Living Room Update - Built-Ins, Paint, and More

 

September 2024

    In September, we made major updates to our living room. I knew before we even bought the house that I wanted built-in bookshelves for my book collection and Drew promised to make them happen for me. It was a lot more work than we realized but it turned out perfect and they fit so well in the house. Here's a reminder of what we were working with before:

Original Living Room

    It was a fairly blank slate, but the room felt a bit long for how wide it was. We decided the built-ins would go on the far wall around the window. The window ledge is a little bit lower than a standard cabinet height, which is why the center console of the built-ins is a couple inches lower than the left and right sides. We definitely did not realize how many more decisions we'd have to make about these bookshelves - I looked for inspiration photos to show Drew what I was picturing but didn't realize I had more specific opinions on things like the width of the lumber used to build the uppers until he got started. He built everything from scratch except the cabinet doors, which we ordered, and it took about three weeks from start to finish. 

A closer look at the built-ins

    After the built-ins were complete, we painted the whole room Aegean Teal by Benjamin Moore and refreshed the baseboards with a coat of white paint. The rug is a hand-me-down from my grandmother's house and there are hints of teal in the pattern that I wanted to highlight with this paint color. The room is on the eastern side of the house so it's somewhat dark anyway and I just decided to embrace it with the bold colors. 

    The only other update we did in here are the blinds, which we had installed right after we moved in, in January 2024. They are a very standard white faux wood blind which we chose since we weren't sure exactly how we were going to style this room at the time that we installed them.

 

Another view of the living room