The Great Renovation of the Living Room

The Living room wasn't too bad to begin with. The hard wood floor in there is amazing! It just needed some updating like the rest of the house. My initial idea was to paint it sage green, but I couldn't find that exact color at first so I bought what I thought looked like it... you'll see.

Notice the shag carpet on the stairs.
Soo... why are the baby pictures of Alyssa in here. It's because of her that the Living room got re-renovated.

I just love these pictures and I had to include them.

When Alyssa was born Nate's Mom Debbie flew out to help me. My sister Tyanna was having a baby just a week or so after me so my Mom went out to help her.

While I was still in the hospital with Alyssa (I have c-sections to I get to stay 3-4 days! I know that some might hate that, but to me it's like a 5 star hotel! I get waited on hand and foot, I order what ever I want for dinner, and I don't have to make it or do the dishes! What more could a girl want!?) Mom Evan's was at home most the time taking care of the boys for me. She is amazing! While she was there, she took note of the terrible color we had painted the living room and she, being the interior designer that she is, said she would love to help us correct our terrible mistake while she was there.

So, while I was still in the hospital unbeknownst to me Nate and Debbie set to work on a surprise for me. First, they discovered the underneath that terrible shag carpet was beautiful hard wood! So they tore out the carpet. When that was done they realized that having a little baby in a house that had stairs, and no railing was pretty dangerous, so they decided to build a banister!

You can totally see the NASTY green we painted! It was so terrible, but we just were so burned out on painting that we didn't want to re-paint.

Here is the banister coming together.

This is after paint... sorry, a little out of order.

Here it is without paint.

I came home from the hospital totally shocked and so grateful.

Even though I was just days post op, I felt so bad that I was just sleeping or sitting and watching, so I volunteered to tape and paint the banister. Debbie wanted me to sleep... and now I think it was partly because I was so doped up on pain meds that I would probably mess up everything. :-) I think I did a pretty good job, and it helped that I could sit on the stairs as I went.

Once the banister went up they thought, heck, if we are going to do this, let's do it right, so off to Lowes they went and found the real "Sage green" and started to paint the monstrosity.

I don't want to forget to mention that Emily (Nate's sister) came out to help as well. It was all during Thanksgiving as well, so it was so fun having Thanksgiving with Mom and Emily here. Emily helped so much with the painting!

They painted a primer, then a base coat then a 3rd final coat. I can't believe how hard everyone worked!

And boy did it pay off. Debbie like I said is like an interior designer and is so brilliant with how she arranges furniture. She somehow found the cutest way to arrange our furniture and make the house look so darn cute!

The finished project. (I still needed to take some blue tape off the banister... it was waiting on a second coat there)

I'm the luckiest girl in the world. I was blessed with a sweet little angel doll baby girl, and a beautiful new living room in just a matter of days. Thank you Debbie for all that you do for us. I'm so blessed with amazing parents on both sides of my family. I hope to be like all of you someday.

Once again, when it came time to sell we decided that the best thing to do with that window was to take it out, and on the living room side we decided to turn it into a built in book shelf.

I love how messy my house gets when we are working on a project!

But it always turns out okay in the end.