Living Room Reveal!

After lots of deliberating and hours of hard work, we have finally finished our living room makeover. Though the room wasn't horrible before, it didn't reflect our style as a couple in the slightest. Once Farmer Bubba and I decided it was time to tackle the cottage and finally make it our own, we thought we'd start with the living room. This is the one room in the house that won't be affected when we add up and redesign the rest of the house to make it more functional. Before we get started, here is a little reminder of what the living room looked like before:

BEFORE

BEFORE

One day, while browsing my all-time favorite blog, The Lettered Cottage, I saw a post about using shutters on your interior windows. It was a great idea and a jumping off point for our living room. It was the one element I KNEW I wanted to use. We have a long bay of four windows across one wall that provides an incredible view up the Potomac River looking towards Virginia, but they let in A LOT of light and specifically, heat. So the interior shutters were a great solution for style and function, keeping out the heat and prying eyes when necessary.

My next hurdle was figuring out what color I wanted to paint the walls. I tend to get overwhelmed when making decisions, especially one with SO many options. I was having a hard time getting out of "neutral land" with creamy whites and light grays, but nothing really jumped out at me once I had it on the wall. During a quick visit from my mom, I mentioned how I love dark blue and turquoise colors and she encouraged me to go for it. And she had a point, the house is full of old baseboards, window and door trim painted white. Not to mention with all the windows and high ceilings we have quite a bit of light to work with. I was hoping the blue color I chose would make the white trim "pop"...and boy was I right!

So, without further adieu, here is the new and improved Point Breeze Cottage living room:

View of the entire room - from the kitchen/back of the house looking towards the front. Front wall - "Desert Fortress" Side walls - "Swizzle Stick". We also painted the overhang where the air ducts are white to match the ceiling. It really opened it up!

View from the front door. Sitting area in the front, TV area in the back.

Sitting area - I found ALL of the pillows for the living room in one trip to Marshall's! It was totally my lucky day!

One of my favorite displays in the room. Top shelf of the book cabinet - memories of our honeymoon in Kauai, Hawaii! aka - Heaven on Earth! Cannot wait to go back, hopefully in the near future. (Thanks to my mom for the Anniversary gift/decoupaged serving tray with Hawaiian postcards!)

Another display atop the electric fireplace. Something to represent Farmer Bubba - Four generations of Hill men, a tobacco knife and spear-head, tobacco basket and dried leaves, and a couple of other farm related trinkets. PS- check out the pretty wildflowers from our garden in the backyard!

View from the front of the house, looking at the bedroom doors and old library ladder that leads to the loft.

Ahhh, my beautiful interior shutters and shades!! I was planning to make my own shades/curtains, but I found a GREAT deal on these at Lowes and they brought just the right amount of nautical to the room!

The bay of windows with the shutters closed and the shades down.

A special gift from my mom - a touch of "bling" to bring a little Mindy to the room.

On the top of the TV cabinet I decided to bring a touch of my family's watermen roots to the room. The beautiful, hand-carved Heron was a wedding gift from Bubba's close friend and talented artist, Tommy Deagle.

There is nothing quite like a Southern Maryland Blue Crab :)

I've noticed how trendy antlers are becoming in home decor. Lucky for me, I have a husband with a garage FULL of antler sheds he finds in the woods during hunting season. And it brings a little bit of his style to the room :)

Another shot of the antlers on the coffee table. Can you tell I read a lot of Coastal Living?! 

New slip cover from Ikea for the couch - perfect! We were also able to reuse a rug we had in the living room previously.

A couple of aerial shots from the loft. 

Again, from the loft. You can really see how great the floors look from this angle! I know the rug is too small, but it is serving its purpose until we can afford a larger one. It was on clearance at Marshall's and is softer than anything else in the house...Harper loves it!

AND we're beagle approved!

Thanks for taking a look at our new living room. I really am so pleased with the way everything turned out, and owe so much of the credit to my handy husband and helpful grandfather. Without them, I'd still probably be painting right now!

