Living room renovation

We spent the summer and autumn of 2023 making improvements to our house.  Feeling accomplished and enjoying the changes to our home, we wrapped it up just as the cold rainy season began.  Mr. Bleu was sitting in his chair on that first rainy day and I was at my desk when he suddenly turned to me and said, "I felt a drop." I looked over to see him rubbing the top of his head while looking at the ceiling.  Looking up we saw together our ceiling was sagging and dripping and a very sad realization set in that although moments before we thought we were almost done with our home repairs, but we were in fact just getting started.

Before we ever saw this house, a tree fell on the roof.  The real estate agent disclosed this (only after we asked about the obvious repair to the ceiling) and assured us that it was properly taken care of.  Once the rain subsided on this particular fateful day years after we had signed on the dotted line, we climbed up to the roof to discover that the opposite was true.  All the work done was purely cosmetic and the structure was beyond compromised; it was rotten.  With winter setting in, we tarped the roof and hoped for the best as we waited for spring.  This is what the room looked like when we moved in:

We painted the walls, put up a mantle, and eventually I did some work on the fireplace at the very onset of our renovations. In the end, we decided to move the fireplace to the opposite side of the house, but this is what it looked like at the various stages leading up to the renovation:

Spring rolled around bringing more rain, and we began construction in stages.  In between grueling days of work, I built some inspiration boards to help me begin.  I took a photo of our fireplace and began laying various design elements over it, trying to see if my ideas would mesh well together.  I was trying to create something reminiscent of the Victorian/Edwardian era.  This is what I came up with:

While the hearth is still unfinished and yes, a bit messy in the photos because it's winter and we're actively using the fireplace, the rest of this space is done and I wanted to show it off a little, because I think it has come together quite well.  Incorporating vintage Delft tiles, creating a more florid mantle, and adding wallpaper and paneling, plus tiling the ceiling, and replacing the modern mirror with this antique, this is how it all turned out:

This was my idea board for the rest of the living room, still incorporating Victorian ideas and working with pieces I already had.

In the end, you can see that I opted for blue wall panels instead of green, and the large green elephants I was promised never materialized, but other than that, I am extremely happy with how it turned out.  I even reupholstered an antique couch and chair in green velvet and am happy with how that turned out, but more on that project later.

The teapot pillow was a craft fair purchase from a sweet little old couple that repurpose antique needlework into pillows.  The picture on the wall is something that I got from a departed relative.  Originally it had a lithograph of a ship on the ocean and I took it merely for the frame, but when I took the ship picture out I saw this perfect piece behind it!  Hard to see with the glare, but trust me it's perfect.  

I repainted the side table to match the walls and that is an authentic working 1923 phonograph at the side.  The ottoman was from Target about 10 years ago and I also reupholstered to match the couch and chair.

Below, I have framed the photos from our 20th anniversary in my Teuta Matoshi dress in antique frames.  The lamp is also an antique that I had to rewire and the shade is handmade and I've had it for over 30 years.  The box fan is just something that we use to disperse the heat from the woodstove on very cold days like today and I forgot to move it for the picture.

The radio is an antique that sadly no longer works, but does have all its guts, so could be repaired should we ever decide to take on that task.  It sits on an antique piece that I suspect once also housed a radio.  Now it houses my collection of books.

So, after all this work, it's finally starting to feel like we're getting somewhere and most thankfully of all, it's looking just as I had hoped it would.