Wednesday, January 7, 2015

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. 

15 comments:

  1. Looks great! And yes, I totally agree about the over-saturation of personal photographs. I generally don't like using personal photographs as decor, but have decided to go ahead and use some in my gallery wall too. There has to be a balance - your living room definitely has that balance! :) Love that Paris painting too!

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  2. It looks great!!! : ) I love how quick you are at getting projects done, it takes us FOREVER!!! I think we may have matching couches - ours is just a darker grey and came with an INSANE amount of pillows.

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  3. We still don't have anything on the walls in our living room yet! I just can't seem to pull the trigger. Oh, and hiring a painter was the best decision we could have ever made. I honestly don't think I will ever paint a wall myself again. The painter we used was super affordable, fast, cleaned up after himself, etc, so we'll use him again and again!

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  4. Love, love, LOVE the color scheme! I might steal it to use in our home too. Thanks for sharing!

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  5. I'm TOTALLY GUILTY of saturating our home in family photos, lol! But, it's where I spend all my time and seeing those photos make me happy :) That being said, if we were to ever put our house on the market for sale, I know 90% of our wall decor would have to come down, haha!
    The colors all came out so great and I think the art you put above the couch in the living room looks perfect! And yes, hiring a painter is the way to go, for sure. I'm reminded of that every time I decide I'm just going to do it myself, haha :)
    I love that gray color, Marilyn's dress. Does it have some pale blue undertones? It doesn't look like it on the swatch, but sort of does in the picture of your landing.

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    1. Yes! Marilyn's Dress does have some pale blue undertones which is why it compliments the Slate Blue so perfectly. It really brought a light and airy feeling to the main level of our house.

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  6. Love the new colors and the artwork!!

    I was a bit upset we had our whole house painted last March and I kept it the same tan/beige colors because we thought we were going to be moving soon after, but I'm so bummed because now I wish I would've done grays. Damn it! =)

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  7. The new color scheme of your home is perfection. I'm so glad Andi found the perfect sofa set for the whole house. That just goes to show how much he cares for the remodeling project. The two of you make a great team, indeed. Anyway, I would love to see more of your projects. Keep us posted! Thanks for sharing that, Heather! All the best! :)

    Grady Schwartz @ iDesign

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