From This to That : Living Room Edition

We had the opportunity to live in a parsonage house built in the 1940’s that was a really great home in a beautiful historical neighborhood, but had not been properly maintained in years. There were so many issues with it, like the fact that the bathroom sink was leaking into an electrical closet, someone had caught an outlet on fire but withheld that information and oh, we had a family (thousands) of spiders living in the washing machine, yeah... BUT I really loved the house and was given permission to spruce it up, so I did! The space I feel like I put little effort into, but had a big reward, was the living room. The living room is where my family lives. Yes, living room. Some people might put more into a bedroom or the kitchen, but really the space that I feel like has to be together or it just isn't a home is the living room.

When we did a walk through of the house there were literally three couches and some chairs shoved into this space. There was so much in it that I really had no idea the was a fireplace in the space! It was very dark, very dirty, and just a little scary. Once we moved all the furniture (to the side of the road) out and removed the ac unit from the window, we saw the fireplace and the huge open windows that let in so much light and immediately brightened the space.

When I saw the fireplace I knew it needed something more. I thought about creating shelving next to the fireplace and making it all feel “built in”, but that was more work than I was willing to do. Instead I built a hollow mantel so that I could mount our TV above and run all the cables through so they wouldn't show. I also knew that I wanted to paint the brick black. Yup, black. I have nothing against brick and love a good brick fireplace, but I sincerely disliked the red brick and tile on this thing.

The last issue with this fireplace was that it didn't work. It’s a lot of with to keep up fireplaces and we really had no intentions of wanting a fireplace, so we didn't look into fixing it, BUT what did need fixed was the metal plate blocking the cold draft from coming through. I thought about just buying a fireplace cover or grate and putting it in front, but it still wouldn't have hid the hideous piece of metal. So I decided to cover it! I had a friend of ours grab wood from their families cabin site that I then cut down in various thickness. I didn't want it to all be one thickness and very copy and pasted. I wanted it to feel more sporadic and natural. I didn't even cut the bark off! I did spray the wood down with neem oil and other more natural insecticides to kill and bugs that might be living inside.

And that was the extent of the living room makeover! I did replace the old light fixture with a woven one I found at a friend's shop and changed out the dark gray curtains with light beige ones, but once I made over the fireplace it really made over the room. It no longer felt like a dark dinghy living room, but a bright refreshed one!

I would say if you have a problem room that you're just not satisfied with, you might not have to redo the entire room. It might just take redoing a main focal point in the room or adding one in. You could also change up a simple light fixture to make it more of a statement. I bought one 4’x8’ plywood sheet and a gallon of black paint to really refresh this space and it was so easy and it made it feel like home.

I really loved this room at all hours and angles!