Home Improvement

This weekend we decided to dive into some home improvement projects that we've been contemplating for a long time. When we moved into our house, everything was fresh and new...new carpet and fresh paint, only problem was, everything was neutral. I guess that's the rule of thumb for selling a house. That works I guess, unless the two people buying the house are artists...the neutral tones everywhere have finally driven us insane. Luckily the previous owners painted the kitchen and breakfast room a gorgeous sage green, but the living room and dining room have beige walls and a slightly different beige colored carpet. Yuck. Dining room...we decided to paint the bottom half of the walls below the chair rail a chocolate brown. I adore this color...it is so rich and so many colors look amazing against it. We figured this would add some contrast and depth to the room.

Here is the before picture as we started the job:


Here is Russ painting the first bit on:


Here is the completed project- unfortunately a lot of our living room furniture is crammed in this room because of the next project we decided to do...But you can still get the idea.



Next we moved on to the living room. Luckily I have a before picture courtesy of Angie taken from New Year's eve. You can see the neutral walls and carpet. We decided to rip out the carpet and expose the oak hard wood floor beneath. Who carpets hard wood floors?! Anyway, this is quite a project...we had to totally empty the room and we will have to power sand the floor, restain and poly the floor...but it will look so much better. We paused briefly to discuss painting the walls a color- but we're going to wait a while and just finish this floor since our house will be torn apart until we can finish this project up. It will take about a week.

Before:


In the middle of the project:

It already looks so much better. I will post the finished product in about a week when we're done.