My Thrifty Living Room Refresh

Well, here it is.  My little living room went to this (above) from that (below) for about $300.  Since I had such a small budget I had to rely on fabric and accessories to change the feel of the room.  The two main things that I would like to change about the space are still there.  I would love new couches (or even better, a couch and two upholstered chairs) and I would love to paint the walls.  I think it will be quite a while before I get to change either of those things.  Right now I'm genuinely happy with my space even though it is far from ideal.  

 

Here it is from a slightly different angle.

I had three main goals for the switcheroo.  #1:  get rid of the leaning shelves to prevent possible injury to my 14 month old son and to provide space for another seat.  #2:  edit.  As you can see I got rid of a lot of stuff.  I'm currently resisting the urge to fill up every inch of blank wall that I now have. #3:  freshen up the color palette,  rust, olive ---> aqua-ish teal, chartreuse-y green.  $200 of the $300 I had to work with went to the chair.  The rest was spent on the curtains, fabric for pillows, the jug lamp and shelves.

Oh, the shelves.  I could write an entire post on those shelves above the TV.  I will spare you the boring details and say that those are not the Lack shelves from Ikea (that I drove 3 hours to buy) because they were a nightmare to hang.  Those shelves are from Lowe's and I ripped them out of my son's room (which I was planning on doing any way) to put in our living room because I got so fed up with the Ikea shelves.  The shelves from Lowe's are shorter and more expensive than the Ikea shelves, but they are a breeze to hang.  Thank goodness I was able to cover the 15 or so holes that are now in my wall due to my attempts at installing the Ikea shelves.

I'm really happy with the way the shelves look now and I'm glad to have somewhere else to put photos.  I already had most of the accessories that are now on the shelves. The only new things I bought were the books between the bookends.  I got them from a thrift store because they went with my new color palette.

I took a photo of the pillows on my couch to show my fabrics off a bit more, and our dog Rufus could not be bothered to move, so here he his with my pillows.

Even though I won't be getting new couches or painting in the near future I'll probably be making small tweaks here and there.  I'm keeping my eye out for a large sisal basket to put between the TV stand and the side table to keep toys and extra pillows.  I'm also keeping my eye out for a new side table.  Our current side table is actually a $14 TV tray and it's just about as unstable as the leaning shelves that we had.  I pretty much have a small panic attack every time my son gets anywhere near it because my beloved $18 lamp is on it.  

Of course, I'll keep the ol' blog updated with any tweaks that I make.

I hope everyone is having a great Tuesday!