My Living Room/ Dining Room Redo

The super talented Amber at Amber Interiors asked me if I would be interested in participating in her series "Room 2 Ways" where you basically change out accessories, lamps etc. to create a different look for the space. I was so excited to try this after seeing her first unbelievable post where she changed up the look of her bedroom. Have you seen it yet? You must.

She had now given me major motivation, and my head was spinning. I had so many ideas, but I ultimately decided to do my sofa wall in my living room for her.  This quickly led to the whole room getting a makeover.  The kids have had the week off, so I was hanging around the house anyway. 

 I decided I wanted to go in a different direction with color for this space.  I knew I was tired of the red/teal combo going on.

BEFORE

I had originally pick the red Lulu DK Chant wallpaper a year ago around the holidays, so it seemed great at the time.  Turns out I like red in really small doses.  I decided to "tint" it to indigo with paint. I still loved the pattern and I wanted to avoid stripping the paper, and lucky for me the experiment went well.

I love the blue. It has a hint of red that pulls through as a dark plum and it plays nicely with the magenta and teal accents.

I had this big window from one of our prior renovations and I was dying to use it somewhere.

The giant window went up after a bit of a fiasco. See my earlier post about showering with it. This wall also hosted all my random artwork and photos prior. See Amber's blog here for the "gallery " look.

Probably 90% of my furniture is reworked, vintage or passed down. The sofa used to belong to Dirk Diggler (well it definitely looked like it came out of Boogie Nights), and I reupholstered it here.

I moved a lot of the gallery wall over to the dining area...

I love my PS Maskros and the giant table my father built us for our a wedding present.

Its actually made out of the floor boards from the house we threw our party in. Its a long story, but it was in a huge house on the Salem Common that my husband was about to convert to condos. We had a costume party because it was right before Halloween and Salem is CRAZY that time of year. It was so much fun and these boards came from the "dance floor".  Its such a great piece with such sentiment attached. Oh, and he made it 56" wide so I could cut bolts of fabric on it easily.

My mantra...

I found my credenza for $45 at a favorite thrift store and painted it teal green.

The brass lantern actually is original to the house. It casts the best "floral" shadows at night.

 Here are some  BEFORES...

 The room used to be laid out like this until I rearranged it this Christmas for the tree. 

And the gallery wall where the sofa now resides...

We have now been in the this house for almost a year and a half, and I can honestly say it is starting to feel like home.  We've moved so many times, and usually tore through the renovations. Despite my impatience, I am really enjoying taking this one slow and learning the house. This room will change again in the next year when we change out the windows and rip down part of the wall where the sofa is, but I look forward to the changes. Right now I am having a lot of fun with color.

Who knows, maybe by then I will actually do a neutral room!