Living Room Facelift

I don't know why I haven't been able to get into green. I also don't know why I couldn't find any other pictures of our living room! I searched and searched but this was the only one I could find that actually showed the whole thing and it was taken forever ago. 

The green was fine. It was really a pretty nice color and in person it was a lot less obvious than in the picture above. I could just never get completely behind it though. Well...one thing led to another and the living room now looks like this.

In person it's a much more subtle change than I thought it would be which is really good. I worried going grey on the wall would feel boring or make the room darker but it actually feels and looks great! This was a spur of the moment change last Saturday and it was all because the curtains I ordered came in and I knew I wouldn't like them with the green. I didn't want to hang them up and then paint down the road when I could just knock it out from the get go.

Speaking of curtains....CURTAINS! This wall of windows has had me stumped. The old owners just used white shower curtain rods inside the window casing with simple white curtains. It was actually a genius and simple solution.

See that wall of three windows by the fireplace? There is hardly any room on either side of those windows for rods. The rods have to end almost immediately so anything with a ball at the end of the rod wasn't going to work. I also couldn't decide if I wanted one long rod going all the way across or if I wanted 4 little rods. Did I want the curtains to function? Maybe I only wanted two curtains, one on each end, and no curtains in the middle spots. #firstworldproblems to the maximum!

Also, curtains are expensive! The don't seem like they should be! I was pretty picky, didn't want anything to bold but still wanted color, and I wasn't going to pay an arm and a leg for them. I found these on Wayfair and they were back ordered. They were the only ones I liked in all of my searching though. I needed 8 at 96" long. I put myself on the watch list and assumed I'd never see them again and that I'd be curtain-less forever but I actually got an email two weeks later that they were re-stocked. So, at 11:30 PM, with Derrick sleeping naively beside me, I pulled the trigger! At less than $20/curtain they were way cheaper than anything else I found and way cheaper than the 24 yards of drapery fabric I would have needed to make my own. Yeah...think about that....$20 per curtain was cheap!!! I need to go sell a house now. 

I kind of love them. They were worth the cash. Derrick would probably agree, but only because he doesn't pay our credit card bill. 

What do you think of those rods?? I made them out of copper piping I found at Lowes. I bought basic brackets at Lowes and sprayed them copper to match. I LOVE the copper color...I was thinking I'd just spray paint pvc or silver metal tubing but when I saw these copper pipes I was totally sold. It went something like this: 

"OMG...COPPER!"

"Can I do that?"

"I can't do that!"

"I think I'm going to try it......."

"It's never been done before...you're crazy...stick with boring ORB!"

"You're right...I can't do it"

"I'm doing it! And it's going to look amazing!!!! and Shut up!"

 

I just used basic copper pipe caps on the end to solve the issue of not having a lot of space for the ends of the rods. I think they look super clean and fresh. 

And I got to use a pipe cutter which was pretty sweet. I had to join a couple pipes together for the two larger windows so I just used couplings to attach them and put in a squirt of hot glue to keep them in place.

These rods were a lot less expensive than they would have been if I had bought them. I needed three total and one would have had to be 10.5 feet. Not to mention it's hard to find them without some sort of ball on the end. 

Also...while we're on the topic, can someone please tell me why hanging curtain rods is so hard!!?? Seriously...I think it's the hardest DIY project I've done to date. How do you get them straight? And level? And how do you hold the drill and the bracket and the anchor and the hammer at the same time? I climbed up and down that ladder about 10000000 times and I also dropped everything twice that many times. Curtain rods are hard!

Here is the before. 

And the after.

Before. 

And after. 

Here's a pretty accurate picture of the new wall color.

Our house looks so fancy now! Curtains are so fancy! I'm so glad to have this project behind me....it's been a long time coming but I'm really happy with how it turned out.

Meanwhile....in kitchen land....