Sneak peek – living room makeover

At long last, I’ve begun my living room makeover I planned way back in May. Monday was a glorious Bank Holiday for us here in Ireland, so I spent my day cleaning my apartment, painting, and cleaning up after painting. And I enjoyed it. 

This is what I fancied up a couple months ago for what I wanted our main feature wall to look like {you can check out my original makeover post here}. This entire wall was originally all chalkboard painted, but since our apartment is dark, all that black wasn’t exactly cheer inducing. 
I’m not one to set goals and then let them get dusty, and after 3 months it was getting dusty enough for me.

So above is a snippet of what’s left of our blackboard wall. Much more sophisticated. And a lot brighter. I painted the surrounding wall with Crown Paint‘s ‘Swans a Swimming’, as chosen last October for the rest of our living room. I blogged that too. You can check out here.

For what has happened over the past couple of weeks {lots of unnecessary stress, and none of it wedding related}, I thought the text on the below E Card was quite suiting, so I scrawled it in my fanciest penmanship on the remaining blackboard left above our shelf. I’m going to go on a limb here and assume I’m not the only one feeling like this … 

Hopeful makeover – living room

I’ve been sick for the past week, and in an attempt to find the silver lining, all this time moping has given me time to mess around on Photoshop, yay!
I’ve wanted to revamp our living room for a while, and to get the ball rolling I did this little mock-up of the focal wall in our living room I want to tackle. At the moment it’s a massive blackboard wall, which is cool and all, but our apartment doesn’t get much light, and I’m really feeling it drag the room down. Considering I love dark colours, I think the addition of depressing Irish weather is encouraging me to brighten it up. So I tried my hand at an ‘after’ image of what I’d like it to look like, and I’m quite pleased with the result!

This is what I came up with, and I’m pretty stoked. A fresher look that’s a little brighter, more uplifting, a little more grown up, but still has the same major elements, and some existing items we already own – 

I kept a smidgen of the blackboard wall, offset from the white shelf, and coloured the rest of the wall to what we already have – Swan’s a Swimming. I’ve had a knot in my knickers to invest in an orchid, but that mother is going to need to be faux since I {unintentionally} murder every plant that enters my care. Spruced up with a Stockholm Rand rug, an unattainable Gun Lamp {a girl can dream}, some crates to balance the scales, and one musn’t forget a hydrangea. 
There are two elements I can’t change in our living room – the white IKEA shelf and TV stand. We’re tenants, and we don’t own these items. Yes, I paint a small amount of our apartment, but I would never have a problem re-painting before we leave. Another item that will remain but haven’t included in the second image is our massive regolit lamp, which is needed, but would stuff up the image. I’m pretty excited about getting started, and can’t wait to give our living room a little revamp! Happy Saturday, everyone 🙂

Mini makeover – coffee table tray

I heart mini makeovers: taking something you already have, and giving it a face lift. I figure, why buy something new when you can revamp something you already have?
I found the previous state of wood x2 on our coffee table was a little too much. In stead of getting a new serving tray, a bit of paint was all I needed. This is a severely minor project, but it’s one of those things I’ve been meaning to do for months. Our living room is quite dark, so it also managed to brightened it up a little. I do enjoy a good revamp.
I wonder how long it will take fiance to notice it’s been painted. My guess is three days.