Living room makeover: the big reveal

I've been writing about it since February and pottering away on related projects all year, but now I can say with great pleasure that the living room makeover is now complete. Of course, there are always little things to be done and new ideas to see through, but it's good enough now to give you a tour. Most projects have been posted about previously so I will link to them rather than drone on. As my inspiration file post detailed, I wanted a black and white base with some modern, vintage glamour!

I got the symmetry I wanted in the form of lamps, lamp tables, and bold prints taken from designers like Kelly Wearstler, Florence Broadhurst and Jonathan Adler. 

Revamping the chandelier and adding curtains with Greek key trim helped add some vintage glamour. So too did the TV cabinet from eBay (it matches the side tables but the drawers still need to be converted to shelves for the DVD player etc. The front of the drawers will get fitted with hinges so that they become doors).

A second hand table made better use of this small space. I also learned to sew this year and got busy making cushions. 

 Making over the fireplace and mantle was the most time consuming project in the room but it was worth it.

I love looking in to the "new" room from the kitchen. The Dulux Domino walls of the kitchen look great next to the Whisper White and the Taubman's Mink Scorpio (quarter strength) in the living room.

We removed the door between these rooms and have enjoyed the openess it creates.

We also bode farewell to this cute, but rather odd, corner shelf.

Instead, we welcomed new friends like this chesterfield ottoman that had a little makeover of its own.

And of course, we have farewelled the worn grey carpet and welcomed a lighter, plusher variety. So, that's pretty much it. A little breather is in order and then we'll be launching into the next project. Hope you've enjoyed "the big reveal".

 

Fireplace & mantle: before & after

Bring out the trumpets people. Our living room makeover is now complete! It has been a very busy month around here but it's DONE. I won't lie, it has been tiring, often boring and very dirty but doing every single thing ourselves apart from installing the carpet has been satisfying too. The biggest job in the room was revamping our fireplace and mantle so this post is dedicated to that particular six-week slog.

In this earlier post, I showed you what we started with and our first steps plus finding and painting a mantle. Here are a few earlier pics for a quick recap.

After knocking out the bricks, some of the big holes were filled by replacing broken brick and covering with mortar. After leaving this to dry for a day, a coat of render was applied (below).

The render was then hand sanded smooth (below).

A coat of base coat plaster (below) was followed by a final coat plaster to give it a smooth finish.

Each layer needed a day to dry. This is what we ended up with after the final coat plaster.

At this point, our little old heater was looking worse and worse, although it was still doing a fine job of keeping us warm as you can see. We figured it couldn't hurt to try spray painting the brown woodgrain veneer using the black White Knight spray can we'd used on the chandelier.

After taping carefully, the Mister sprayed away et voila! A new lease on life for this old boy.

Tiling was next on the agenda but first we had to fix the surface beneath the old tiles. You can see we exposed a crazy mix of different wood under there so it had to go.

I got brave and used the circular saw to cut this piece of flooring, then screwed it down.

Next to go down was a piece of cement sheeting and some aluminium tile edge was measured up. A fair amount of YouTube tutorials were also viewed around this time! Who needs a tradie when you have your own two hands and YouTube :)

The Mister was busy replacing flooring in other parts of the room and fixing squeaky boards so I had to get on and lay some tiles. When a deadline is looming, it's amazing what you will just get on and do. The carpet was due to be installed three days later so what could I do but smear down some tile adhesive, shimmy a few tiles in place and push some spacers down? Apart from a scary moment near the end where I momentarily thought my careful measurements were off, it was too easy. 

Grouting the next night was the real challenge. We'd purchased ready made black grout in a tube and it seemed to get dry quickly and feel like it was setting before I could smooth it nicely between each tile. I may or may not have sworn at my husband in a state of stress! But I just kept smoothing it down as best I could then used a damp sponge a lot to get a nicer finish. By the time I fell into bed at 1.30am, I was feeling better about it.

In the morning, I saw this and felt rather pleased. After a bit of a clean up, I thought they looked a million bucks!

Later that morning, we had the carpet installed. It's a twist pile Godfrey Hirst carpet in a colour called Antique Linen. A few days later we drilled two holes into the chimney and inserted walls plugs and screws to hang the mantle. At some point we'll also reinforce the mantle with liquid nails. For now, we are just kicking back to admire it (and blog about it)!

Nothing better than a mantle to display beloved objects. I have already bought fabric to sew Christmas stockings that will hang on the mantlepiece! What a DIY nerd I have become. 

Oh, so much better, don't you think? Those green patterned bricks are but a distant memory. 

  

Trying out DIY abstract art

Between eating, sleeping and sanding every surface in our living room this weekend, I had a go at some DIY abstract art. It was so fun! Last week, I posted some of my favourite abstract art as inspiration (see here) and wondered if I dared give it a try. Just looking at gorgeous pieces by Michelle Armas and photos of art in Kelly Wearstler's divine interiors was inspiring, then I received an email with tips and encouragment from a friend. It cemented my ideas, gave me some confidence and I was off.

