I have been pretty quiet over on Oxford Handmade the last few weeks- you know Christmas, parties, whatnot. But honestly, most of the silence is because Marco and I have been working on a little side project we like to call Living Room Makeover 2013.
(Technically, it started in 2012, but just go with it ok?)
This is where our living room was sitting at the beginning of December:
Charming right? That MDF bookcase on its side acting like a sideboard. The 31 decorative pieces on the mantle. The 6 mini tables in the living room. That second picture is actually a during picture, but it shows some good before-ness too. Continue to just go with it.
Well like I mentioned here, we had some winter plans that we needed to get started, so when Marco's office closed for the holidays, get started we did. Suddenly our fireplace wall looked like this:
Blank except for the Instagram photos and the Trevi fountain canvas. That's also why that picture of the couch is so cluttered, most of the stuff just got moved across the room. Then suddenly through the power of the internets, the room started to look like this:
Turns out that phase one of Living Room Makeover 2013 involved 60 feet of bookshelves plus 12 feet of table height surface space. We added trim, filled in the holes, painted, painted again with a different white, and we when we finally sat down on the couch four days later, we were looking at this:
I waited a whole 72 hours before putting our books and collections on the shelves to make sure they cured nicely, but I gotta tell you, it was a little painful waiting that long. Having these shelves makes the room feel so much more balanced. That weird corner, to the left of the diningroom opening (you can see it in the picture right above), is suddenly useful. Plus the trim along the bottom of the shelves makes them look like they've been there forever.
And the best part? This bookshelf project really started the ball rolling with other living room projects. But you'll have to check back to see those. In fact, I should probably be working on them now...
