Living Room DIY Ideas – Before & After
We bought our house at the end of 2015. The previous owner of the house was renting it out to a family with pets. The house was in pretty bad shape when we got it. Which I am not complaining, because he did sell us the house for a really good price! But…anyways, it was BAD! There was carpet everywhere, even in the restrooms. & The whole whose smelled like animal urine. So of course, the first thing we had to do was remove all of the carpet! Everything!!
As you can see from the picture, our living room definitely needed some remodeling. Our house now is not exactly where I want it yet. But we’ll get there eventually. I am pretty content with the way my living room is at this moment so I decided to go ahead and post “Before & After” pictures. We basically bought new flooring, painted, and added décor! I’m very happy with the outcome, compared to what it was before!
So the flooring is from Lowe’s. We got Vinyl Plank Flooring in a dark brown color. I just didn’t like the light brown color that it had under the carpet. So we went with something darker. I also didn’t like the “green” color on the walls. I knew for sure that when we painted the house, I was going to want more neutral colors. (Except for the girl’s room! That room does NOT count! Lol.) So we got our paint from Sherwin Williams and painted our walls gray & went over the white on the ceiling and the trim.
Now for my favorite part, the décor! We bought our couches from Ivan Smith Furniture. Once again, I really liked the dark brown color and I knew it would go well with the dark brown flooring so I went with that.
Everything that is on our walls, are most likely from Family Dollar. I prefer to have pictures on my walls instead of pictures with flowers. That is my personal opinion; I like seeing those memories on my walls and have everyone else see our family pictures as well. I liked the idea of a “Gallery Wall” & that was basically my goal, but in a subtle way, not too much, but not too little either.
Our house did not come with a fireplace (unfortunately) but I made it work! Instead of having a mantle to put my décor I asked my husband to put up a shelf under the TV. (We did not have to buy the shelf; we just moved one of the shelves from the Laundry Room to the Living Room.) Basically what I did was buy 2 candleholders from AVON, and put 2 picture frames (that we got from Family Dollar) on both ends of the shelf. Then I put a picture of my husband and I with the girls on our wedding day in the middle. I LOVE it, because that means I have an area to decorate for the holidays as well so we can have some type of holiday cheer inside and not just outside.
The only thing I have in between the front door and a big glass window so far is a round mirror. We got this mirror at a flea market we went to and the guy sold it to us for less than 20 bucks! Which we thought was really good. On the other side of that big window, we have more family pictures. Once again, the picture frames are from Family Dollar.
There is a little breakfast area in between the kitchen and the living room. So we put a counter height black table with 4 stools there with a beautiful wine vase painted black with white artificial flowers inside. (This was something that was given to me as an idea for our wedding centerpiece but I wanted something with lilac since that was my wedding color so I used that for my centerpiece for my breakfast table!) & Of course we have a napkin holder.
Next to the table, there is a built in bookshelf. I really don’t have that area completely organized or decorated how I want it. Right now, I basically have a few picture frames, few books, and a few wine bottles. It’s simple but cute.
Well, that’s it for my living room ideas! Let me know what ideas you had to re-vamp your living room in the comment section below!
XO,
Mariela Oviedo
