Living Room Renovation | One Room Challenge | Before

Y'all!  We are about to start on a project I have wanted to tackle for three years, our living room!  It's a really big and slightly awkward space and I kind of just filled it with things we had already.  I didn't even paint the walls when we moved in three years ago.  I'm excited to be participating in the One Room Challenge hosted by Linda of Calling It Home blog again, and that means we will finish this project in just six weeks.  I've said it before, I work best under pressure and with a deadline, so this is good for me.

This will be our fourth time participating in the One Room Challenge.  We weren't able to finish the Fall 2016 project because we had to stop during week one when our house flooded during hurricane Matthew.  Our first ORC project was when we turned the largest of our dormer rooms into my husband's modern rustic home office and we are both so happy with how it turned out!  

And our most recent ORC project was this past Spring, when we renovated the other one of our upstairs dormer rooms into a colorful science themed bedroom for one of our boys.

I have huge ideas for this room.  The biggest project here will be replacing this 30 year old carpet (eeewww) with new 12" wide pine plank floors to match the original floors in the house.  We just did these floors in our attached mother-in-law apartment and I love them so much.  You can see all about them here.

Another important project will be lighting.  There are currently three different light fixtures in this room because we bought one to try out and didn't like it, and then tried again.  We need to unify and increase the lighting because this room is DARK!  Even during the day the room is very dark because all of the windows are covered by deep porches.

This staircase has been terrifying for us with four kids because there are no balusters.  Thankfully no one has fallen out over the past three years.  We have been searching all this time for something that is inexpensive and do-able for us.  I am really hoping we can solve this problem during this renovation.   

The fireplace!  It doesn't have a mantel!  I have wanted one so badly for the past three years.  The stonework needs some repair work before we could add one so it never happened.  The time is now!

This big room is divided a little awkwardly for the layout by this doorway into the kitchen, the fireplace, and the only place for the TV to go.

And like I said, this is a huge space!  This is the other side of the room.  I cannot wait to finally unify this big awkward space!

So those are our before photos!  Hopefully we will have something amazing to share with you in six weeks!  In the meantime I will be giving weekly updates on our progress.  Thanks so much for coming by to check out our project!

Now there are hundreds of other projects linking up for the One Room Challenge and you can see them here.  Go take a peek!