curtains in the living room to make a statement!

Steven spent (most of the afternoon) Sunday hanging the living room curtains for me. While most people might not think hanging curtains should be a 3 hour event, I must tell you, when Steven does something, he does it right. He put up the hardware for three windows in the living room... which, I kid you not, required tape measures, levels, etc. Because if it was a 1/16th of an inch off, he would notice. It is nice having a perfectionist that makes sure things get done right.

Anyway... Ms Bagel Power, glorious blog reader, was kind enough to shop at Ikea for me and got all the curtains and sheers I needed for the living room and dining room. (Thanks again!) The living room curtains are up and they are lovely.

On my way out to Colorado, with me a safe distance from the house, Steven did admit he initially had concerns about the yellow curtains I picked out. He wasn't sure how the yellow would go with the sagey green walls. (Notice he said this AFTER I left Kansas?) But he quickly assured me that the curtains brighten up the room and he thinks they look great.

I did spend a lot of time pondering the living room curtains. I didn't want to do drop cloth curtains in there. I have a lot of neutral going on in the room, and really, I crave color! In my mind, the sagey walls were really just a neutral backdrop for the color I wanted to bring in. I didn't think they really register as a "color," so I wasn't too afraid about clashing.

My neutral living room walls are actually "Hazel Woods" by Ralph Lauren.

I will be making a drop cloth slipcover for the Queen Anne sofa. I think the casual slip will not only extend the life of the sofa (4 boys!), but also make it more laid back. Nothing screams comfort like Victorian, right? I will also be reupholstering the side chairs in drop cloth, and adding some pink accents... but more about that later...

I want to bring in some splashes of pink, and maybe just a bit of yellow, to go with the neutral sage and taupe. I decided to put together a quick photoshop of what it might look like... keep in mind, this photoshop was a quick and dirty, and is more than mildly dorky, so bear with me.

In case Steven ever loses his mind, I made the right half of the wall pale pink. I know this will never happen since the bedroom and dining room are already pink. The sage is here to stay a long time. There is the drop cloth Queen Anne (not so stuffy, right?) and some pink throw pillows. We picked up a chippy crackly plant stand from Good JuJu that will house my yellow-potted ferns. A new chenille-jute rug is definite. I am still on the lookout for a brighter rug to overlay. This kilim is super cheap on Overstock, but I'm not sold on it yet. I think the yellow Ikea curtains perk up the room. I will be collecting artwork here and there as well.

This B&W rug from CB2 will be moving into the dining room. It will work better with the pink and black.

The big hold up with the living room is the other half of the room. This is the side that we tore out a fake facade wall from. So we are left with a nasty looking leaning fireplace. I have plans to build floor to ceiling bookcases to the right of it. The chimney will be all boxed in, with a rustic mantle. I want to tile around the fireplace. Possibly mounting the flat panel TV above it. But we are still negotiating on that. ;)

Here is the fireplace wall right as we started demo. I find nothing attractive about the lighthouse wall paper. Which, by the way, was at ceiling AND chair rail heights. Double score!

Here is the fireplace after the wall came out. (Old framing, for the record, has 8 million nails in them.) We have been told that chimneys were sometimes built slanted like that to draw better. I just can't wait to cover it up!

I hope to put up a bunch of new pictures this weekend. It's just that with me in Denver, I have such limited time on weekends to blog!