Have you made over a room in your house lately? What was your favorite part of the process? For me, it was the fact that we were able to "re-use" so much. The love-seat in the sitting area, round table behind the love seat, old mirror on the wall and the TV cabinet were left with the house when we purchased it. The recliner and book shelf/cabinet were hand-me-downs from family members, the coffee table, table by the bedroom doors and small bench under the front windows were yard sale finds, and the fireplace and clear lamp were gifts from my parents. Even a lot of our decor pieces, like the antlers, tobacco basket and leaves, and binoculars were pieces we had from everyday life.

This makeover was quick and mostly painless, and I loved every minute of it! Now, to get rolling on some more projects...

A Fresh, New Look

As I mentioned in my previous post, we started our living room makeover last week, beginning with the walls and the floors. Since Bubba and I both work full time during the week, we called in some serious reinforcements to help us speed up the painting process. This guy (on the left):

Meet Pa, my retired, expert carpenter/painter/handyman extraordinaire grandfather. He is beyond precise and is always willing to lend a helping hand when we need it. 

We placed the painters tape and picked up where he left off once we got  home from work, so it made for a REALLY fast paint job. If you follow me on twitter (@PtBreezeCottage) you got to see a little sneak peek of the wall color. I haven't taken any pictures of JUST the walls or the paint job, but you will be able to see a little glimpse in the photos below.

Not only did Pa help us out with the paint job, but he also stuck around over the weekend to help Bubba lay our new flooring. Now; some people may think it seems odd to cover up original, hardwood floors with laminate Swiftlock flooring from Lowes, but we needed to. We think that the original floors that we had/have are actually the sub-flooring from the original 1929 house. Which is really cool and true to the house, but it's also really hard on our electric bill in both the summer and winter. Did I mention that we also had grass growing up through the living room floor once? Yeah...the joys of having an old house on piers instead of a foundation and sub-flooring with little to no insulation under it. It was only a matter of time before one of us fell through the weak spots in the living room.

The original floor:

Not terrible, and very "rustic", but it just wasn't working for us. So we went to Lowes, purchased some lovely Fireside Oak laminate, and got down to business.

The original flooring side-by-side with the new laminate. Affordable and efficient!

The new floor:

Don't mind the beagle-cat on the couch. She was feeling mighty displaced during all of this work!

I'm so happy with the way it turned out, just beautiful! Oh and did you notice the "Swizzle Stick" blue and "Desert Fortress" wall colors?!  Once we've got the room back in order, our new slip cover and window treatments up, I'll be glad to show some more revealing photos ;o)

Living Room Makeover - The Beginning

As I mentioned recently in my "Living Room Inspiration" post, I've been putting a lot of serious thought into a makeover for our living room. Here is a little back-story as to why:

Before we purchased this beautiful, old 1929 cottage, we rented it. One of the conditions of renting was that it was almost fully furnished. At the time, this sounded like the perfect deal seeing as I'd just graduated from college and really didn't own anything of my own anyway. And it's not that the style of the house (specifically the living room) wasn't nice, it just wasn't MY style. But while we rented I dealt with it...beggars can't be choosers, right? Right. Then we purchased the house, and our former landlord left several pieces, which we're very thankful for, but again, they just aren't our style.

So, it's just over two years since we've purchased the house and we've gotten rid of most of the furniture that she left, but the house still just doesn't seem "homey" our like it's "ours". Every time I see that yellowish orange paint in the living room, I think of the former landlord. Again, not that it's a bad thing, it's just not right for us. Everything I've used to decorate the living room up until this point has had to work around the wall color. I just couldn't make anything work with the golden tone except reds, greens, and a little blue. It was hard to get out of that color scheme and see any other possibilities.

After a trip to Lowes with my mom, I shared with her that I'd been holding on to a color pallet sample book since about 2009, but I wasn't sure if the dark blues and turquoise would be "too much". She encouraged me to go with what I love, and the more I thought about it, the more I agreed. Our house has LOTS of beautiful white trim along the baseboards, windows, and a loft just off the living room. If anything could hold up against a dark blue, it would be the white accents.

We are currently in the process of getting the living room painted, but I wanted to share some "before" photos with you first. Take a look at what we're working with. Then go check out my "living room inspiration" board on Pinterest and let me know how you think it will turn out! Any suggestions? Advice? Leave a comment, I'd love to get your feedback.

View from the kitchen looking towards the front of the house (living room).

