Living Room Makeover

Do you have a builder grade living room? You know, the kind with the beige walls, tan carpet, and bland furniture? If so, don’t worry. You’re not alone. But that doesn’t mean you can’t make your room look better. In fact, there are a lot of things you can do to improve your living space. So if you’re ready to give your living room a makeover, keep reading. We’ll show you how to do it without breaking the bank.

Our living room, like most rooms in our old builder grade home, is fairly small with little character. We have slowly been working our way through our home to add the character that was lacking. The living room makeover was next on our list.

The first project we tackled was removing the old carpet and replacing it with timber flooring like we did in the family/kitchen.

The next project was to fill in a void that was in the wall next to the built in cabinets so that we could extend the built ins to the ceiling.

Adding some decorative moulding in our living room makeover

To bring in some much needed character to the living room we added moulding and trim to the other two wall openings as well as the large window. We removed the outdated trim work from both room entries and added more substantial moulding.

I have a post showing how we did all this trim work and you can find all the details here.

Tackling the old built ins

The dominate “feature” in the living room was an old built in that Tony had constructed many years ago. It was solid and well built but not our style at all. With some hard work we transformed it into something we absolutely love. You can read all about that transformation here.

The window

Next up we added colonial bars to the large window in this room just as we did with our family room/kitchen. You can see all the details of how we did this here.

We also hung a beautiful roman blind from Blinds on Line which is stunning and really finishes the window beautifully. The fabric is called Chantilly Natural and the pattern was absolutely perfect for the space I was creating. I also ensured that this blind was remote controlled for ease of use. Installing these blinds is always trouble free and I can highly recommend them. They will be used throughout the house as we move through with our renovations.

DECORATING THE SPACE

Comfort Works Sofa Covers

I originally intended to replace our two sofas however after looking around for a while we decided to keep our old IKEA Ektorps. They were in good condition and suit the overall style we were going for. To give them a fresh new look we purchased new sofa covers from Comfort Works. The fabrics and colour choices available were fantastic. We chose the linen cotton blend fabric in the colour natural cream and opted for white piping for contrast. You can also choose to have additional sofa arm covers made so we did this and also had the white piping included for these too. The other amazing thing about the Comfort Works sofa covers is that you can also get sewn in tech options!!

The fabric feels amazing it’s so much softer than the old ones. Fitting them was easy, I gave them a quick steam and they looked fabulous. You will need to bear in mind that the linen and linen blends will crush more than some of the other fabrics. I am really happy with that as I wanted to have a bit of relaxed feel in this room and I just love linen. If that is not something you could live with them definitely look at some of the other fabric choices, there are many!!!

Comfort Works has a style guide which is great for helping you work out what look will best suit your home.

They will also send out 8 fabric samples for you and I encourage you to do this. Colours can look different in your own home depending on light and other fabrics in the space. It also allows you to feel the fabric and make sure that it’s what you want.

Coffee Table Makeover

We have had this huge timber coffee table for years. It used to be a desk in our office but about 15 years ago we cut the legs down and made it a coffee table. It has served us well but didn’t have the look we wanted for this room. The timber was too dark. Tony wanted to keep the table though so I decided to sand it back and see whether I liked it. I loved it!! The light colour of the timber was just what I wanted and I sealed it with white wax so it kept it that way.

New side table

Because we were trying to lighten the room up we decided not to use the large timber table we had between the sofas and opted for a small oval one found on Facebook Marketplace. I decided to paint it white rather than strip it back just to bring in more white.

New Rug

I have never had a rug in the living room because it was easier with kids in the house not to have to worry about messes and spills. Now though we don’t have many kids around anymore so I thought it was the perfect time to introduce a rug and see how we liked it. We chose a bone, white and silver one from Temple and Webster that we hoped would be complimentary to the other pieces we had chosen. It was also a very reasonable price just in case we didn’t like having a rug!!!

Additional Furniture

One of the requirements for the living room makeover was to provide additional seating for when we entertain. It was not an easy thing to do with such a small space but I found chairs from Lavender Hill Interiors that would fit nicely along with a small white table to place between them.

Wall art

Eventually we will put some wall trim on the only full wall in the room but until then I wanted to find something to fill the wall. I have loved Georgianna Lane’s Paris prints for ages and really wanted to do a gallery wall of them because they were in the same tones I wanted to use in the room.

The frames came from TKMaxx so were very inexpensive.

The finished living room makeover

To be able to sit back and enjoy this room is an absolute gift. We love it!! The vibe of this room is now much more in keeping with our style. It is relaxed but feels put together. I love the neutral tones which have helped lighten the room. I’m looking forward to the new year to be able to decorate the whole space. For now it’s decked out in all its finery for Christmas. What do you think??

I hope you enjoyed this little room makeover. We have done a makeover on our family room recently too. You can find that here.