The girl at the art shop told me to use acrylics over oils if I meant what I said when I told her I didn't know what I was doing. So my old trusty acrylics it was - student quality, not artist, because I wasn't keen to spend a fortune on an experiment. What I was about to paint may never make it to the wall. I did splash out $12 on a small tub of impasto gel as "the girl" told me this can be mixed with acrylic paint for a textured look. I found it hard to make brush stroke marks when I tried this so I'm not sure I will use this too much.

The paintings pictured are my first attempts on some white card stock, framed in some unused Ikea Ribba frames I had. I hadn't been to my trusty $2 shop for the canvas at that point in the weekend and I wouldn't have been game to paint straight onto it anyway. I really enjoyed having a play around without the pressure of knowing I want it to go in our living room when it is finished. Below is the very first card I painted yesterday. It's not my favourite so just as well I got to try a few more things...

After this one, I stopped using blue and came up with three others using all pinks, yellows and white. This colour combo worked for me.

My mother duck is an artist and she will be very proud of me when she sees these I think. I'm pretty proud myself. I started picturing myself opening an Etsy shop with my DIY abstract artworks and taking commissions for special colour combinations to really make my clients' hearts sing! Tonight I came back down to earth when I painted another two cards and didn't like them nearly as much (too dark to photograph sorry).

I have now purchased a 60x60cm canvas. It was only $12.95 (from a shop called 'Up to $5'!) but I still feel that I need to "find" my technique or style before I put pen paint to paper canvas. Right now, the end result is a complete surprise to me. I don't feel I'm in control of how it turns out. It's a wait and see thing. Maybe that's the point of this style of painting?! Maybe I need to relinquish control and trust that the universe will provide?!

A chandelier reborn

The best thing about revamping old things is that it often doesn't matter if it doesn't work out. Unless you're dealing with serious antiques or things of sentimental value, the stakes are low and you're free to let loose and be creative. When it comes to transformations by paint, I'm yet to find myself wishing I didn't apply that fresh coat. It almost always looks better. 

This weekend while the Mister was putting render and final finish plaster on the fireplace, I got sidetracked from my next job of sanding all the wooden surfaces in our living room and reached for the spray paint. Oh, how I love spray paint. So fun to apply, so quick to transform something. I had my sights set on the chandelier in our living room. Eventually, I'd like to replace it but nice light fittings are never cheap and the good ones need to be installed by an electrician. That would cost even more money so I set about wondering how I could improve this old chandelier. The biggest barrier were the crystals. To paint over the brass fittings would require removing and then replacing each crystal. That sounded too long and arduous a task for my impatient self so I decided to try to cover them instead. Drips of paint all over them would look very amateur too so what to do? Masking tape all over them may have been hard to remove and could leave sticky bits which would have been a nightmare to clean when still attached to a light dangling from a 3.5 metre ceiling. Then I thought of plastic film/cling wrap. Genius I thought until I started questioning whether I could make it tight enough around the top of each crystal so no paint dribbled down. Mulling over this led me to my final solution which was aluminium foil! 

Wrapping all the crystal pieces of the chandelier was pretty painless. Just made sure I pressed them tightly around the top to stop any drips getting through. The final prep was masking the top of the light and sticking some newspaper up to protect the ceiling rose.

A coat of White Knight Super Primer and we were on the way. 

Then two coats of White Knight Quick Dry satin Enamel in black (this and the primer cost less than $10 each from Bunnings). I followed the instructions of the can and waited an hour between coats. I was pretty excited at this stage. High on life not on paint fumes, me hopes!

I managed to wait an hour before removing the aluminium foil, then I just had to see what it looked like! The photo above shows the bottom crystals half unwrapped. I took this to show the little strips of foil that I wrapped tightly around the top of each crystal before wrapping with a larger piece to cover the whole thing. I felt I had more control of this little piece and could make sure the top was tighly covered. It was mostly a success. 

Once all the foil was removed, there were only 3 or 4 dots of black paint on the crystals to remove with a little turps (mineral turpentine). At this point I realised that the white plastic things that sit under the light globes were a dirty cream colour so I threaded these on a piece of string, strung them up outside and sprayed them with a couple of coats of white paint (leftover from the lamps I painted here).

Another hour of waiting later and the makeover was complete. Old globes back in et voila! Some new globes are on the list of things to hunt down, maybe something a bit daintier. The current energy saving globes are not cutting it.You may notice that I didn't put quite enough newspaper up to protec the ceiling rose. Whoops. Lucky fresh paint is on the agenda.

So there you have it - how to revamp an old chandelier for less than $20 with minimum fuss, without an electrician or removing it from the ceiling!

Here it is from afar with a glimpse of the progress on the fireplace (final coat plaster now applied and tiles ripped up). 

With a new lease on life, this old beauty is now fit to remain in the revamped living room. The black gives it a bit of a pop and will help it tie in with all the other black elements in the room (the curtain trim, the lamp shades, the ottoman, the paintings etc). One final, before and after to showcase spray paint satisfaction...

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