The House Tour: Front Room

Here was the view when you walked in our front door.

And here it is NOW:

It is about double the size of the front room in our old house. Woohoo! While I do love it, in order to make use of all the space (which is Jason's preference), it looses a bit of the comfy feel without a coffee table (or something) in the middle of the furniture. But it totally works.

Here is the view from the opposite side of the room. BEFORE:NOW:I am planning to paint the front door (inside and out) - it sticks out like a sore thumb. I would also like to put a fun console table in place of the black wooden chair by the front door . . . in time. One decorating lesson I learned a long time ago: Use what you have and be content with it.

Did you see the two sets of four shelves indented into the wall in the before picture? The shelves had to go. We didn't have the time or money to tear the trim out completely so Jason ripped out the shelves and I sanded and painted the wood. The lanterns and hooks were in my kitchen in my old house.
This is my favorite wall in my house by far . . . the mirror collage!

I have been wanting to do something like this for over a year. I didn't have a place to do it in my old house. But, I started collecting mirrors over a year ago and was finally able to pull it off here. All of the small mirrors are from Goodwill. The curvy one ($10) on the left is from a barn in Galena, IL. The fancy looking one ($12) is from the Habitat Restore in Des Moines. The long one is from my old house and the round one ($8) is from Goodwill. I used a Krylon spray paint in the color Satin Nickel from the Brushed Metallic collection (got it at Walmart). I am in love with this color of spray paint! It is like a muted silver. And it looks great against the dark color I painted the room - 'Semi-Sweet' from Lowes. The paint sample card looked like a dark brown color. But, when I got it on the walls, it looks like a mysterious brown/charcoal with a hint of dark purple (go figure!). It was the color I went out of my comfort zone on and I love it!

We did buy a new couch . . . at a real furniture store even! We needed a couch for more seating in this room and I was looking on Craigslist for one. Decent couches are $300-350 (or more) on Craigslist. I wanted a grey couch and knew that would be hard to find. We were in Des Moines one weekend and we decided to just go and see how much couches are at a 'real' store. I honestly had no idea. Low and behold this couch was $359 and so were many others. Who knew? The crazy thing is that I swear to you this couch was GREY in the store. Jason can vouch for me. That is why we bought it. It was one of only a couple grey couches in the huge store. Once we got it in our house it totally looks brown. Which is completely okay. It goes with the rest of the furniture quite well.

You can see the color of the wall better in this picture. The color is actually very dark, but I'm here (along with Nate Berkus) to tell you to not be afraid of dark colors! They add such a warm feel to a room.

I don't know what got into me, but I have a sudden love for decorating with glass. I have always loved old glass jars, but primarily used them in the kitchen. I have them in a number of rooms in this house however. Here they are hiding the nasty TV antenna. And I thought this would be proof that my love for decorating and organizing does not translate into cleaning. Look at all of that dust. And I don't really care. It is way up high where no one can see!

I had to blur out the pics of the kids from Africa once again in the picture below. I would love a different chair in place of the $5 wicker chair I got at Goodwill 7 years ago when I moved into my house and recently spray-painted black. BUT . . . I'm working on being content with what I have! The little side table was a $3 garage sale find that I sanded and painted a turquoise color.

Well, there is the front room and all of my commentary.