other option was spray paint that had paint and primer in the same can, but what a mess.  And how many cases of cans would we need?  When I found out that I was going to have to buy a gallon and a half of both paint and primer, we decided to go with the spray. It would be cheaper.  So Dave covered the windows in the upstairs bedroom, and he would spray about ten pieces a day.  He had just enough room to lay out ten pieces to dry.  So, we would also hang about ten pieces a day.  I would hold them up while Dave nailed each piece in the ceiling.  And this was the first few pieces we hung, and realized we didn't lay them out quite right on the ceiling, so we took them down and started over.

Perfect!

We also had a hard time deciding how to lay out the ceiling.  There were so many fillers and trims and cornice and crown molding pieces to choose from.   Every time we went into an old building we were looking to see if they had tin ceiling and how they did it.  I was at a Downton Abbey party and I saw the ceiling trim and that was it!  Simple

awwwww

Boo Boo's happen!

So here's one TA DAH!  The ceiling, which I think turned out great.

 

 Now, during all of this ceiling hanging work, I was also painting lots and lots and lots of trim and wood pieces.

 

And this is just a small amount of the trim and pieces that I painted.  If you know me personally, you know I was tired of painting these pieces of trim...every...single...night.

 Next, we started on the floor.  Every evening I would lay out several rows of floor while Dave was at work, then the next morning he would get up and nail those rows of flooring down.

Dixie had to check out the floor. 

You can see in the below picture that we had to wear earplugs the whole time.  The air compressor and nailing gun are loud.

almost finished....and you can see we put cardboard down to cover the freshly laid floor from paint because I....was....still....painting....trim....pieces........still......still.......still......

Floor finished!  Need to put trim down and finish window and door trim.

TAA DAH!!!!  Here it is peeps!!!!!

My favorite room!!!
I can't wait to show you the furniture lay out.  It turned out great!

Cindy