View from the front door looking back. The "living room" is actually quite big and pretty much doubles as a dining room.

From the front corner, a view of the raised ceiling and loft. Lots of white trim, doors, etc.

Looking at the living room from the bedrooms - please try to ignore the MESS! We were prepping for taping/painting.

Second view from the bedrooms, just more inclusive of the side of the house/bay of windows.

I think this room is screaming for some cohesion and style - Goodbye strange, golden, impossible to work with colored paint!

Cottage Improvement Chronicles: Flower Garden UPDATE

A little less than a month ago, I shared the story of our "Dead Shed" with you, as well as our plans for the revitalization of the spot where it lived. To make a long story short, we have an UGLY spot in our backyard that needs to be made pretty. Easy enough, right? Right...

So, we've cleared the spot, tilled it up, bordered it with old bricks and drift wood, planted wild flower seed, and are waiting not-so-patiently for the first signs of "bloomage". In the meantime, I decided that it needed just a little something else to make it a true oasis for the wildlife in our backyard. A bird bath! Yep, that's what it needed, it would add height to the space and give all the wandering birds a place to cool down.

After a little browsing, I realized that a decent bird bath is not cheap. And then it hit me, why would I buy a new bird bath, when everything else in the garden was a DIY project constructed out of things and materials that we already had? I decided I'd make my own bird bath...While perusing Pinterest one day, I stumbled across the cutest idea for a home made bird bath from Eclectically Vintage...

I mean, seriously, how adorable is this set up?! It got my juices flowing, and I rummaged through our cluttered garage in search of an old step ladder, the bottom pieces of a couple flower pots, and some smooth stones.

Stones? Check...we use to collect sea glass and unique rocks from the beach in a basket on the front porch, and I had a baggie of store-bought stone left-over from my boot rack project a couple months ago.

Flower Pot Holders (I'm sure there is a real name for these things, and I just don't know it...)? Check! I couldn't believe my luck, something told me to peak under the back deck and there sat two perfectly sized plates from pots in a pretty sea-foam green and your typical stone color. Thank you, former landlord...

Old Step Ladder? Negative. But I did find an old work bench, a weather worn stump, a big plastic barrel that I bought last year from Lowes that was filled with flowers, and a vintage plant stand left by the landlord that I had spray painted and kept on the porch. Not as rustic or cute as the step ladder, but hey, it all worked for me!

After some serious placement and replacement of all the pieces, I finally found a set-up that I was satisfied with. I even found a cute little bird decor piece from a yard sale to complete the DIY project. It's certainly not as cute as the pictures and inspiration I found on Pinterest, but I'm REALLY hoping that once the wild flowers come up it will look nice and give the birds a save haven.

Bakery Bliss Table

Welcome to Monday's Featured Product: The Bakery Bliss Table!



This "sweet" piece was designed especially for the youngsters in your life. With a purple/fuschia finish, a decoupaged top and pull out drawer, this table is sure to inspire many fun moments. It is versatile, with a large cubby for books, toys, blankets, or any other child favorite, as well as smooth sliding drawer with large white knob for easy access. The top has a large, flat surface for tea parties, a place to practice drawing or even a board game. If you are looking for a funky, unique piece to compliment your child's bedroom or playroom, look no further!

The history behind the Bakery Bliss Table: After a long and hot day of yard sales in St. Mary's County, we were on our way home when we saw an "off the beaten path" sale. Those kinds of sales are typically hit or miss, with either tons of treasures or tons of trash. At first glance, this stop appeared to be trash. And lots of it...Then, just as we were about to leave, I noticed the table that some of the old toys and clothes were displayed on. It was pepto bismol pink and very dirty, but something about it seemed to be calling out to me. As we loaded it on the truck, I began to brainstorm about the possibilities, what colors I'd use, and if I'd be able to find the perfect fabric.

Well, we happened to have some fuschia colored, mis-tint paint from Lowes, and I found the perfect scrap piece of dessert themed fabric from JoAnn's as well as a strip of lime green ribbon. A couple coats of paint and decoupage later, and this precious little Bakery Bliss Table was born! To purchase this table, please email us at ptbreezecottage@gmail.com or visit our etsy site, HERE.