{Changing the look of your house - Part 2}

So yesterday I shared with you a little about my goal to change the style of my house on little to no budget.  If you didn't read it you can here.  The first thing I did was remove all decorations from my room including couch pillows, curtains, accessories, dark pictures, etc.  I instantly felt better just having this stuff removed from the room.  Let me insert a note here...I did not get rid of that stuff.  I kept it because I knew there were many things I could repurpose and reuse in the room with a little bit of tweaking.

As I began to look around for inspiration for my new look I was drawn to these pictures...

thenester.com

hollymathisinteriors.com

www.theinspiredroom.net

I love, love, love the look of white couches! I so wanted a slipcovered white couch because I knew step one to changing the look of my living room as getting rid of the red (dark) floral couch.  I had to find another couch or another solution to that piece of furniture.  I went back and forth on what to do.  I thought of sewing a slipcover for the couch.  I had previously sewn a slipcover for an armchair that I love. I thought about buying some slipcover, but those never fit just right.  Z and I finally decided that we would invest in a piece of furniture so off shopping we went.  This part was agonizing!  I was drawn to light and soft and he was drawn to dark and leather.  We went to the store twice and I realized we weren't going to come to a conclusion.  I knew that realistically having a white couch was not the most logically seeing as we have 2 kids that are 5 and under but I SO wanted that white couch!  We finally decided that we would go with the leather for pratical reasons and I have to say I am happy for a few reasons including the mess of kids, but I also so wish I would have gone with what I truly wanted because I still want those silly white couches.  I know I will have them one day....

The decision was made and it felt like were were going to the wrong direction, but I pressed on and decided I would make the most of it.  Step 2 was to do something about our wall color.  It was way too dark and really wasn't a neutral that would open itself up for other colors to be introduced.  This was a HUGE undertaking because we have a very large room that needed to be painted not to mention the 30+foot entry way and all the way up the stairs.  Painting is the easiest and one of the most inexpensive ways you can change the look of a room.  IF you do the work yourself.  I love to paint so it didn't seem like that big of a deal and I knew I could tackle it a little bit at a time. 

Remember the greenish color before.  Very dark.  I decided to go very light and wanted a neutral that could go with a variety of colors.  My super talented friend, Candice, has a great grey all throughout her house that I love and she suggested that I use it.  I got a few samples (which I highly suggest) and painted them throughout the room in different areas and lived with them for a day.  It made my decision pretty easy and I went with Versatile Grey by Sherwin Williams.

It was the perfect shade for my living room and I am super happy I went with it.  Now started the painting.  It was a tedious, time consuming project but I estimate we saved over a $1,000 doing the work ourselves. 

You can see it was a lot of ladder work and took about 2 weeks a little at a time to finish, but we did it during a huge snow storm so there was nothing else we could be doing anyway!

Here is a pic I took after the couch had arrived and the paint was finished.

Much brighter and you can tell I threw some white pillows on the couch to distract from the darkness.  More on this tomorrow!