living room makeover

I've mentioned in our house tour that this house had us at "hello". You may wonder how when this is what the living room looked like when we toured the house...

We did some serious painting with tons of primer (we love Kilz oil based because it covered up the stained bead board so well). All the molding around the floor and the windows needed to be painted as well as the mantle, the wall of original bead board and the bricks on the fireplace. And we did all this in the first three weeks we lived in the house... we were spurred on by an open house that we purposely booked shortly after moving in.

This photo above shows a door at the top middle of the photo, it heads right into our back entryway which flows right into our kitchen. Notice there was no door in the before photo. The refrigerator was sitting on the other side of that when we toured the house (I know, little weird to have a fridge in an entryway but the kitchen was designed bizarrely). I was in Florida for a business trip one weekend and AJ (who loves destructing things) opened up the door. We had to move a pipe but it's worth it (I say "it's worth it" but in actuality I had nothing to do with moving the pipe)... we use that door all the time. Doesn't it just make more sense to open it up to have the whole downstairs flow?

This next picture will (accurately) make you think I'm such a slacker. I STILL haven't finished recovering the chairs. I think I'll make that my goal to finish it by this coming Sunday. I'm not in love with the black table, the black TV and the black frame on the right in the photo below but I'm working with it... Do you see that orange and navy thing on the couch? That's Drew wearing his little football sweatpants. :)

We were in New York last weekend visiting AJ's family and found some amazing boards in his Dad's / Grandpa's barn (they run a dairy farm) that we thought would be great to use as a mantle in the living room... as you can see ours is very dinky. I AJ found that neat weathered frame in a pile in their barn... I'm in love with the color and texture of it.

These photos aren't our "after" photos of the living room... they are our "progress: save up and gut later" photos. In all seriousness, we do need to rip all the drywall off the walls. Our house has no insulation (hence, me sitting here on June 14 wrapped in a very cuddly blanket). What should we do with this long bowling alley style space? I'll try to jot down some of my thoughts later this week and share them with you.