Hello again! I hope you enjoyed my last post with our Downstairs Hallway reveal. Thank you for your nice comments! Now that things are finally moving a bit more quickly around here—at least for awhile—let’s jump right back in for the promised Living Room Reveal.
Since many of us like to get our bearings when we first enter a home, we’ll start with the diagram I shared last time. Today, let’s pretend you walked up onto our big ol’ farmhouse (wraparound!) porch, rang the twist-to-ring doorbell, and stepped inside our home. The Living Room is on your right.
As always, I like to show you where we began before sharing with you the rest of the story.
If you’re thinking this “before” picture looks like a dining room, you would be correct. The room was, in fact, the dining room for (I suppose) all previous owners. But the last owners added a pool at the back of the house, and now the natural access to outdoor living space is on the opposite side. The obvious answer (since the Kitchen needed a complete overhaul) was to flip the four rooms on the first floor.
To improve the function of our old house, the old dining room would become our new Living Room.
But that didn’t happen overnight!
At least 6 layers of old wallpaper with at least 3 different colors in between were removed from this room.
Every now and then a large enough section of pattern would show its face!
The original windows were removed in the 1960s and replaced with aluminum ones in a style and size totally inappropriate for the house.
See the repairs at the top and bottom of the new window? That was our clue to the size of the original windows—and our cue to remove the “new” framing and prepare to go backwards to what would have been there (as seen in the diagram).
We have an amazing craftsman in our county who built new windows for us, and on a super cold day in November 2020, the three of us worked together to remove the old windows and install the new ones.
Somewhere along the way, the beautiful old heart pine floors were refinished, too.
And then we lived with partial progress for a long time.
Finally the week arrived when we unloaded all of the heavy furniture, moved everything to the center of the room, and covered it with plastic. The painter was coming!
After what seemed like yet another eternity, things slowly started coming together.
That curtain is temporarily blocking off a pass-through to the recently demo-ed Den.
Look at Renaissance Man’s gorgeous ferns! (Click the picture to see how you can have them, too!)
The wall color is the same as the background color in the Entry Hall wallpaper.
There are still a few things on the punch list for this room:
- Replace outlets and switches Yes, of course that should have already been done. Sometimes things slip past us!
- Tile the fireplace
- Window treatments For now, we’re just blocking the strong west sun!
- Wall decor
But today we celebrate the progress!
Some of you figured it out in my Downstairs Hallway post: Renaissance Man and I love BIG antique furniture!
Next time, I’ll show you the Dining Room—but I need to do a little playing in the dishes before then. See you soon!
Beautiful! How lucky you are to have a talented local craftsman to build your windows! They add so much character back to the room and the exterior, too, I’m sure!
Hi, Megan. Yes, we are VERY fortunate to have Butch Griffin Restoration nearby! He is meticulous and fast and great to work with. As you know, our “new” windows definitely transformed the entire feel of this (and the dining) room—and, yes, the front of the house!
Love the wall color! That and the new old windows make the room. After all is said and done, my friend, I think you found the perfect house to indulge your big furniture love. can’t wait to see in person!!
Thanks, my friend. I can’t wait for you to see it in person, too!
What amazing restoration you are doing! It really looks so much better with the authenticity of the original home’s intended bones. Those ferns are amazing. My son-in-law rigged up something similar for their porch flower baskets. 🙂