House tour: Downstairs

When we bought our home, it was tuh-RASHED. As in, dog urine (and maybe human?) on nearly every inch of carpet, filthy, banged-up walls, black grout, clutter everywhere and it stunk to high heaven. Even so, I put an offer on it immediately because I knew it had good bones and would clean up nicely. (Which it did. Thank you to all who helped!)

Here it was before:

Ugly blue/grey wall color and trashed beyond recognition.

Here's what we did to it:

The first thing I noticed about our house was how filthy and trampled the carpet was and decided immediately it'd need to be replaced with something hard. I'm not a huge fan of tile in living areas because it feels cold and uninviting to me. And echo-y. You can remedy that with a large, thick-pile rug, but I just prefer carpet or wood flooring. I knew carpet would never hold up to the high traffic this room sees, so we went with wood laminate. We got it at Sam's Club for a sweet deal and the pad was included. Best decision ever. It still feels like a living/family room, but I don't have to worry about the carpet getting thrashed to death.

We repositioned the couch to go along the side wall which opened up the room a lot. I chose to go with a dark brown microfiber sofa and jazz it up with some fun pillows (IKEA). The table holds some toys, puzzles and piano music.

Here's the wall by my front door. I really want to treat the windows somehow. I'm not sure about curtains, but I do LOVE this idea. I could paint or upholster the center part in a fun color/fabric.

Next up is the piano corner. Before, it looked like this:

Not BAD but definitely not good, either. It made no sense in my mind to put a dining table there because there's a chandelier on the other side of the room where it ought to be. So this is what we did with the space instead:

I love to sit here and play and sing with my kids while we look out the window. It's a dream come true. Sometimes, little birds land on the window sill and watch us. Straight out of a Disney movie, I swear.

The Ansel Adams picture was purchased at a BYU Bookstore sale many moons ago. I've always loved it.

Also, props to Dill for cutting and installing the baseboards all by himself! I helped paint them, too. Upgrading baseboards is surprisingly not that hard nor expensive. We only did the downstairs out of necessity (had to tear out the old ones to put in the new floor) but now I want to do the whole house. Of course.

And also, I think I need a small, eclectic chair to go directly under the wreath. Thoughts? Ideas?