Great Room REVEAL!

We've gotten a lot of great feedback on the Kitchen Reveal post ~ thank you!  A few keen observers commented on the photo with the view into the dining area and asked why we haven't yet shared any photos of that room. You caught us. Yes, once we were able to get all the cabinets & appliances OUT of the main living area, we started working on that space, too.

The "great room" is approx 32 feet long by almost 16 feet wide, and with the kitchen opened up, the shared living space is now more than 600 square feet. We've extended the same beachy wall color to make the whole area feel even bigger.  When you enter the house, this is what you will see:

Wait - I don't think I've shared any "before" photos of the living or dining rooms as they were when we first bought the house, so it's important for you to see where we started with this space. First the living room half:

and the dining room:

These rooms were not as bad as the kitchen was, but I'm being generous in using the term "dated" to describe the furniture. Plus, the dining table had been poorly repaired with one leg barely holding on, and one of the book cases was held together with packing tape. We made a lot of trips to Goodwill and unfortunately some things just had to be trashed. 

Of course, this meant lots of opportunity for shopping! Everything is new. Check out some of our cool finds in these closer shots of the living room area, with views from all angles:

And also looking back into the dining room area:

As with the kitchen, please ignore the lack of baseboards and door trim for now.  And apologies for the lighting changes in the photos - we get so much wonderful natural light that it's difficult to get a picture near with the windows.  (In the bedrooms, we have added room-darkening drapes so that we can sleep past sunrise, but that's for another post.)

We did some work besides shopping, too : )  It was amazing to see how much the room brightened after we scraped all the popcorn coating off and gave it a new coat of ceiling paint.  Although we loved the charm of the original juniper wall, with age that wood had become an unappealing orangey color. We kept the wood, but sanded off the varnish and covered it a light white.

Changing the flooring made a huge difference, too. Here's the carpet that was there - no padding, just a flat rug glued to the plywood subfloor. ugh. It didn't even feel like you were walking on carpeting. We replaced that with a light-colored wide-plank flooring, and then added a cushy rug to the living area for comfort and to help define that space. 

Yes, if you were wondering, that is a fireplace hiding behind a chair. It's in bad shape. We had some guys come look at it and they said we would need to replace the whole thing: from the face of the hearth to the flue to the cap on top of the chimney.  The air down here destroys metal and it's completely rusted. : (  That will be a project for much later.

We've spent a good amount of time here so far this summer, and we are loving it. So great to be this close to the beach and the house is just a relaxing, enjoyable place to be.  We still have work to do on all the bedrooms and the master bathroom has not been touched, but we'll continue to combine some work & play trips and then get back to weekend visits in the fall to try to finish more projects.

Thanks for continuing to follow along with us!