Livingroom Renovations Done (pretty much)

Last summer I was sitting in my sorely outdated livingroom and had enough of it.  When we bought the home it had orange shag carpet, matching orange velvet drapes and mirrored tiles on the walls.  The security blind on the large window broke the first year we lived here so we got next to no natural light in the room and it was just plain depressing.  So while sitting on my old, stained, hand me down couch I got fed up.  I hauled my sofa out to the alley for pick up, emptied everything else from the room and ripped out the carpet.  And then I realized I could not lift the carpet and had to wait to ask the neighbors to help me haul it out to the alleyway as well.  For 1 year I worked on this room, doing everything myself, paying for each step slowly as I got the funds.  I pulled down the mirrored tiles, and ripped the hardware for the security blind out of the wall.  Patched a ton of holes and repainted the walls and trim.  I laid new flooring (yikes that was a learning curve), bought new sofas, a bookcase, a little window seat (Ikea kitchen cabinet actually), and a tv table to use for school, and new artwork.  I found a little chair and desk at a thrift shop as well as most of the knick knacks now decorating the room.  Actually several of the items I found at the dollar store as well.  I hauled a heavy work table up from the basement for the tortoise tank(as mentioned in an earlier post).  And slowly but surely the room went from being trapped in the 70s and ugly to being a room I love to be in.  Here are some pictures showing the before, the after and a few in between.

Before!  The orange carpet was so stained you could see where the sofa used to sit.  And aren't those mirrored tiles so wonderful? Ick!

Before: The bay window area.  You can see I was starting to rip out the carpet here



Mirrored tiles and wallpaper gone.  There was so much damage.  I really should have ripped all that drywall down and started it over, but I think I made it look good anyway




Corner showing part of the wall that had all that damage and the front door(never actually used as a doorway though)



This is the wall that had those hideous mirrored tiles on it.  Not bad eh?

The bay window area as seen from the no longer hideous wall



The big picture window with the broken security blinds.  You can see I ripped out the interior hardware, patched the holes and repainted.  We didn't learn how to get those blinds off for another 6 months after this.



Starting to lay the laminate flooring

Just about done the laminate



After! So this is that window seat area as seen from the no longer hideous wall. I still have the stained glass window clings to hide to finish this section off.  And figure out if I want the lamp to stay in here or not, it doesn't really get used in here




After: The security blinds are gone, new curtains and rod are up



After! This is the formerly hideous wall.  You would never think looking at it now that it was so ugly before or that it had so much damage to repair after I took them down.

 

After! as seen from the front door.



After! This picture was shared in the post below but I just realized it shows the light of day coming in.  See no security blinds, wonderful natural light shines in when I have them open



After! Under the tortoise table is Finn's kennel when not in use and the cutest little rug ever. 


So there you have it, one livingroom nearly done being renovated.  I still need to install baseboards and a couple thresholds for the 2 doorways into the kitchen but with school starting back up I just wanted the room to look beautiful and functional even if those things are not done yet.