The Front Room

Now for the as-promised update of the front room. Speaking of which, I never know what to call it. Since it's all one big room, it feels silly to call it the dining room, but for the same reason, it doesn't really work as the living room either. So I usually just call it the front room. Any suggestions for what else to call it are welcome.

For about the first 5 weeks, when people got the house tour, I called it our "flea market." Here's why:

We all know the truth about rooms like these. If there isn't a TV in it, then it doesn't get a lot of use. So this is where we put ALL the furniture until we decided where it went. We slowly arranged the furniture in the other rooms and this room slowly emptied out. While the den was being painted (for 4-5 weeks), the TV was in this room and so it did actually end up getting more use. I really enjoyed those weeks because the view from this room is really wonderful (as long as the sun isn't shining on you - then it's just really hot).

I knew from the beginning that I wanted a crisp grey in this room. Greys are so hard! Most looked like a baby blue or a pale lilac. I ended just making up my own color by mixing the colors I liked. You can notice all my samples on the wall on the right.

Once the grey was finally selected....we called in the professionals. We were too worn out from the other room. The prepping and painting began:

And then it was OVER and it was one of the best days of my life.

I wish I was joking, but I was soooo happy to have my house usable again. And just in time too, because we had a baby shower in 4 days. The next 3 days were spent making the room look like a real home so that the shower guests didn't think they entered a construction site.

All of our breakable things had been stored in the guest room up until this point. Most of these things final home was to be in the front room. So the unpacking of all these things began and the room turned into a bubble-wrap newspaper mountain.

Somehow, it all got together in time with the help of lots of people (thank you Janie and Ro).

Pics from the shower:

And now what it looks like today:

 It still needs a lot of work, but at least it's usable and half-way decent looking. I need to work on the wall above. It looks a little lame right now. My favorite part of the room is the patterned club chair next to the window. It's the most comfortable chair in the house and the view and lighting is great from there. Phil has read books there all week long. I'll try to get a secret pic of the bookworm in his chair later.

All the dining room chairs and pink chairs should be recovered, but I'm unsure if I want to do it now and work with the current colors if I want to hold off until we do the big remodel. Maybe I'll do half and half or something. Opinions welcome.