front room paint!

finally!  it really didn't take that many man (woman) hours, but it seems like it took forever (1 week and a half maybe?) to paint the front living room.  we had to sneak painting in while z was napping, or when my mother in law could watch him for a little bit.  and then after we painted the walls (my father in law did the walls!), hubs painted the beam running along the apex, and i touched up the trim and railings and all that stuff.  we painted the front room and 3 walls of the dining room, since 2 of the walls are continuous with the front room.  anyway, we are done now and i love love love it!  it's such a deep, rich color and it is going to look great with nice, crisp white, breezy curtains and some art/pictures and odds and ends to fill the room and give some fun pops of color.  we'll be adding furniture and all that a little at a time since we can't just go out and buy everything at one time, we have to save up.  so it'll be a work in progress for awhile.  i also want to paint the brick around the fireplace, ultimately i want to chisel the existing tile out and re-tile with something like hex marble tile or some nice white penny tile, we'll see, and then add a mantel or a mantel like shelf.  and in the dining room, we need to choose a wall color for the last wall, which we didn't paint this dark blue since it is continuous with the hallway wall, and then also add some white curtains, some shelves and art and a rug, and replace the chandelier.  but that stuff will need to wait because first we need to build out the faux built-in shelves and desk area for the front room so that we can re-locate the office stuff there and then work on the nursery.  whew.  but the first step, which maybe is the most time consuming? is done.  yay!  disregard the mess in these pictures, the front room is still kind of a mess from painting and moving everything around:

this is the side of the room that faces the dining room, beyond those railings, i want to paint the tile around the fireplace for now, and then replace it later, i also want to add some nice art or a mirror above the fireplace and hang a mantel/shelf thingy.  also, this is the end of the room that will be the play area for the kids

on this wall i'm planning on putting the office/desk area, i want to put a bookcase on either end of the wall with a desk in the middle, and then build out the bookcases to make them look like built-ins by adding trim and stuff, kind of like the pictures below:

here is a better picture of the height of the room, with the beam, wherein the new light that we got will hang in the middle

we also had to paint a couple of the walls in the dining room since they are contiguous with the front room walls, to keep a good flow and continuity.  i wanted to paint the dining room this color originally, and then decided to also paint the front room this color.

the other side of the dining room

i would also like to add wainscoting on the walls, but now i have to decide if it will still look ok since only 3 of the walls in the dining room are painted dark blue

oh, and another thing that i finally got taken care of is replacing the tv stand.  we have been wanting to do that for awhile, i have been searching for MONTHS!  originally, i wanted to replace the tv stand because the top shelf area where the receiver and all of that electronic stuff was open, so z was constantly turning those things on and pushing buttons and changing the settings and stuff.  then i covered it with screen-door screen material, which successfully kept him out of that area for awhile until he figured out how to rip it off, and then he was able to get into that stuff again.  so we pulled the screen stuff off the front of the tv stand.  but i also wanted to replace the existing cheap ikea stand with something more furniture-y and something nicer.  the hunt was on.  i looked everywhere!  and i was limited by budget, and parameters---i wanted it to be a tad bit taller than what we had, but still able to fit under the tv that's mounted on the wall, i preferred not to get something that was black, i was looking for white or a different color, i wanted it to be made of wood, drawers and doors were fine but i preferred that they were not glass, i wanted the entire front to be covered with either drawer or door so that there were no open areas for toddlers to get into.  we figured, with drawers and doors that we could put those childproof locks on them.  and i didn't want to pay soooo much.  the ones i was looking at that met my criteria were about $1000, i even saw some for $700 but that was way more than i wanted to pay.  so i just kept looking.  finally, the other day, i decided to just pop into homegoods to see if they had anything good, in general.  and then i found it!  homegoods had this tv stand that pretty much met my requirements, and was decently priced.  so i put it on hold and arranged for us to get it home.  it took a couple of days, and in the meantime i was looking through the joss & main app like i do everyday, and i found the same exact one, and i thought, 'oh! i like that!' before i realized it was the same one at homegoods.  so anyway, we were able to get it home, and all set up.  and i think it fits well.  it's a little bigger than the ikea tv stand we had, but i think it fills out that wall nicely.  so i'm pretty excited about that find.  wooohoooo!  yay for homegoods!

this is the previous ikea tv stand that we had, too small for the space, didn't fit our needs

 anyway, those are a few things checked off my list.  now for the next 85 things.  oh!  and i might just get rid of the old ikea tv stand, but then when i was looking at it, i thought that maybe i could repurpose it somehow.  so, i'll have to think about it and see if i can give it a new life.  any ideas?