Welcome! This is what you’ll see when you first walk into our house (except the dog will not be so calm). Yes, we’re nerds who have Full Metal Alchemist hanging in our living room. One of my plans for future changes is putting something super neat and artsy there, but for now we figured that was representative of us.
As you can see, we took out the gate that was attached to the railing. Apparently one of the former owners was blind. We also decided to take off the whole panel that connected the gate to the wall—which was a big mistake. It took a lot of effort to get the panel off (they had nailed, screwed, and glued it on), and then it took a lot of mudding to get the hole covered. Thank goodness my father used to do drywall for a living.
We also painted the whole room yellow with white trim. We have the same white trim in the two rooms on this level of the house. As you can see, the one wall has stripes…
That’s because it used to look like this. We thought about taking off the wall paper, but behind it is wood paneling (not the only place in the house) and so we decided to just paint over it. Honestly, I really like how it looks with the lines showing through. It looks like we did it on purpose!
The drapes came with the house and we specifically picked a color of yellow that would go well with them because they’re very nice drapes. I’m happy with how it turned out. We don’t really use this sliding glass door because it’s older and takes more effort to open, but I love having all of the light and even though it’s just looking out into the neighborhood and our patio, I enjoy looking out it.
Lastly, this is our hide a bed. No, we did not plan on having a hide a bed in the living room. We bought it for the Magic room (like Magic the Gathering, which is what will be played there), but could not get it up the stairs even after denting the walls a ton. So the couch that was down here is now in the Magic room and the hide a bed is downstairs. We may switch them again whenever we get the windows replaced (these windows are likely the same ones the house was built with in 1961 and therefore not energy efficient at all) because I’m sure that the couch could fit through the window.
Things I’d like to do with the room:
Fireplace
Photo courtesy of http://www.homebedazzle.com.
I don’t like the color of our current fireplace. There is a reoccurring theme of salmon pink in (and outside) this house and that is simply not my color. Surprisingly, we painted the downstairs room a very salmon-like pink. Yes, a full room of pink. You’ll have to wait to see it though. :-P
Back to the fireplace: I mostly just want it to be white. I like the idea of tiling it, but with the jagged edges of the brick, I doubt that will be possible without a ton of effort. Either way, it won’t happen for a long time.
Entrance
As I said, we don’t want to keep the Full Metal Alchemist poster above the stairs… well at least I don’t. Anyway, I’m really into grey and yellow lately and thinking of maybe putting something like this, or this, or this. I like the sunflowers, but it doesn’t necessarily have the be a sunflower thing. Let me know if any of you have any good ideas for something in that space. I really like the idea of vinyl wall art. Or possibly painting something, but I’m not a good painter.
Seating
While this hide a bed does make a dandy couch, it only fits about 3 people comfortably. Therefore, we need more seating—preferably two more seats. As I stated before, I like the idea of grey and yellow. I love the pattern of this chair, but I wish it had arms. This one is pretty lovely too, but also lacking arms. I like this kind of chair. Guess I’ll just have to keep my eyes out.
