I realized I've been holding out on everyone.  We've been living in our house almost exactly a year now and I've neglected to show some after photos.  When I first started posting I thought I would wait until the rooms were completely finished before I would post full room shots, but let's be honest, when is a room ever completely finished.  Whether it's switching out some art, or restyling a side table, my rooms are in constant evolution.

When we moved in, I tried to focus on decorating the rooms we used the most, like our bedroom and living room.  Hmm, that sounds like all we do is sleep and watch TV.  Okay, so maybe the rooms that would get the most action, okay, that just sounds worse.  Since we knew we wouldn't be renovating the kitchen or bathroom anytime soon without winning the lottery, I focused on the next couple of rooms that we used the most.  There, that sounds better.  

While I'm constantly tweaking little things around the room, for the most part the living room is complete.  I asked to borrow our friend's DSLR camera, (something I've been wanting for myself for a while - hint, hint Mike) and thought what better time to take some 'After' shots of the living room.

When Mike and I bought the house, I didn't know I'd be documenting everything so I only have one before picture, but it's still a doozy:


The room is about 20' long by 10' wide, with 9' ceilings, so it's a pretty nice size room.  The previous owner's paint choices were not doing anything for it though.  The dark gray stripe around the room actually made the high ceilings feel much lower and the extra thinner dark stripe chopped up the wall even more.  And, let's not even begin to talk about the actual quality of those stripes.  Hours were spent sanding the thick gloopy paint along the edges of the stripes, just to primer over to get a smooth finish.

Besides the paint, we had all the floors refinished (you can kinda see a semi-before picture of the other side of the room too) and replaced the door.  And, I obviously burned all the old window dressings. 

We already had all the furniture from our townhouse, and after repainting my original choice of color to gray and adding a few details like our picture ledges and paint swatch art, the room has come together pretty easily.  Although I still feel the room is a little...um, gray.  I'm hoping to add some more colorful accessories to brighten it up.

Here is the view from the dining room, (how come my 8 foot couch looks so small?):


And looking at the front door from the stairs:


And the opposite side, from the front door:


And, a close up of my new favorite spot in the living room: