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This transformation has been a year in the making. I honestly forgot just how much we have done to this room until I sat down and wrote this post.

Over the last year we painted the walls, painted the baseboards white, replaced and redesigned the door and window trim, painted and stained the staircase, built a new mantel, german schmeared the fireplace, and changed out the lightning. It sounds like a lot and it was. Probably why it took us a year. Ha! So let’s start at the beginning. This is was it looked like when we moved it.

We decided first the paint the room. Browns aren’t really are color. We picked Classic Silver from Behr Marquee.

We then moved on to replacing the window and door trim.

We used a really simple design that we came up with so we wouldn’t have to make any angled cuts.

I then decided the mantel needed to be stained.

And from there I just couldn’t take the staircase any longer. This was a huge transformation in itself. Here is the before, during and after. Also to date this was the HARDEST project and most time consuming.

So this is where we stopped for a bit. It was last January and for the last year we moved on to other projects in the house knowing we would eventually come back and finish it up.

Fast forward to last month and I was ready to redo our fireplace. I really wanted a big mantel and I knew I wanted to do something different with the stone.

It took a bit of convincing to talk my husband into letting me do it but he finally gave in. I decided to german schmear the fireplace. It’s super easy and is just a mix of water and white mortar (equal parts) and you paint it on your stone. First we had to take off the mantel.

Then I got to work. This process does take longer than you think but I did get it done in a night.

The finished product

The only thing left to do was to change out the ceiling fan. I had been dying to put a wagon wheel light somewhere in my home and really wanted it in this great room. There was just ONE problem. We have 20ft ceilings and there is no ladder that will reach since it’s in the middle of the room. We had an option to pay an electrician but that is so not like us so we decided to rent scaffolding and do it ourselves. This is NOT for the faint of heart and almost put us through. Pretty sure next time we will call an electrician. Ha!

And now, the living room is done….so let’s get to all the before and afters! They are the BEST part!

Before:

After:

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After:

Before:

After:

Before:

After:

I so love this room. Definitely my favorite in the house…and no we aren’t done. We need to replace the flooring on our main level so hopefully that will be coming soon!

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~Julie // Sisters that Shop