A Farmhouse Living Room Re-do

After lots of moving, sorting, dumping, hauling, patching and painting, we've finally got two rooms almost done. I can see why it's beneficial to move every six or eight years. You don't tend sort and edit enough if you stay put for a long time; we're in our seventeenth year here.

I just couldn't stand it anymore, so before Christmas we talked about how once the holidays were all over, it was time to pay a little attention to the house and get some work done. Now, this is all just a beginning, there's so much more to do. Next is the family room to paint, the entryway, after that the stairway and hall upstairs. And still more closets to clean and a garage to do. In between all that there's the garage sale, and the working some more on the basement. UGH!

But, we'll eat this elephant just a bite at a time and hopefully when summer arrives, we'll be able to spend lots of time that's guilt-free out in the yard, aside from another daunting job...the biggie this summer: a kitchen re-do. We may end up doing just the demolition ourselves and hiring someone else to do the finishing so it won't drag out for six months. The kitchen is something we've been procrastinating for years and years and it's time to pay the piper. And I'm sure that PAY we will. I get the willies just thinking about it.

But for now, I'll show you the photos of the living room all done, I'm just waiting for a couple throw pillows to be shipped that I had ordered from Target. I took advantage of having an antique mall only eight or ten minutes from the house and I did a lot of shopping there to get all of this done. I think they wondered what in the world I was doing so I just told them, I'm trying to get rid of the only remaining pieces of furniture in the house that weren't antique or that were made in China (all the pre-fab stuff that was fifteen years old from Sauder) and replace it all with antiques. I bought a dresser, the chippy blue table, an old tall wooden file cabinet (that originally was used in the Chevrolet plant!) and various boxes and wooden bins. I re-purposed some of the things we already had, too and that's always satisfying. I found some tropical plants to finish it off and I hope I don't kill them. I'm not a good green thumb--at all!

I did change things up somewhat, I still have a red, white and blue theme, but I backed off the Americana in a big way, inserted the robin's egg blue and went more for the cottage look. I'm tired of anything considered "country" but I can take all the cottage you can dish out!

In the next day or two, I'll show you the dining room.

I love the edge on this table, I'm told it's a piecrust edge!? Whatever it is, it reminds me of gingerbread trim on a porch railing and I fell in love with it right away! And the color is gorgeous.

As a bonus, the hard-working, eager to please little blue table had a lower shelf on it, so somehow there landed upon it an iPod player and some great magazines! I wish I could have found two of these tables!

I threw some light blue on the couch to tie the little table and the lightning rod together. I think it all works out well. I never would have thought to throw light blue into the mix until I saw (and had to have) that little blue table!

The whole main seating area, all put together. There's not a lot of re-arranging I can do in this room. It's not that big (old farmhouses usually have lots of small rooms!) and in this room are two huge windows and FIVE DOORS!

Lem's dad built this old cupboard many years ago, and we added about the tenth layer of paint to it last weekend. It's a piece made of parts of other pieces of furniture--a salvage piece-- and because his dad made it, we love it all the more. All the walls are a khaki now and the trim piece and this shelf are a darker shade of the same color. I decided to let my blue pieces live in the living room. (They said they were tired of the dining room.)

Our big bookshelf got totally re-done. Lots of books edited out and all my USA stuff pretty much now is in one spot. I enjoyed arranging all these things and grouping them in their own families: Civil War, Revolutionary War, etc

All the aquamarine glass was moved to a new spot and it's much more visible now. I only started picking this up when it caught my eye last summer while garage-saling. I had the old mirror, the dresser is a new vintage purchase. All the supplies that were in the pre-fab computer table that we got rid of are now housed in here...and a dresser is a surprisingly good choice for all the "office" type supplies I needed to find a home for. The lamp is a huge vintage blue canning jar full of old wooden dominoes. I don't know why, but I LOVE dominoes, old or new!

I made the throw-sized quilt here on the back of the recliner a couple years ago. I would love to quilt more than I do. Maybe when I get older!

Alicia Paulson's book now has a place of honor on my coffee table. Inspiring! If you haven't seen her blog, go check it out! She's an amazing (as well as inspiring!) woman.

Couldn't leave out the most favorite gift ever from my sis...her embroidered, framed flag in honor of 9-11.