House Progress (Living Room + Dining Room + Bedroom)

April 15, 2019

interior-design-inspiration
This post is a long time coming — seven months to be precise. I've been meaning to share photos of our house progress from the beginning but here we are seven months after we moved in and I'm only now sharing these. I'll caveat this by saying that these are very much progress photos and the house is not done. I kept wanting to wait until everything was perfect to share more photos but I think that progress photos are fun too. Hopefully sharing here will help me get my butt in gear to keep putting the finishing touches on! Today I'm sharing before and afters of the living, dining and bedroom. I'll do the kitchen and bathroom another time but those transformations aren't quite as dramatic. 

So. These photos are a mix of iPhone snaps and DSLR photos that I've taken over the last seven months. Most of the DSLR photos were taken yesterday so they're the most up to date. I did tidy up to take those photos but I really didn't do much more than that so you may notice stray cords, empty frames, etc. Settle in for lots of photos of where we started, where we are now and what finishing touches I still hope to make!
before-and-afer-home
I think I've said this before but our house is a rental. You'll probably think we're nuts to have made updates to it since we don't own but I love this stuff and really wanted to put work into the space to make it ours. So the first step was to paint the living/dining area white. The whole house was painted a pale grey but the living and dining area don't have the best light so I wanted it to be white so it would look as bright as possible. 

Dining Room

before-and-afer-dining-room
We also swapped out a couple of light fixtures, including the chandelier in the dining area. Mark and his dad are the best and did it themselves. We plan to just swap them back to the original fixtures when we move out. 
styled-shelf
The next step was to install this ladder shelf from CB2. I've mentioned it a million times but Alaina is someone whose design style I really admire. She had this shelf in her last house and I knew that I wanted to get one for this space. It's the perfect home for some of our prettier glassware and we also use it as a makeshift bar.
styled-shelf
dining-room-inspiration

In addition to the chandelier we had to put in a curtain rod because this house didn't come with any window treatments (insert eye-roll emoji here). I would love to get a larger kitchen table and add a rug here since we have the space but other things have taken priority for now. 
before-and-afer-shelf
before-and-afer-shelf
I played around with the shelf stying for a while and I think I have it where I want it. I might want to get one more baking dish to stack on that 6th shelf but otherwise I love it!

Living Room

before-and-afer-living-room

The living and dining room are one big, open area so we painted the whole thing white. Well, I shouldn't say "big" since our house is tiny but it felt huge once we started painting. Mark was very against painting but I was adamant and told him I'd take care of it since he didn't think we should do it. I thought it would take me a day since the area is relatively small but good lord it was a nightmare. Remind me never to paint again. It took an entire weekend (as in three days) and Mark ended up helping a lot after I had a meltdown or two. He's the best.
living-room-design-inspiration
before-and-afer-bookshelf
You guys, this bookshelf has been the bane of my existence. I was so excited to have this cute little built-in to style but I cannot for the life of me get it to a place I like. I've rearranged a million times and still don't love it. I just want to finish it and be done!
styled-bookshelf
styled-bookshelf
before-and-afer-living-room
Couch

I've been wanting to make a few updates to the living area to warm it up a bit. After having these plaid pillows out for Christmas I realized how much I loved the look of some color or even a pattern on the couch. I've been on the hunt for the perfect pillows ever since. We also really want to get an ottoman coffee table to make this little area cozier and better for movie-watching. There's too much white going on right now so I'd love to get a cognac leather ottoman or something like that to warm it up!
living-room-inspo
living-room-interior
In an ideal world we'd mount the TV but I doubt if that's ever going to happen. Just imagine it's mounted ;) 
living-room-inspiration
reading-nook

So this little nook is actually in the front room which is technically a bedroom. It's a joke of a bedroom so we use it for storage and have this little chair in there that Louie likes to perch on and bark at people as they walk by 😅

Bedroom


bedroom-inspo

Our bedroom is a special little snowflake in that there is no room to put a queen sized bed without blocking a window or having the bed up against a wall. We chose the blocking a window option. I know it would look better without a headboard but we like having one so it is what it is. The other eyesore in this room are those mismatched black shades you probably noticed. You also may have noticed that a lot of our windows have paper blinds. We got them when we moved in since the house felt like a fishbowl without any window treatments. Here we are seven months later with a ton of paper blinds still up because, well, window treatments are expensive. We've only put in a few permanent treatments and the rest are still paper. I plan to eventually replace the black shade here with this white one that will hopefully look less weird. 
before-and-afer-bedroom
styled-nightstand
before-and-afer-nightstand
before-and-after-dresser
I am obsessed with this dresser. I mentioned it before but I just wasn't finding anything online that I liked so I turned to craigslist and found a woman who had refinished this old dresser in black to give it some new life. I never thought I'd be this into a dresser but here we are. 
styled-dresser

I think the finishing touch here would be to group the items on the left in a tray like this one and then it'll be good to go! 
styled-dresser

Still a ways to go but I'm really happy with the progress we've made and am excited to keep chipping away at it! Hope you enjoyed seeing the progress!

xo Catherine 

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