When we moved in our place a couple of years ago I had grand ideas for decorating, but unfortunately we ran out of money. We left up the curtains that were here when we moved, we kept using our thrift store couch and we gained some hand me downs from the in laws. That left us with this:
Now let me just go ahead and say that I see many pics of blogger houses and everything is perfectly neat and tidy, everything is immaculate. Sometimes things like TV’s and DVD’s are completely hidden. That is simply not us. We have a massive DVD collection, and it would be too much of a pain in the butt to try and hide or conceal all of them. Instead they get neatly arranged on bookcases. I also have some craft stuff stored in the living room. Why you may ask? Simple, this is stuff I work on while watching TV in here, therefore it lives in here. You may also winder why we have the window covered up. We live in a field with no trees to provide shade anywhere near us, and in the summer it gets very hot and very sunny in the south. We use thick curtains, and do what we can to try and cool this place down and reduce the power bill.
The black chest that you see off to the left side is actually on old cedar chest that was my Grandmothers. It doubles as a coffee table/storage unit. I painted it black and then antiqued it with silver. It needs to be redone, but that will be for another day. The red couch in the bottom left hand corner is our thrift store find. It’s not in horrible shape, but it could use some recovering. When we got it I initially covered it in some gray fabric, but the cats picked it and destroyed it, and I never got around to recovering it again. The gigantic entertainment center was actually built from scratch by my father-in-law. It was in their house until they got a new massive flat screen that is wall mounted, thus rendering this useless, so it became ours. I would rather not have this massive thing in here, but my husband loves it, so I let it stay. We tried to put it in the game room, but the ceiling is funky therefore it wouldn’t fit. What you can’t see is a tan love seat that was a hand me down from the in laws as well. It’s in great shape, so no complaints there. When I snapped this pic we were already part of the way in the re-do which is why the love seat and coffee table aren’t in the right places.
I had to bring some newness into this room, and here it is.
A new zebra stripe area rug, and coordinating gray and black damask velvet curtains. I was also able to use the old gray fabric that was once on the couch to recover the couch again. I just used the back side, so none of the snags from the kitties would show.
Here is the new and improved living room. I could still do without the massive entertainment center, but this is much better.
As extra added decor I sprayed some cheap lion, tiger and leopard figurines with silver spray paint. They are sitting a top a satin runner that is draped over the coffee table. The center one is on book full of Rolling Stone covers throughout the years.
Between the couch and DVD’s you see a little silver shelf holding canvas bins that wasn’t there before. Those were originally just stacked on top of each other in the corner, but I remembered I had this little shelf. I gave it coat of silver spray paint and voila. Above it I hung a couple of old vinyl records with simple silver thumbtacks. I had another idea pop in my head for this area last night, but I am waiting for supplies to arrive before I can make it a reality. I see a tutorial in the future though.
I hope you enjoy, and maybe this will inspire you to give a room in your house a simple redo.
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