Home Tour: Living Room / Dining Room / Entry Way

Oh, hey! Remember when I painted and redecorated my entire house this fall?

No, I never mentioned it?

Well, I did, and it seems as if the holiday season has stolen all the thunder.

Last November as Andi and I pulled together the finishing touches of our lake cabin remodel, I got the itch to update our Twin Cities house as well. It began as we shopped for living room furniture for the cabin and couldn't quite find what we were looking for. One day I said to Andi, "You know what would work perfectly in the cabin's living room? Our leather sofa set from home." So, that's what we decided to do. We moved our brown leather sofa and oversized chair to the cabin which opened up a window to purchase new furniture at our house. 

Every since we moved into our house three and a half years ago, I've dreamed of having a blue and gray living and dining room. It seemed like the perfect compliment to the chunky white trim throughout our house. And besides, I never cared much for the existing green and tan color scheme. One day Andi called to say he found the perfect gray fabric living room sofa set at a local furniture store (and he was right; it was perfect). Meanwhile, I scoured the Internet for new paint colors and narrowed my choices to the following:

Andi was traveling for a few weeks in November so my plan was to paint our entire house -- the living room, dining room, upstairs hallway, entryway, stairway, downstairs living room and laundry room -- while he was gone. "How are you going to do that?" Andi asked me one day before he left for travel. "During nap times," I responded.

He was right. Again.

How did I plan to complete all that painting in the three weeks that remained before Aden's first birthday party? It would've taken me a year to paint those rooms by myself with little children underfoot, so Andi suggested I hire a professional painter to complete the work. I did, and in one day's time my entire house was transformed by a few gallons of paint. 

Living Room / Dining Room / Entry Way 

BEFORE

Living Room / Dining Room / Entry Way 

AFTER

The living and dining rooms are Benjamin Moore Slate Blue and the entry way, stairway and upstairs hallway (not pictured) are Benjamin Moore Marilyn's Dress.

I keep a fairly minimalistic design style with few knick-knacks sitting around (life with little kids doesn't allow it), but I did purchase new living room artwork to hang above the sofa. I searched high and low for the perfect painting to match the vision in my head and I finally found it here. 

Paris is one of my favorite cities in the world, and this canvas print brings me so much joy. 

I also added a small gallery wall of photographs above the living room sofa chair. Sometimes a home can be over-saturated with personal photographs in my opinion, but we have too many wonderful photographs not to display them. 

The dining room and entry way areas remain the same aside from the new paint color. Though, it really is amazing how simply changing the paint color(s) and nothing else can truly transform a home. I'm really pleased with how it all turned out.