This year’s project is… dun-da-da-dun… The Living Room!
After finishing up the office near the end of 2013 (and the finished result), I did a few short projects, like painting the kitchen and the laundry room upgrades. That means we’ve checked off the master bathroom, master bedroom, the guest bath, Avie’s nursery, the office and the kitchen… leaving only the living room.
My plan includes moving the couch, new curtains, a new color pallet, recovering pillows and a few new details to go with the new color pallet.
The couch was already moved for the Christmas tree. The new color pallet:
And last week, I finally braved the 9 yards of fabric I bought for curtains.
It was nerve-wracking and rightly so. Measure twice, cut once right? Well, here’s the deal. The selvage says “Dry Clean Recommended”, but who wants to have curtains you can’t wash? So I though, hmm, I’ll test it first on a small piece to make sure it doesn’t totally inhilate the fabric or completely wash out the color, right? Good idea. I’ll cut off 22″ for a 20″ pillow and wash it real quick to see what happens. Perfect.
In the mean time, I fold the rest over in half and find that it’s just barely long enough for the full length, plus the 3″ hem on the top and the 5″ him on the bottom that I’d like to add. Then I cut it. Yeah. I cut it. Panicking the whole time.
So, nothing super bad happened to the little piece. It was 22″ and shrank to 20″. Not great, and enough to make me worry, but not the end of the world. Overstuffed pillows look more expensive anyways.
After contemplating do I wash the panels or do I not, I finally decided I just really need to be able to wash them if I have to. So I did. Aaaaand they shrank. Like a lot. Like 8″ for each panel. All 8″ of the two hems I planned for. Great. After some tears and discussing my options with Ansen, I finally decided to simply put a small hem on both ends and hope it was just long enough to pool a tiny bit on the floor.
Oh, and that curtain rod? I thought I’d DIY it, you know? And then I went to Lowe’s and walked around a lot. I got lots of help from employees and weighed all of my options. Finally, I decided it was much more logical and worth my time to simply buy one, particularly since I couldn’t find any finials in a decent price that I actually liked.
It’s oil rubbed bronze with sort of interesting finials (not just plain balls). It was $45 (ah!) but worth the headache for me. Sometimes, you just have to know when it’s worth it to just buy something and when the effort of DIYing is just too much.
Overall, I’m very happy with the final product!
Now for some pillows and decorative accessories. I might finish this project up a little more quickly than the office!
PS. Also, sorry for the link-heavy post. Just want to keep track of all of our updates!