Living Room Before & After

Living Room Before & After

When we bought this house, everything was a dirty white. The house sat vacant for several months, absorbing all of the stench from the people who had lived here before us with animals. They either had lots of animals or just never cleaned after them. You can see dirt on the walls where they rubbed up against them, you could smell urine in the carpets and there was hair matted on the carpet along with very dirty trails where they walked. I also think the people locked the animals in the bedroom closet because there are claw marks on the back of the door and there were urine stains in there, too.

You’re probably wondering why we bought the house in that condition. Well, the Sarasota market is tough. It’s part of the price of wanting to live in paradise. Homes sell usually within days of being listed. This house is in a great area and had potential. I am always up for a challenge as well, so please let me have the fixer-upper.

Most of the house has this white tile throughout, which has broken pieces and the grout was never sealed, so it is hard to keep clean. It’s going to be an expensive cost and something we are putting to the side.

This is the living room before we moved in. The blinds on the left side wouldn’t even open and they were both filthy, covered in fur and dust and the strings were stained from use.

The ceiling fan was tiny and wobbly with a turtle for the pull. The seals on the front door were torn from dog claws.

It needed some love. And lots of cleaning.

You can see the dirty areas on the walls around the lower part.

We wound up cleaning the floors as best we could and we painted the walls with Kilz. We chose a soft blue color because we wanted our house to have a calm, beachy feel to it.

This is our living room now:

There is still more work to do. We will be removing the crown moulding because I decided that I don’t like it. I let my husband choose it and it does not fit the style of design in the house. It just feels too proper for me. I lean more rustic, as you know.

That black coffee table was a cheap Walmart purchase and was meant to be temporary, but has been around for much longer than I like. I plan to build a new one, but we can never seem to tackle any projects lately. Same for the black entertainment center. It will eventually be built-ins that are NOT black.

I just figured a little before and after would be fun for Friday! Have a great weekend!