my mom’s living room makeover

So in the sneak peek of the furniture I painted for my mom while visiting last week, I showed you these dark pine bookcases.

These bookcases have great significance in my memory bank as they were the backdrop for every.single. homecoming dance and prom picture from jr. high to high school. Wanna see?

10th grade homecoming

11th grade homecoming

Just a regular ole date (my mom was camera happy).

Senior prom

Weren’t my dates happy? Just look at those smiles! 🙂

And what’s not to smile about? It was the 80’s…when Journey was still together and I still had a waistline. 🙂 Good times.

Anyhoo…hope you enjoyed that little trip down memory lane. But you are here to see a living room makeover right?

I don’t have any true before pics because I was a little overzealous and started moving furniture outside to paint before snapping any. Oopsie.

But here are some pics my mom took before they had the carpet replaced a few weeks ago.

Diagnosis: Too much dark furniture placed willy-nilly around the perimeter of the room. It looked like a furniture hold-up. All the pieces of furniture retreated to their separate walls with their hands up. Nothing was cohesive.

Remedy: Lighten up some of the furniture and arrange the room so that it is visually pleasing and inviting.

First up…the painting. As I showed you in this post I painted the dark pine bookshelves and the antique stereo cabinet in Benjamin Moore’s Cloud White.

Here is the before and after one more time.

To help freshen up the living room accessories, my mom and I headed to Birmingham.

Our first stop??? My happy place.

We found some great pillows and accessories. (BTW, I found the Hadley duvet cover that’s out of stock here in Canada!)

Then we hit HomeGoods, Target, TJ Maxx and Steinmart. Just look at all those goodies we had piled high! 🙂

Next came the fun part…putting the room together!

I used all of the same furniture that was in the room before and added only the ottoman. I just rearranged it so that there was a true focal wall and a warm, inviting seating arrangement.

The walls are a beautiful mossy green color, so I stuck with greens and yellows with botanical accents. I’m not big on “themey” rooms but in the right doses a common element or theme can really pull a room together.

I added a runner, lamp and grouped a few accessories to create a vignette on my grandmother’s drop leaf table. Underneath was a perfect spot to store the unused ottoman. It’s handy when extra seating is needed.

The pillows are from Pottery Barn.

The french script ottoman and the botanical prints were found at Steinmart.

Love this green lamp. We found it at HomeGoods.

These basket weave lamps are one of my favorite things we added. I love the texture that they bring to the space. The linen button shades were a Hobby Lobby find.

My goal was to create a beautiful retreat for my mom using pieces that she already had. By painting a few pieces of furniture, rearranging the room and freshening up the accessories that goal was accomplished.

My mom loves the room and I’m pretty happy with how it turned out too.

Have a wonderful Wednesday, everybody!

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