Living Room Color & Curtains

For the first few months, the empty, white walls of the house really bothered us psychologically.  Everything was really drab and lifeless.

This fabric inspired me for the living room:

The blue in this fabric would look nice from the kitchen, which was being painted a similar blue.  We were looking at greens and browns for the living room walls that would look nice with our dark brown furniture and lamps.  This fabric just jumped out to me as the perfect pattern.

We painted one side of the living room this green color.  It's dark, but in a room this size, it looks really nice. The other side of the living room is a neutral transition color.  We wanted each room on the first floor to be unique but flow together.

I found a curtain book that had a ton of great examples in it, and one of the tutorials explains how to make your own roman shades that actually draw up and down!  As soon as I saw this ivory-colored fabric with fleurs de lis on it, I knew that the fabric I was going to use for the panels would go really well with it.

I should write an entire post on the process of making roman shades!  I wish I had taken better pictures.  The good news is, I plan to make some for other rooms.  The first one was the most difficult, but it was a breeze after that.  I did one roman shade per weekend, and I did one of the four curtain panels early on to test my idea.  It took almost 8 weeks to finish the entire set of 3 roman shades and 4 curtain panels!

I watched and waited for Target to put the curtain rods that I wanted on sale.  I had to buy 4 of them!  My husband sawed off at least 10" from the length of each rod so that I could get this short appearance.  (He goofed up while hanging this rod, as you can see by the extra drill holes that I still need to patch up and paint over...)

I wanted to frame the windows without covering the windows... but I also wanted the ability to have privacy or full sunlight.  This design seemed to give me all of those things.  I can raise or lower the roman shades, and the curtain panels remain in place at all times.  

The patterns on both fabrics work well together, and I also found some wall art with fleurs de lis that pulls the entire theme together.  I even found a Scentsy warmer that coordinates!  (I love it when a plan comes together...)

Now, we both feel like I chose to hang the curtain rods a bit too high ... so there are 2 things we've considered doing.

1) We could take the roman shades down and re-install them in our master bedroom where there are 3 identical windows.  Then, we could make new roman shades that are external-mount (whereas these are internal-mount), and by making them about 8" longer (finished length), we could install them up closer to the curtain rods, but they would still open all the way down to the window sill.  This would really make the windows look huge!

OR,

2) We could use wood semi-circles/arches to cap each window and look like a window casing, which would decrease the amount of green between the rods and the top of the window and also add some character to the room.  We've never done this before, but it might be nice.

That's about it for the living room so far.  We have plans to replace the flooring (when we replace the kitchen flooring), create a family portrait collage on the long wall that has nothing on it so far (we need to update our family photos first though), and I know that my husband wants to organize the entertainment area because he can see cords! (Gasp!)

Now that the blog is pretty well caught up to where we are with the house, my next post will be on the project we're actually working on NOW (August 2013): the Master Closet and Vanity!