House Updates: Living Room(s)

This house came with two living rooms. This still baffles me. It is certainly a design challenge. Right now we have it set up so there is one more "formal" sitting area, and another by the TV. Eventually I'm thinking 1 living room and 1 dining room. We'll see. Either way, it is working for us now.

We made a trip to IKEA soon after we moved in and bought this new couch with a chaise and navy rug. We also bought the chair below, which I highly recommend:

The midcentury pieces were thrifted either in Michigan before we moved or here in Utah. The record holder above was $5 and the side table was $8. The record player two photos above was $40.

We painted all the wood paneling in the living room with a fireplace, but left the built in shelving as is. It adds some nice warmth to the room.

Chevron Pillow... Finally!

I have been long been blogging about my love of chevron... so long it sort of feels like maybe this chevron fad is almost over. But it still makes me smile. So bring it on. About a week ago I was in NYC walking around Mood... it is hard to believe.

One of the fabrics I decided on last minute was this green and creamy white chevron. I can't believe I almost passed it up. I vowed to not let my (by my standards) expensive Mood fabric purchases sit around for months after I got home, so I made up this pillow right away.

It was such an easy change and it makes me happy every time I see it! Need to see a bunch more pictures of my chevron pillow? Ok! Here they are...

Morning Sunlight & a Picket Fence

First Anniversary Celebration

To mark T.J. and my one year of being married we... bought a house! I was very clear to my lender than we had to be in before the weekend of the 17th because I refused to celebrate in our stinky old temporary apartment, and I got my wish!
So because we were buying a house we decided to just put in some good ol' elbow grease rather than buy each other anything. T.J. put in a fence for me, and I painted the living room/kitchen "for him" (or more for me, can I have two gifts and T.J. have none?).
Luckily our families came down to help. I don't know if you have put in a fence or painted 11.5' ceilings lately, but it sure is a lot of work! Here is the yard and the living room walls before:

This privacy fence was right outside our back door around the patio. It was nice for privacy but because we have no backyard or side yard neighbors to the right, privacy was not really what we were going for. We wanted some beautiful views of the field behind our house. So the privacy fence had to go. T.J.s dad helped him demo it.

 Notice the crazy half painted walls and the molding between the off-white and gold? And when I say gold, I mean GOLD. It is hard to tell in the pictures but when it's about mid-day, this room was obnoxious. Because one of our favorite things about the house is the skylights in the living room, we wanted to enhance all the light they bring in. So T.J. and I decided to paint it a nice warm and inviting Morning Sunlight color from Behr (360A-2).

P.S. I just realized that my bathroom gray is Morning Fog and living room yellow is Morning Sunlight... must have been meant to be!

So here are some shots of us hard at work on our respective projects. 

First T.J. ripped out the molding and had to putty the walls. Apparently the molding had been put up while the paint was still wet causing big chunks of paint to come off with the molding. 

This is the scaffolding we had to climb to do the very top. Painting this room was a team effort, T.J. edged and my mom and I rolled.

 

Here T.J. is busting his butt digging post holes in 90+ degree weather. He looks good doing it though. :-)

T.J. even made his own gate.

And this is my view now:

And here are my fittingly named Morning Sunlight walls. 

 

I found this fabric that actually goes with my walls and my couch (which was harder than you'd think) at Joann's in the red tag clearance section. I think I ended up paying $5 a yard for them and bought 6 yards so, $30 curtains. 

 

  See how off-white the walls look here? The yellow takes on many different shades during the day. It almost always looks yellow in the kitchen, above my green walls. 

 

And here is how we looked as we finished our work day exactly 1 year after we were married:

 

Then we got cleaned up and went to dinner:

And they lived happily ever after in their cute little yellow house. :-)