We moved into our new home in May of last year. When we bought our house, we thought the wall colors and all was just our style, and couldn't be happier.
And then we moved in all of our stuff. We realized the beige and tan colors and greenish-brown trim that we either hadn't noticed or hadn't cared about were going to start bothering us soon. We noticed that the living room is north-facing and doesn't get a lot of light. We noticed that the stairwell railings and spindles were outdated, ugly, and even a little wobbly. This is not a criticism (exactly) of the previous owner, she really did a nice job on a lot of the things she did around the house. But she had more of a nice, romantic, elegant style, and when we started wanting to pin up our kids' tacky pictures on the walls, they didn't quite fit into the house's elegance.
So we set about making it our own! A little younger and hipper, more modern, and more kid- and light-friendly.
1. First off was the dining room wall. We painted it from beige to blue, and eventually added a decoratative plate mural.
Before:
After:
And one picture for in-between, because it's kinda fun:
2. Next, our beautiful south-facing dining room needed to bring in more light, and be a fun, cheery place to put up kids pictures and eat dinner without destroying the carpet. So we took down the elegant burgundy wallpaper (which I actually really liked), and painted it light blue, added a fun rug and bright tablecloth, and pinned up kids pictures all around the walls.
Before:
After:
And another picture for in-between (after the wallpaper was ripped off):
3. Our biggest/most expensive project, of course, was the stairs. We hired a professional to take out all the spindles and put in rod-iron. We liked the black-white contrast, and feel likes it really updates the look of the home.
Before:
After:
4. The trim and mantle/fireplace. I realized soon after painting the dining room blue that the deep red accent fireplace had to go. The trim throughout almost the entire house was this brownish-greenish tobacco stain that I don't know who selected, but it is not at all attractive. So I painted all the downstairs trim white (HUGE DIFFERENCE!), and even painted the mantle all white as well. We painted the previously red accent fireplace wall the same grey as the rest of our walls- Agreeable Grey (Thank you, Sherwin Williams!)
Before:
After:
5. Decor: It took me a long time, a lot of shopping, and a lot of help from my home-decor-savvy friends to decorate a few of our walls. Here's our wall right above the couch. In the bottom-right corner is a window-shutter with an ultrasound picture of our soon-to-be new edition!
And here's our new, colorful gallery wall in the entry hallway:
We painted the living room grey, and here's a picture of that process:
We've got plenty more work to do. We haven't touched the paint upstairs, but when it got dangerous for me to paint and be on a ladder, and when I couldn't properly ventilate the painting area (that was around November), painting stopped. I'm really pleased with most of downstairs! We'll tackle the "blood-spattered" wallpaper in the downstairs bathroom some time this year, and probably paint a mural on the vaulted wall in our living room.
