Living Room Remixed

Over Memorial Day weekend Ang and I decided to renovate the living room of our new place.  8 days and several working hours later - we learned that we highly overestimated how quickly we could get it done and also underestimated the cost.  After numerous trips to the hardware store and many a drive-through, we finally finished the remix this past weekend.  Here is the transformation to J+A steeze in picture form:

BEFORE

DURING

The house was flipped back in 2007.  They did several things well (i.e. kitchen, rewired whole house, new bathrooms) - but there were a few things Ang and I were left scratching our heads at.  Specifically, we didn't understand why they would paint over the exposed wood beams in the living and dining rooms.  That was the first obstacle we decided to tackle.  In the pictures above you will notice the beams are painted a dark brown.  We stripped the paint (freaking messy by the way) and stained the wood to it's natural color.

The next step in the process was to paint.  We felt like the color scheme when we moved in was too "dirty" feeling.  The majority of the walls were a light brown and the accent wall was a dirty brown.  The colors really made the room feel a lot smaller.  We wanted to open up and brighten the room.  We painted the major walls all white and chose a mid-gray for the accent wall.  We love the cleanliness of the look and it really does make the room feel a lot bigger.

First round of paint

Second round of paint

Zooey wondering what the heck is going on

FINISHED PRODUCT

In addition to painting the main walls white and the accent wall gray, we also changed out the nasty track lighting with this cool overhead bell-shaped light.   We've been on the lookout for a couch that fits the layout of the room as well as our steeze at a reasonable cost, but we were striking out left and right. While perusing the local Ikea (if you couldn't tell already we have been doing a lot of shopping at Ikea) our eye caught this gem of a couch.  Seriously, it fits the room and matches our color approach perfectly.  

We tried opening up the room even more by adding the wall mirror.  Also, big props to our buddy Josh Graham for the amazing owl painting. There are obviously a lot of other things we changed with the room and a few other things we would still like to do, but it feels great to have completed this project and start making this place our own.