Our Home Reno: The Living Room

I’m so excited to show the first in a series of highlights from our home renovation, starting with the living room. But first, a little history.

We bought our home in 2012 from a wonderful family who had a long history with the house, meaning, they built it in 1948 and sold it to us in 2011. That’s right, we are only the second owners of the home, which meant it was basically a gut job. Everything was original to the house other than the family room addition which was done in the 50s (that we actually had to rebuild with the first phase of our renovation to make the ceilings level and prepare for a future upstairs addition).

It was important for us to keep the traditional feel of the house, but we wanted to open it up and modernize it. It’s been a lot of work, and isn’t even quite done yet, but it’s been one of the most rewarding projects I’ve ever worked on. This house and renovation is now such an important part of our family’s history.

Renovation Details

The living room needed the least amount of work in our house. We actually kept the walls in this room! The main work was refinishing the floors, adding new lighting, building new built-ins and painting.

We’re now on our second round of decorating in this room, as I realized I wanted everything a lot lighter and brighter than I originally imagined it. I love the white walls, dark floors and pops of color from art, books and accessories. Here are some before and after photos of our space:

How We Use the Space

We’re in this room every day. We do a lot of reading, games and puzzles in here. The girls often move the bench in the front window and dance together. We also sit in here with family and friends when we entertain.

The built-ins are where we house our books, in rainbow order one side, black and white on the other. We’ve also set up a bar where Chris makes our cocktails.