Throw Back Thursday - Living & Dining Room Style!

I had so much fun digging through old photos of our living room's evolution looking for an early fireplace photo that I thought I'd come back this week and take you all on a magical journey through time.

Let's start here with the living room when Adam first moved in.

And the dining room.

After a couple months Adam coerced a couple of friends to come over and help him remove 3-4 layers of wall paper that had been painted over, and over.

Only to discover that much of the plaster was cracked and would need repairing.

So Adam did what any first-time home owner would do - he gutted the living room.

First came the plaster.

Then the lath.

Then he made the decision to rip out the arch between the living and dining room in favor of installing built-ins in its place. This is what it looked like when I met him and saw the house for the first time before the new windows were installed.

Here's me, not much later, over my shock and pitching in.

Adam updated the electrical - adding high-end can lights to the living room (which I was highly skeptical of but am so grateful for), some accent lighting, and AV wiring before hiring out the task of sheet-rocking. 

Xia was not a huge help.

Adam installed the new trim with the help of another friend who also constructed the builtins both either side of the fire place and then between the living and dining rooms.

There will always be room for ongoing improvements (update the fireplace again? Check.)

But for the time being it feels mostly finished. Though there are some sections of trim in the dining room that need to be painted or touched up and the trim on the stairs needs to be finished.

Initially I thought we might miss the arch between these two rooms but I'm glad Adam went the route he did because of how open it makes those front rooms feel - not to mention the giant bonus of all the storage added.

So that's where we're at. What started as a simple "remove wallpaper" project turned into an all-out renovation, which was great for installing things like insulation, new lighting, and wiring the TV flush with the wall, but I think it was more work than Adam had initially thought he'd put into these rooms. It'll be interesting to see how we tackle our next home and what projects we choose to do first and how extensive of a remodel we'll take on.

In the mean time we'll be here, reveling in these before and afters...

                   

What's the largest project you've taken on in your home? Was it your first project or did you live in your home for a time before taking the plunge? What would you have done differently or the same?

Too Hot to Handle

It's hot. Like H-O-T hot. Which means the last few days have found me inside, reveling in the air-conditioning, pouring over my favorite design blogs and thinking to myself, "you're overdue for a blog post." And what stares back at me as I sit on our couch but our gaping dark hole of a fireplace. The red fireplace I've been threatening to paint for the last six months. It's the focal point of our living room and it's where light goes to die.

Don't get me wrong, it's leaps and bounds better than it was when Adam bought the house and the previous owner's passion for all things pink and mint green was still going strong...

If this were our forever home I think we'd sit down and brainstorm a plan to eventually reface this guy as there are no fewer than three different textures of manufactured stone going on here - from the Rockies to the plains to the beach after a rain storm - but we wanted to do this quickly and on a budget. In trying to keep with the traditional craftsman vibe we chose to paint the stone facade a deep brick red and at first we loved it because it was such an improvement. But eventually I began to feel like it was sucking all the light from the room, and being as our living room is in the northeast corner of our house with hedges outside the largest windows, we could use all the light love we can get. Then when we added the new reclaimed-wood mantle that Adam built it became a little too "cabin cozy" for me. The pine cones and the owl don't help, I know.

The built-ins flanking the fireplace are painted the same color as the trim throughout the better part of our house and I had most of a gallon left over from when we did the trim in our bedroom.

It took me two coats to complete and because of the "terrain" of some of the stones I had to apply my paint pretty thick to get into all the crevices, which led to some drips. I've learned that often times it's best to let a drip dry completely and pop it off with a straight blade later rather than to try and wipe it away, especially in hard-to-reach areas like under these bricks.

I'm in love! Friends, this thing literally bounces light back at you! I'm so happy with the result and I hope Adam is too (I pulled this off while he's been at work - danger.)

There's just something about the way the mantle pops off the white stone - it makes a bolder, cleaner statement. Now to scrub the hearth and update the decor up top.

We still have some trim work to iron out around the sides but for the time being the paint job cleans that area up substantially.

And in honor of #throwbackthursday...

What do you have in the way of throw back Thursday? Any awesome shots from your home before you started working on it? Or midway through a big project?