More Home Renovations

A few more rooms are now "close enough" in this whole renovation process.  Or, as close as they're going to be for awhile, since we recently had the "over-budget" conversation.

So here are some pics of our new living room, semi-modified kitchen, and slightly altered sunroom.

First the Living Room:

Here is what it looked like BEFORE:

Most of the changes were along this wall:

Sorry -- crooked picture. 

I know you're not supposed to make everything all symmetric above the fireplace, but I can't help it.  Looking at asymmetric things bothers me!

We designed this cover for our TV and Pete built it:

And now we have a spot for our firewood.  Bring on the cooler temps!

The other main changes were along this wall:

We switched out the chairs, and my father and Pete added trim around all of the windows.  Now I'm trying to decide if I should hang curtains on the sides of them or not.... any opinions??)

Since our furniture always ends up with writing on it anyway, we decided to just go ahead and pick chairs with writing already on them:

This was the first thing I bought (at an antique store) when I knew we were going to re-do the room:

Here's the room this evening:

 (By tomorrow it will all be full of clutter again, so I want to remember this!)





Now for the KITCHEN:

We didn't have money to do any major changes -- no new appliances or light fixtures or anything -- so we just focused on adding a few touches to make it more my style.

My favorite part is the new bar. Here's how it looked BEFORE:

And NOW:

 Pete hung beadboard under the bar and above some of the counters in the rest of the kitchen.

I put up this quote from the Benedictine monks-- "Deo Optimo Maximo" -- which means, "To God the best and the greatest.  (Good for teaching Latin roots, too!)

And that's my homemade ginger ale fermenting on the counter!

...But it was only a matter of hours before someone had changed the board to read this:

I may have to hide the chalk.  Anyway, moving on...

The view from the sink:

This is what the view was BEFORE:

Finally, the SUNROOM:

This was the BEFORE:

And this is NOW:

Again, not a lot of big change, but I do like it better this way.

(Yes, the stools still need to be cut down.)

Another question I now have is whether or not I should re-hang the curtains I had above these windows.  (They're navy and ivory stripes -- see "before" pic)  Should I????

And another question is what I should put along this wall.  We used to have our piano here, but it is now in another room.  Should I get some sort of bench for this wall??

And finally, if anyone is reading this, please remember this saying on my wall, and come visit!!!

p.s. Tomorrow I'll post pictures of our "conservatory" -- I still need help with that room!