Our Living Room

Here are a few shots of our living room as it looked a few days ago. I've painted the pipe to the left to match the wall since, but I haven't had a chance to take pictures. I can't believe I took a picture with the window sashes all misaligned. I usually make sure that all of the horizontal parts line up.

We painted the room using Olympic Paints from Lowes. I had wanted to use Yolo Colorhouse or Mythic paints or even AFM Safecoat, but there don't appear to be any retailers in my neck of the woods. The Olympic paint seemed to me to be at the crossroads of quality, lack of VOC's, price and convenience. I don't know how tough it will be, we chose the flat enamel instead of the regular flat paint in the hopes that it will wear better. The sheen is actually more of an eggshell rather than a flat so it does highlight some of our wall's imperfections (there are many). I actually had wanted something a little less green than this, something that would be a bit more of a background color, but we don't have the energy to repaint it so it will stay for now.

The curtains are from IKEA. We needed something inexpensive until we can afford to get something nicer. They were $30 / pair which is about as cheap as you can find for curtains this long. I can't say that I love them, I'm just hoping they grow on me. Once I get some real curtain rods, I will hang them from the flat part of the window trim above the window. I know the trend these days is to hang them from somewhere higher than the window to give visual height to the space, I think we have enought height already (the tops of the window are over 7'-6" above the floor), plus the trim is so pretty I didn't want it to be hidden behind curtains. As an architect, I'm a bit of a window nerd and don't like to hide pretty old windows behind heavy curtains which is why I tend to pick sheers for most places. They are probably too summery for this time of year, but I don't care.

I still don't have anything hanging on the walls yet. I don't want to make any holes in the plaster until I'm absolutely sure about what I'm hanging. Plus, once the picture rail hooks come from Rejuvenation, I can hang things without making any holes at all. I think picture rails are one of the greatest inventions. I know some people don't like the look of the exposed wire or cord that it hangs from and you can't do the random collage style of hanging pictures, but it does allow you to move pictures around the room without having to worry about patching holes.