Originally posted at twentysixcats.com

With the anticipation of guests, I finally got the living room cleaned up! So before it got messy again, I decided to take some pictures. First, the before pictures:

Please note the floors and how disgusting they were! We could see that they were just dirty, so we had them professionally cleaned. They are in really good shape for a 50 year old house, and they’ve never been sanded before! Here’s a picture of the floor in the living room now:

Now for the picture of the living room furnished!

Besides the floors, this room didn’t need a whole lot of work. We removed the borderprint (which didn’t match the wall color at all!) and painted all the walls a light yellow, and actually still need to put on a final coat. When we painted the walls before we moved in, it was during all that rain and flooding Atlanta was getting. The house was SO humid we couldn’t get the paint to dry and it wasn’t even sticking to the wall! So we had to wait until the rain stopped, and then we moved and now there’s furniture. Actually in person you can see what a bad paint job it really is! I’ll get around to it someday – and hopefully sooner than later, because I’m waiting on that to put up all the pictures!

The other two things we did to this room were take down the curtains in front of the bay window and replace the front door. The bay window has blinds, so curtains were a little unnecessary, and I think taking them down just opens up the room that much more. The original front door was a hollow wooden door without even a deadbolt so we replaced it with a steel door and new locks & a deadbolt. We also replaced the storm door. We thought the original storm door was really ugly, it didn’t close right, and it didn’t have a screen. Since the bay window doesn’t open, I wanted something to allow for cross-breezes in our house without letting the cats out. Hence, a new storm door with a screen.

Because the living room is the most used room in our house, we decided to go ahead and get a rug. I was checking Craigslist for a good rug when I found this new blue one at Home Depot for only $20! It’s not “perfect” but since I don’t have a good conception of the style I want for this room, I am totally cool with functional and not clashing.

Ideally, in the future, my goal is to put the TV and the computer downstairs in the family room/den. I’d like to get a piano to put up here, and make this a nice visiting room. Neither of us really care for the current setup, but there really is no other way to arrange it with the furniture we own. So, at a future time, we’ll figure it out. In the meantime, it’s functional and that’s the most important, right?