Living Room Update
Happy Monday, y'all!
The past two weeks have been filled with constant home renovations and I am SO tired. Today is the first day that I haven't woken up with painting to do and I am so ready to get back into a normal routine. We purchased this house from an amazing couple but they were renting it out prior to selling and those renters had several animals. I have to tell you that because... Well, you'll see. When we went to look at the house, it was a hot mess, I am just being honest with you. The smell, both smoke and animals, was so strong that I had to step outside after just a few minutes. Maybe that was fate, though, because when I saw the back yard, the first thing I imagined was us having Declan's first birthday party out there and I knew it was the one. Colin agreed that the house had a ton of potential and we put in an offer on the spot. Six weeks later, we were moving in.
This picture was taken just a few days before we closed. Obviously, the day that we closed, all of the renter's furniture was gone so it looked a little different than this but I forgot to take a picture. I was just too ready to get that wallpaper off of the walls :)
The blue wallpaper around the bottom of the room was, for lack of a better word, fuzzy. My mom told me the technical word for it (I forgot) and said that back in the day, it was considered to be really nice wallpaper but it looked to have become a scratchpad for the cats who lived here before. My sister's started helping me pull the wallpaper down and one of them remarked that it smelled like cat urine. "PUH-LEASE, the cat DID NOT pee on the walls, you're imagining things" I snapped back at them. Right about then, my hand landed on a wet strip of wallpaper and it was... yep, you guessed it, cat urine. Y'all. I almost died.
The blue from the wallpaper had faded onto the sheetrock behind it where the cat had peed on the wall. And y'all, this wasn't just in one spot, it was around the entire room. We were planning to pull the carpet in the living room up in the next couple of weeks anyway but decided it had to come up RIGHT THEN. My dad and sisters helped me pull it all up and just as we expected, there was cat urine all over it, straight down to the pad.
After the carpet was up, we headed to Home Depot for clorox and Killz. That night we bleached and Killz'ed the entire room. It had to be done, y'all. That same process has since been done to the entire house although the other rooms didn't seem to be as affected. It was a whole week before the floors were installed but we were happy to walk on concrete rather than that carpet. We chose the same dark vinyl plank for the living room, entryway, kitchen, dining room, and hallway. We like vinyl plank because it is so hard to scratch, unlike real wood and of course, it is way more affordable. We painted the walls SW Agreeable Gray. Grays can be really hard because so many of them turn blue but this one has more of a tan undertone and is exactly what I was looking for.
We still have several projects for this room and I will keep you updated as it comes together. We plan to paint the fireplace in the next week or so and get new blinds and furniture. The blinds were left from the previous owners and our current furniture doesn't match the color scheme that we are going for in this house. Slowly but surely and one step at a time, this little place is starting to feel like home.
The past two weeks have been filled with constant home renovations and I am SO tired. Today is the first day that I haven't woken up with painting to do and I am so ready to get back into a normal routine. We purchased this house from an amazing couple but they were renting it out prior to selling and those renters had several animals. I have to tell you that because... Well, you'll see. When we went to look at the house, it was a hot mess, I am just being honest with you. The smell, both smoke and animals, was so strong that I had to step outside after just a few minutes. Maybe that was fate, though, because when I saw the back yard, the first thing I imagined was us having Declan's first birthday party out there and I knew it was the one. Colin agreed that the house had a ton of potential and we put in an offer on the spot. Six weeks later, we were moving in.
The blue wallpaper around the bottom of the room was, for lack of a better word, fuzzy. My mom told me the technical word for it (I forgot) and said that back in the day, it was considered to be really nice wallpaper but it looked to have become a scratchpad for the cats who lived here before. My sister's started helping me pull the wallpaper down and one of them remarked that it smelled like cat urine. "PUH-LEASE, the cat DID NOT pee on the walls, you're imagining things" I snapped back at them. Right about then, my hand landed on a wet strip of wallpaper and it was... yep, you guessed it, cat urine. Y'all. I almost died.
The blue from the wallpaper had faded onto the sheetrock behind it where the cat had peed on the wall. And y'all, this wasn't just in one spot, it was around the entire room. We were planning to pull the carpet in the living room up in the next couple of weeks anyway but decided it had to come up RIGHT THEN. My dad and sisters helped me pull it all up and just as we expected, there was cat urine all over it, straight down to the pad.
After the carpet was up, we headed to Home Depot for clorox and Killz. That night we bleached and Killz'ed the entire room. It had to be done, y'all. That same process has since been done to the entire house although the other rooms didn't seem to be as affected. It was a whole week before the floors were installed but we were happy to walk on concrete rather than that carpet. We chose the same dark vinyl plank for the living room, entryway, kitchen, dining room, and hallway. We like vinyl plank because it is so hard to scratch, unlike real wood and of course, it is way more affordable. We painted the walls SW Agreeable Gray. Grays can be really hard because so many of them turn blue but this one has more of a tan undertone and is exactly what I was looking for.
We still have several projects for this room and I will keep you updated as it comes together. We plan to paint the fireplace in the next week or so and get new blinds and furniture. The blinds were left from the previous owners and our current furniture doesn't match the color scheme that we are going for in this house. Slowly but surely and one step at a time, this little place is starting to feel like home.
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