To kick off our New Home series, here’s a look at our Living Room Before and After.
The house we purchased hadn’t been decorated or changed in many years, the walls were grubby and the floors had seen much better days. But when we viewed the house we were able to look past all the cosmetics and had a real vision for what we could do with the place.
With a lot of help we began ripping everything out, taking the house back to basics. We removed wooden floors, lifted carpets, chipped off tiles and got rid of all signs of the previous decor. Once we had striped the place we were ready to start making some decisions. In this post I will share our interior choices, design ideas and savvy saving tips for what is sure to be one of the most used rooms in the house.
Paint & Walls
We ran a light grey (almost white) throughout the house to freshen and brighten it up. I knew I wanted a blue theme in the living room, mixed with the neutrals and gold accents around the house. After seeing Hague Blue Farrow & Ball all over Instagram, we got a swatch mixed up and instantly loved it. This is the first money saving tip, we used our local Decorating Centre who were able to mix up the Farrow and Ball colour but for a fraction of the price. We used it on one feature wall in the living room and also picked up 2 gorgeous prints from Desenio with blue and gold throughout.
Floors
Choosing the floors was a really big deal because from the offset we knew we wanted to run the same flooring throughout the rooms on the ground floor (excluding the kitchen / utility – more on that soon!). We went to a number of floor stores and had quite a few different samples out to look at them in the house in different rooms and under different lighting. Finally we decided on a modern oak laminate for the ground floor. The house originally had solid wood flooring in the living room and we had considered restoring the boards and staining them to our desired effect. In the end we found that the price to do this was similar to the price of replacing the floor completely with something we loved. Laminates are great and the floor fitter actually demonstrated how hard wearing they are by scraped a coin down one of the off-cuts – there wasn’t a mark!
Windows
We feel so lucky to have had some help from the guys at Make My Blinds who kindly gifted wooden blinds for the room. My family home had dark wooden blinds and that really drew me to the Dark Walnut blinds on the site. I feel they will add to the cosy vibe we’re trying to create and we ordered the feet of the sofa in the same colour and opted for a similar effect on the tv stand to tie it all together.
I took a step back with any DIY in the house but one thing I did do myself was measure up for the blinds. Having never done anything like that before, I watched the Make My Blinds instructional video and followed step by step. I measured using the ‘recess’ method, placed my order and kept my fingers crossed I hadn’t messed up the measurements!
The blinds arrived quickly and were securely packaged to withstand the journey to our door. I must admit I didn’t fit the blinds myself but they look fantastic. In fact we were so impressed that we have decided to buy more Make My Blinds for the rest of the house.
Seating
We searched what felt like every sofa shop in the country until we found ‘the one’. We selected a grey fabric corner suite and a complimentary velvet grey rotating love seat too. I have paired them with some cushions from Next, tying in the blue and gold and adding a hint of baby pink. We have a gold basket for our blankets in the living room and I wanted to introduce a little touch of pink without making it too girly. 
Lights & Finishing Touches
The living room had been wired for wall lights by the previous owners so we thought we would take advantage of this and ordered some black and gold wall fittings from made.com.
We also added a floor light from Ikea and a bulb from Hue for some smart home control. We are sill waiting on the main ceiling light arriving but we opted for a black glass dome feature light. I found a bargain antique mirror from a charity shop during the process of buying the house, and I’m so glad to have it now in prime position on the fireplace. We hope to hang it on the wall soon but as a number of things on the house, it’s being added to the ‘To Do List…..’
Thank you so much for reading, and a special thanks again to James and the team at Make My Blinds for their help – you can check them out HERE
• Kirsty •
