119: Living Room Re-Do

After taking the summer off from working on the house, we're ready to begin the next project.  For those who may not know, last January we bought a multi-family home and became landlords.  We live in one of the apartments in the building and rent out the other two units.  We have dreams of one day restoring the home back to its single-family glory, but for now, we're content to keep living in our one-bedroom apartment and collecting that rental income :) 

Since we purchased the house, we've painted the master bedroom; revamped the foyer and common stairwell, which included scraping away years of wallpaper and paint, demo, putting in new ceilings and painting, and installed new gardens in the front yard.  

Here's the bedroom in the very beginning stages of painting:

Here's the bedroom after two coats of Sherwin Williams Enigma: 
                                

  
Here's the common stairwell during the 3-month long project.  Pure hell:

Here's the common hallway after months of hellish hard work, a few coats of Sherwin Williams Sticks & Stones, and some white trim paint: 

Here's the house with nothing but weeds in the beds:

 
Here's the new and improved beds, taken Memorial Day weekend.  You should see how much everything has filled in- it's wild!   Currently, you can't see the ground; it's all herbs and vegetables and flowers and total urban jungle goodness.  I would take a picture but frankly, I'm too lazy. 

So that's a little taste of what we've been up to.  More detailed pics are here, if you're interested.  When we first bought the house, we were all excited for projects and couldn't wait to dive in and get started.  Painting the bedroom was fun, mostly because it only took a weekend to complete.  The hallway project, on the other hand, took us several weeks and made us realize just how time intensive and all-encompassing these types of things are.  We thought we were just going to paint, but one thing led to another and before we knew it, we had a full blown demo and construction project on our hands.  This was tough because the weekends were our only time to work on it.  Gone were the lazy rainy weekends and spontaneous Saturday nights out, and in rolled the monotonous routine of scrapping, more scraping, and even more scrapping.  It was at least a month before we saw even the slightest improvement, and even then, it still looked like crap. 

Once we finally completed that project- well, it's not actually complete yet, we still have to deal with the floors, but it's just about done.  Anyway, once we felt done enough, we agreed to take a break from house projects and focus on other stuff.  Jay had a lot of side work to take care of, and I really enjoyed spending time in the garden.  We also wanted our summer weekends as free as possible for beach trips, spending time with family, and just not being bogged down when it was so nice out.  

Now that the "brisk" winds of autumn are blowing in (it's in the mid 80's as I write this) and we'll be spending more time indoors, we feel ready for the next project - the living room re-design!  This is my kind of project, as it's mostly cosmetic and design centric rather than construction-heavy.  Our current living room is fine, but I want a space that reflects our style and personalities a little more.  I want a room that is designed without being too design-y, you know?  Kinda eccentric, cozy, playful and relaxing is what I'm going for; a room that has style but doesn't take itself too seriously.  I want someone who has never met us to be able to walk into the room and get a total sense of who we are. 

So, all that being said, here are the colors we've chosen:  


The main color will be Sherwin Williams Alpaca, a warm grayish/tanish neutral , and the accent wall color will be Sherwin Williams Peacock Plume, a blueish/greenish beauty:

We had some difficulty deciding between a cool gray and a warm gray, but ultimately we decided to go with the lighter, warmer one (Alpaca) on the right.  Thanks to Mom, Sara, Jenny M. and Simone for their votes.  Just about everyone voted for Alpaca

I'd also like to throw in some pops of green, magenta and/or orange, if possible.  Here are a few things that I'm inspired by.  And yes, that is a cat on the pillow.  I'm inspired by her nap habits. 

Pillows with general color scheme found at Marshalls.  Cat not included.  The blue pillow is a perfect match to the accent wall color.  The green is along the lines of the "pop of green" I referred to above.  There are also pops of magenta and orange in the white pillow

40 x 28 Koi fish painting by Ben Will.  Note the pops of orange and green.  Note the awesomeness.

Letter blocks made from vintage maps of Ireland, perfect for on top of the bookshelves.

8 x 10 graphic map of Philly, comes in a variety of colors.  Did I mention I love maps?  May get a few from different cities we've visited and cluster them together.

16 x 20 print of classic Banksy gorilla graffiti.  I LOVE this; not sure that it will work in this space, but it belongs somewhere in our home. 

So that's where we are right now.  This color scheme is based loosely on what we already have, so I know certain elements will work.  I'm just so excited to put fresh color on the walls, throw up some new art with our existing stuff and hang curtains.  Right, curtains.  I haven't started looking at designs I like yet, I kind of want to paint and accessorize first, and then deal with window treatments.  Not sure if that's a good strategy... what do you think? 

The only thing we've actually done so far is pick and purchase the paint.  I say only as if it's simple to pick paint colors.  Nope.  It's super hard, especially when you're as indecisive as I am and as indifferent as Jay is (about the paint color).  Now that we've decided and locked in, I feel like I need a few weeks off.  I'm exhausted!  :)

I'll keep you all posted on the project as we make progress.  Here's hoping that it's a relatively easy project and that we're not opening Pandora's box again!  Hell, even if it does turn out to be a long, drawn out mess, at least we'll have this guy to entertain us.