Budget Room Refresh: Mid-Century Modern Living Room with AllModern ($1,500)

Our living room is one area that I have yet to touch with a real project. Almost everything in here, except for the drop cloth curtains, was bought. We love our deep sofas and our most recently acquired West Elm coffee table, but everything else is pretty much temporary. I've even started to outgrow the ever popular faux fiddle leaf fig, even though I do like something "green" in here. So I've teamed up with All Modern to put together a mid-century modern refresh for this room — for $1,500!

Installing Feet on the Couch

Thanks for welcoming me back from my blogging (and social media) hiatus, it's amazing what some time off to focus on yourself can do.

I'm 99% sure everyone has those tiny tasks you just can't seem to take the time out of your day to do it. It's not that it would cost a fortune or even take that much time, but it just sits there and sits there, un-tackled. For us, that was the replacement feet for our love seat. When the couch got moved from Atlanta to this house the feet got lost and we have lived with it sitting right on the floor for 2. YEARS. You might not think couch feet would make that big of a difference both sitting on it or looking at it - but it does.

Low Cost, High Quality Oversized Rug Option

The living room is supposed to be the most comfortable and homey room in the house, and a few weeks ago ours was far from it. We had old ugly rugs and carpet remnants to put the sofas on and no where to put the television - it was not pretty or functional. In June, we got the bamboo blinds which put us on the road to making our space better. 

If you've ever had leftover carpet, you know that you don't want to waste an inch of it because it is flippin expensive. So when my grandparents replaced they're almost perfect carpet, we grabbed a few scraps to have bound into rugs. Most local carpet places will bind remnants for you by the foot, ours ended up being about $150 for 4 big rugs. While I was picking up the finished rugs, I perused the other carpet remnants they had and OH if I didn't hit the jackpot.

Bamboo Blinds in the Living Room

Hi guys, it's been a while. After our 6 week sprint to finish the Laundry Room, I was DIY-ED OUT. I had to take a break. I started a new job and made plans for what project we would take on next and then a few weeks went by - but hey, that's real life. The living room has been untouched since we moved in. We don't have a tv and haven't had guests yet so it has been a low priority. Thankfully my mom was making room in her basement for new blinds, so she sweetly gifted them to us.

Bamboo blinds have always been my favorite, especially in the lighter color, but never thought I would get them in this house since they are so expensive (blinds are just expensive in general..). Thankfully these beauties came across my path and we put them up last week.

Putting Down Quarter-Round

We are getting anxious to get in this house you guys. So anxious, we just ripped out the old counter top and sink before we were done painting everything and moved some of our stuff into the bedrooms. No sink obviously makes things more difficult, but it felt like we were getting somewhere. After the last coats of top coating go on the cabinets, we really only have to have the vinyl and counter top guys come out before we can start moving stuff in, eek!

After the floors were refinished here, we were going to put quarter-round down to polish it off. The house came with some pretty hardwood natural quarter-round, but after taking the whole of it out we decided to buy new ones. It seemed easier to buy it than try to repair the ones we had broken, try to get the million and one nails out without breaking them more, and then painting them twice. In lieu of the hours it would have taken to do all that, we decided to scrap the old ones, run to Home Depot and get 200ft.(61¢ per ft.) of primed quarter-round for just $120. It was well worth the money. Auston lined up and painted them all trim white with one coat, and installed it over the weekend.

Here is the living room right after they refinished the floors, with no quarter round. There is a gap between the floor and the baseboards, making it look unfinished and a nice place for bugs to hide (ew!).

And here is part of the room with quarter round installed.

Fortune Cookie Friday 006

In case you haven't seen, Target is having a huge 30% off home items. I snagged this adjustable floor lamp that I have been eyeing for the living room and this double lamp for the office. Lamps are perhaps the best thing to happen to homes since electricity. Registries are such a wonderful thing becuase you can use them even after whatever event you got it for. I keep all ours we did from the wedding up to date just in case someone needs a birthday, Christmas, or whatever occasion gift idea. I love giving presents and I think registries are a great tool because you know you're getting something the person really wants.

Speaking of gifts, do you ever want to send someone a small, cute, personalized and inexpensive gift for any occasion? Greetabl is here to rescue you. They make a small box that you pick the pattern of, fill it with whatever gift at whatever price point you want, and then put in a personalized message and pictures. The gift giver in me is just jumping for joy. They have the best taste in patterns and gifts they offer, and give you great advice if you don't know what to write in your message.

Currently, I am dreaming about a cozy bedroom like this one from Room&Board. I usually don't like canopy beds, but this modern wood looks amazing in the fresh white room.

Sketches: Kitchen and Living Room

Once we painted the inside walls, the house was just an empty shell with abnormally (but awesome) large rooms. For a second I started to feel the anxiety set in as I thought of all the possibilities of decor and furniture. It seems that having an idea of a space is harder to put on paper than you would think. Planning is one of the most difficult parts in a project for me. I have so many ideas and thoughts about how I want the space to feel, but I the problem is I have so many choices! There's a million paint colors, a million side tables, a million pillows, and a million 'n one pieces of art to put on the wall. So, as I tried to figure out how to get my ideas into see-able form, my first instinct was to just save pins of pictures that had aspects that I wanted. That was a good start, but I still could not see how everything would work together in the rooms.

I finally came across the Houzz App while listening to a podcast. It has a feature where  you can upload a photo and the sketch on it. Among other things  like text and a pen feature, you can search for products and add them to your sketch. Houzz is great because it saves all of the products that you have inserted, and once you save the sketch and go back to the picture, it tags all of the products in the room. Now, these are ROUGH sketches, very rough. Almost so rough that they are a little embarrassing to share. But by doing these sketches, we were able to hone in our ideas. We decided that we like black fans better than the white. They also were a big help in deciding what colors to paint the cabinets. You get the point, just try different ways to envision your space so that you know what you want will actually work well together. How else do you envision your ideas other than in your head?

This cow print is just so cute right?! And I love that fiddle leaf fig. I wasn't so sure about the overarching lamp, but seeing it in the space solidifies my thoughts: love. I'm always on the look out for a similar moroccan rug. We have a similar grey love seat and hopefully soon a matching sofa. I'm thinking maybe we can DIY those wooden nesting tables soon maybe?

The kitchen sketch is way worse than the living room, but it was so hard to to put a million little tiles with a counter top that wasn't the same color as the one you're going to have. The first picture does not have the door wall tiled, but we have been toying with the idea of tiling the backsplash and the entire adjacent wall for more of a cohesive look. On the look out for a cheap but pretty Persian rug to bring some color to the room.