Guest Post: Living Room Redo by the Phillip Fam!

May 8, 2012

Guest Post: Living Room Redo by the Phillip Fam!

Hey There,

I'm so honored to write a guest post on Little Moments today! Courtney is a talented designer & such a lovely lady! I have been so inspired by her creativity. I'm thankful to know Courtney from our days at Baylor {Sic 'em!} She's a ton of fun and always has a smile on her face!

I hope you guys enjoy a little glimpse into our world. If you have a minute, hop on over to visit us at the Phillip Family!

Thanks for having me Courtney!

My husband and I recently bought our first house back in December 2011. We're constantly working on it & we always have a to-do list floating around with the next project that we want to tackle! Of course, we're on a tight budget, so every coupon counts! Join us as we turn this little house into our home.

Today I wanted to share with you guys our favorite room of the house, the Family Room!

 

Just for fun, here’s a little BEFORE picture of our family room when the previous owners lived here:

I love this Before/After contrast because you can actually see the focal point in the room: Our lovely fireplace! I was a little nervous {and husband was a tad bit skeptical of my bold taupe/white paint choices} but I absolutely love the way it turned out! We used Lowe’s Valspar Signature “Smoked Oyster” for the walls and “Cream Delight” for the brick fireplace. I definitely recommend the Valspar Signature paints if you’re going to be painting over another neutral color because it has the paint & primer in one. It also has great coverage. We probably did 2 heavy coats & an additional lighter coat on the walls. However, if you’re painting over a mural or a bolder color, I would recommend priming the walls first and then paint. Of course, we’re no professionals, but this is just what we’ve found to work best for us.

This is the only room in the house where we actually have mostly “new” pieces of furniture. “New” mostly meaning, new to us! Ha. We bought the couch, love seat and wingback chair {matching ottoman coming soon!} from a place called Freed’s Furniture in Dallas. Some friends of ours recommended this place to us, and we really liked it. They have great prices on quality furniture & have been easy to work with. The couch set, love seat, chair & ottoman set is called, “Walden.” We’ve been happy with it so far.

The fabulous rug was a STEAL from Pottery Barn. Okay, no, I did not actually steal it. Don’t go tattle on me! In January, I stopped in Pottery Barn to browse & spend my gift card from Christmas. {Yay for giftcards!} I decided to purchase the two curtain panels you see in this room {which were on sale!} They are called, the Vanessa Floral Drape. They no longer sell the neutral panels, unfortunately, but I think the blue & red panels are really adorable, too!

Back to the rug. I was waiting in line to check out & I noticed they had two 8x10 rugs that were on serious clearance {like 75% off!}. At the time, we had just moved into our house. Our house is all hardwood floors and we didn’t have any rugs at the time! I loved the color, it matched most of the other things in our house, and it was a GREAT price! So, what did I do? I called my husband and explained the whole situation…and crossed my fingers! Ha! Fortunately, my gift cards covered a portion of the cost & he said okay! Normally, I would not have purchased a rug from Pottery Barn because they are so. stinkin. expensive. but, since this rug was 75% off, it was way cheaper than any other 8x10 rugs I had seen. Even discount stores like, Home Goods & Marshalls still sold their 8x10’s for $400-$500 dollars at the cheapest. This rug was HALF of that! SCORE! The rug is an 8x10 and is called, “Janelle Rug Brown.”

For Christmas, my sweet Mom & Dad got us a new “chest” that we use as our coffee table. It is from World Market & is a part of the “Sourav” Collection. After browsing on Craig’s List, I found a listing for a lady who had two end tables that were the same “Sourav” brand from World Market! She was selling them for $30 each!! Of course, we had to check it out and they were in great condition. Sweeeet! Here is a link to the tables at World Market. Thanks to Craig’s List, we now have new matching end tables in our family room!

Another fun part of the room is the Gallery Wall above the couch. This was fun to put together. I used all things we already had! It’s very mis-matched, which I like. The middle frame is a regular 16x20 inch frame from Hobby Lobby that I sprayed with chalk spray paint on the glass to make it a chalk board! I’ve enjoyed writing different verses on it from week to week! It really does work well…this was my first time using chalk spray paint & it’s amazing how well it works!

If you’ve ever read any of my previous posts, you know by now that I love furniture/decorations that have a story behind them! This cute green milk jug was my grandmother’s from the 1950’s! While cleaning out her old shed, we came across some pretty cool antiques that I fell in love with! I used a 50% off coupon at Michaels, to buy the silk flowers to set inside. I think it turned out quite nice!

Thanks for reading about our favorite room & a little bit about our new home! Anyone else out there on a tight budget & can go a little coupon crazy?! I would love to meet you. I think we'd be good friends!