The $50 Living Room Makeover

Well for goodness sake. I am such a flakey liar. I know, I know. I promised this yesterday (and the week before that) but the urge to purge overcame me again and I must obey its call while I can.

Without further ado. I give you the $50 living room transformation.

While I certainly do appreciate warm colours and cozy spaces (obviously), I’ve been in that mode for a long time and felt that it was long past time for change. For ages now I have craved a bright, beachy and serene/uncluttered feel to my living room. The craving gets particularly strong every Spring when the instinct is to lighten up. I think it will make Winter seem brighter and lighter too though, and that is always a good thing.

I kept putting off making the change though, because I was sort of intimidated by what it would take to create the opposite effect of what I already had in my living room, on a very limited budget. Enter that fateful Friday just after school break when my intrepid friend Cindi and I spied this cute white changing table/cabinet for $10 at the garage sale across the road.

I did not think that it screamed “changing table” at all and it fit perfectly with the theme I had in mind. Did I mention 10 bucks? It has tons of storage space inside. Sold.

An hour or so later we were slapping white paint on anything without a pulse. And within 48 hours my airy beachy dream was reality.

Here’s are some views of the room before, including the ever scary perpetually messy coat closet for your perusal.. (the strange kids and the weird woman with the arm in the air is just a bonus…)

And here are the afters: Voila! If that light blue lampshade looks a little….wrong…it’s because I drew it in there. At the time of the photo we did not yet have an appropriate shade for that lamp. The “slipcovers” as I’m sure you can tell, are white sheets. I have ordered these real slip covers from overstock.com

and anxiously await their arrival. The blue cushions are actually my existing cushions wearing a variety of blue shirts and sweaters from our closets….I just had to get the effect on that very day. (I’m sort of…ok totally an instant gratification type of girl). I was thinking plain cotton/canvas in the shades of blue/green I have in the sweaters/shirts.

Almost everything that was meaningful to me in the “African-ish” motif we had before has remained or relocated to my office space (the family photos were in there before) which pleases me. I didn’t want give that stuff up. It was definitely a case of use what you (or your generous friends) have.

So here’s the first thing we (and by we I mean Cindi) painted. She believes me to be an appallingly bad painter. No comment. This is a very nice quality oak entertainment center we bought from Craig’s List. I really did not love it though and found it looked very dated in its original finish. You can sort of see it on that last unpainted door. I think it is much better now. Did I mention Cindi hung in til the wee hours of that morning and came back the next day (while we weren’t even THERE) to continue to work? She even broke in again to clean up when all was done. She’s a gem that one.

Here are some other views (click to enlarge). We actually just acquired another piece of furniture via Kind Friend Decor(thanks Joanie!) so there’s a whole new thing going on in one of the corners there….(and yet MORE storage space-Yay!)

The little mirror on the bottom left was my most expensive purchase in this venture. It was a whole $20 bucks at Big Lots ($16.00 after my 20% off good customer discount). It is super heavy and so pretty. I love it. The beautiful wooden thingie above the closet doors was living in Cindi’s garage. It’s on an extended loan. Cindi has the coolest stuff…

As you can see, I have kept the floors mostly bare for now…I love bare wood in warm weather but it will need a rug come winter. Serendipitously, Overstock.com has invited me to check out their wares. (Which as you can tell from the slipcover purchase, I do anyway. Love me some overstock). I am salivating over the plethora of choices (click to go to the link and view larger. ) What do you think?

or this

maybe this one?

maybe?

Sooooo prrriiiiteeeee…..

So what do you think of the makeover? I realize the stark and white is not for everyone but I love it. It feels cool and calm and soothing to my soul. And for those of you who freak out over the thought of four kids, all their friends, a dog and a bunny and all that WHITE… Surprisingly it has been fine. My house looks a lot cleaner now in fact and I honestly have not been going crazy with keeping everyone and their muddy paws and popsicles off the couch. I have a washing machine and everything is washable. I think once the couch covers come, I will toss a sheet over it for every day lounging. I got this idea from someone with many kids and white slipcovers and you really can’t tell.

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