As most of you know, July was all about moving, unpacking, and painting at Magnolia Cottage. So far, I’ve painted seven rooms, the stairs, and the front porch floor (my hand literally hurts from all of that painting!), but everything is coming along so nicely and I really love the charm of this sweet old house.
Just to refresh your memory, here are a few “before” pictures of the living room. The yellow was brighter than it appears in these pictures.
I decided on Sherwin-Williams Rock Candy for the paint color on the walls; it’s a very, very pale blue/gray (almost a white) and a great neutral color. Then I hung window treatments (I absolutely love them and will link to them below) and decorated.
If you saw this video, here’s what it looked like in mid-July:
But a few weeks later, my husband came home from deployment (yay!) and then a couple of days after that, his things that had been in storage in Kansas were delivered. I kind of forgot about his recliner! Also, while I would be perfectly happy without a TV in our living room because I’m a bookworm, a television is essential to his happiness. Marriage is all about compromise, so I rearranged a bit in order to accommodate the recliner and the television.
Here’s how it looks now:
The recliner is to the right of the French doors.
The antique dresser that I always use in our living rooms is now just to the right of the front door:
{Read more about the bergere chair}
I almost always have lilies in the living room. I can buy them for $4 a bunch at one of our grocery stores and they smell heavenly.
I wanted to keep the couch centered in front of the double window; I tried it in a different spot but it just looked wrong.
I feel like the fabric of my husband’s recliner has yellowed a bit over the years that we’ve had it, but it’s still an almost perfect match to our couch and I would absolutely, positively buy it again. You can read more about “the perfect recliner” in this post.
The built-ins are a great feature of this room; we have photo albums and games stashed below out of sight.
I was originally planning on doing a stencil over the tile of the fireplace surround but since I have quite a few teal accents in the room it honestly seems to work just fine for the time being!
We did just buy a new TV, not the one you see here. It’s one of the ones that have a frame and show art on the screen when it’s turned off {available here}, so I’ll post a review and pictures of that soon. I think it might be the perfect compromise for us since I always hate having a big black TV on the wall.
Here’s a close up photo of the curtain rods, rings, and panels that I used. They’re IKEA panels that I added pleating hooks to and they look great! I’ll link all of my sources below and if something is vintage or thrifted I’ll try to include a similar item as well.
Curtain Rods | Curtain Rings | Curtain Panels HERE or HERE | Pleating Hooks
It’s always a work in progress so I’m sure it will change again soon, and I’ll be back with the TV details once we get that set up.
Paint color: Sherwin-Williams Rock Candy
