House Reveal: Living Room

We have been in remodeling stage of our house since July.  And although it's not totally done, we are getting close.  Today I thought I'd share our living/dining room with you.  Here are the before & afters.

We decided to do a whitewash style of stain on the main wall in the living room.  I wanted to brighten the room up a bit & decrease yet another version of wood grain in the room.  A lot of different wood grains in this house... a lot.

I love our living room.  The cathedral ceilings make it feel so open.

And there are so many windows that no matter what the weather it is bright inside.  I love having a 180 degree view our of my living room.  

The major change we did in this room is replacing the banister with a wall.  We had to have the banister replaced & brought to code before closing because it was so dangerous.  I was afraid that I myself would fall through those pickets.  So this project was one of the first on our list.  I decided to do a wall because A)I needed more wall space in this room, there was very little on account of all the windows.  B) It closed off the family room/kid zone in the basement & greatly decreased noise between the main & bottom floors.  I love my new wall.

The fireplace makes this room so cozy & inviting.  (Those hieroglyphics are an old fan system that was in the fireplace before the gas insert.  I have plans to put mortar over the black caulking to make it blend in with the rest of the fireplace.  Or maybe I'll leave it so people can wonder what kind of weird stuff I'm into :)

It is a great place to gather.  The other major change we made in the living room was we added the dining area to it.  Before the dining room was over there to the right, directly in front of the sliders.  We use the sliders as our main door for the most part.  So having a big table in front of it was not good.  I didn't like the flow of it from the moment we first saw this house, & I knew I would change it right away.

So we placed it over on the other end of the living room creating more of a great room feel.  It works great with the flow of life & allows for a big table, which we need with a family of six.  Now we have a big entryway as well where you can sit & slip off your shoes.  Everything is almost done in this room.  Just two ceiling light fixtures & the top of the banister to finish it up.  I'm really happy with how it turned out.