Living Room Before/After

 

 

Back when we were looking to buy a house(one of my favorite things to do). We looked online at a ton of homes in our area. We went several days with our terrific realtor looking at the ones that we thought that we would like. One day she said I have this home that I think would be great for you guys. Newly renovated, original hard wood floors. But then there was this...

 

 

 

Please excuse the poor photo quality, I'm pretty sure this is a photo of a photo. But This right here is one of the reasons why we didn't even have this house as an option to look at because the words out of my mouth was "What would you even do with this room". But trusting our realtor we went, we looked, and loved this house.

 

So here is the story of the ugly duckling room.

 

 

 

The Plan for this room did not all come together at once. It was definitely a work in progress for awhile.

 But here are some tips on how to:

 

One thing was the awful flooring. And yes I understand that It could be falling apart and that would be worse but this carpet was stained and ripped. The brick is ugly, just look at it, Scrub it all you want and it looks filthy.

So we ripped all of the carpet out (Heavy! and What a mess!) We researched the plywood flooring and then got to it. The subfloor is concrete. So we had to use a lot of liquid nail along with drilling into the concrete to make this work. And then with sanding (a lot) and staining, and sealing we have pretty cool unique looking wood floors. I actually love them. The photos of this process are currently lost. . . somewhere. Maybe one day I will come across those for a floor tutorial for you.

The brick on the flooring I painted and then hand painted the grout lines in. This is probably one of my favorite things about this room. After painting I did add on a poly top coat and it has held up very well.  Along with the brick floor, I also painted the brick wall, this I painted all white. It took several coats because the brick just really sucks up the paint.

 

 

Again another blurry picture below but check out the difference that this made. My dad came over one day and he helped me with my cabinets. We used the existing cabinets building new doors for them. He also gave me some awesome built in shelving, that are adjustable! Double score on that one.

 

 

 

But check out that difference!!

And here you have it. My now favorite room in my house that was once the room I disliked the most. I love all of the color in here and how bright it is.