Living Room Before & After

The day is finally here! Our new TV stand is finished! Yay! So, on Sunday I told you about the living room makeover, which is centered around our new maple TV cabinet that my father built. Today, I am going to share the big reveal!

You remember the BEFORE pictures:



And here is the awesome AFTER:


The new cabinet is proudly gracing our living room feature wall (we will call it). The custom built cabinet houses our VCR, XBOX and accoutrement. The design includes two removable shelves to accommodate any additional media devices we may aquire in the future (can you say DVR?) ;) As luck would have it, the bottom shelf on the left exactly fits a DVD box! We didn't even plan for that-- hooray serendipity! Eventually that happy accident won't be so important because I intend to get a woven basket for the DVDs so we don't have all those colorful boxes cluttering up the view. :) The cabinet was constructed with solid maple and stained ebony, then coated with multiple coats of bombay mahogany poly-shade to achieve the dark mahogany finish. My mother sanded, rubbed, sprayed and brushed this thing for a solid week to achieve this satiny-smooth finish. Isn't it gorgeous? Now, we just need to get her to do all the other pieces of furniture in this room to match! Haha!



Our TV BEFORE... Don't jump, TV, we'll get you a new home!



And now:

And in the corner where the ugly TV stand used to live, we now have a nice corner for reading or talking on the phone (or putting on those running shoes!) A special thanks to Mama for the cushy chair--a ratty goodwill find that she reupholstered with cream colored cut velvet... so soft. The new lower TV position opened up the wall above the cabinet for a photo gallery featuring black and white family photos. I bought most of the frames on the cheap, painted them black to unify the different styles, and then hung them symmetrically above the television. I tried it assymetrically for a while, but I just couldn't handle it! :-P Me and my laser level are all about precision--in addition to hanging the frames on a nail, I also taped them to the wall so they won't be bouncing around and un-leveling themselves as time goes by. Who has time to go around straightening frames all the time? And the other set of frames displays some botanical prints that coordinate nicely with the colors in the room:



The final addition to the living room is a set of bronze lamps with cream shades from Wally World on the clearance aisle (they weren't really that cheap, however, I think those Walmart people just put a clearance sticker on something and stick it on that aisle so some sucker like me will buy it!) :) Finally, a little light for our main living space.


So, there you have it, our lovely living room makeover. But don't worry, we aren't done yet (could I ever be done with a room?) Future upgrades to the living room include new paint color (in a darker shade of beige for more contrast--can't get too wild here because the walls connect to the foyer and hallway), bamboo roman shades, recovering the couches in a nice tan color, a big square ottoman to replace the coffee table, new neutral drapes, coordinating throw pillows (of course), and at the top of the list--a console table to replace this little plywood stand:


I like this one from JCPenney, but I wonder how it would look with all the other furnishings in this room. What do you think?