Monday, April 8, 2013

living room progress- spring update {before and after}

Isn't it so weird how good weather makes you want to shake everything out and sweep underneath the couch? {or wait, maybe it's just pregnancy that does that for me... no weather can make you want to clean, right? ;) }.

Either way, for some strange reason, I was feeling motivated to do some spring cleaning and found myself rearranging the living room Friday afternoon. :)

Even though we finished the living room more than 1.5 years ago, like every room in our house, it's always changing. :) I find something at GW to add in, or move or sell a piece of furniture we don't love or use. I'm a chronic furniture re-arranger.  I've been consistently rearranging my rooms since 1987- my mom can vouch for that one! I think it should totally count as a special gift/talent of some kind. :)

So here's what we started with in the fall/winter of 2011- this was my favorite room redo in the house! Everything but the rug, the 118 inch Ikea curtains, and one lamp was purchased used, thrifted, or repurposed from our old house. :)


The next year, I found this huge rug on clearance at Target, as well as a gray slipcover from Ikea {after the great white slipcover/pink sharpie incident of 2012}, added a couple of new cheap pillow covers, moved some old art I had around, and it totally changed up the room! So for a while, our living room looked like this:


It looks so different to me, but it was really just three major swaps here: pillows, slipcovers, and the rug. We also moved our original gray rug back to the nursery room for the baby, so it's still being used for the moment. :) I usually try to keep close to the same amount of money invested in the room by buying and selling our old stuff as we don't use it, and replacing it with used or cheap things that are the same amount.

This year, I decided to sell the red rug and found a different one at Pottery Barn for the same price as the Target one! :) Then I changed the gray slipcovers out again for the old white ones {bleach did the trick!}. I'm not finished {well, in my head, anyway}, but here's what it looks like now! :) 


Again with the same swaps...slipcover, rug, pillow covers. :) Super easy to swap them out, but they always make a big change! 

I think I want to exchange the placement of the door {it's our old kitchen door!} with the scroll art and maybe paint the scroll art deep blue or coral... and I have some new homemade art to put between the curtains that I haven't quite finished yet. 

I have a few more ideas too- I'm thinking about painting a few things, but I'm really happy with a few little changes! 

I ordered some awesome pillows that go with everything but they were such a good price, I might resell them instead of keeping them. Or maybe I can pay for one by selling the other one... ;)

It's been fun to swap out new things with the old this year for a small cost! It was so exciting to see how a little bit of work changes everything up! :)

I joked Friday that after spring cleaning at my house, one side of the living room looks amazing... then you turn around and see this behind you:


Apparently, I'm a spring cleaning piler. It all eventually got picked up too- so for the moment, my living room is kind of clean! And we'll see if we have any great sharpie incidents with the slipcovers back on again. Let's hope not! ;)

Are you a cleaning-piler or do you put everything away as you pull it out? I'm curious! :D

Should I move the door? What do you think about the symmetry there?

Why can I ever only find one child flip-flop at a time? And speaking of symmetry, why can't they make kid footwear left/right universal like gloves? {it could be the next best invention, I tell you}.

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