Originally found here: Cocooners Mini Reno

We are selling our house. Finally. We’ve wanted to since we got married but needed to put a bit of money into the place and save $ as well. Moving on up to the North East side is our mission and moving on up requires the funds. The realtor’s photographer took some great wide angle photos so I thought this would be a perfect time to post some before and afters.

Warning: some of the before shots are pretty sad and you may be traumatized after viewing. The afters will have you feeling much better, though! Oh and this is a long post – lots of pics. 

Let’s start with the dining room light. It was pretty horrible. But I fixed it. 

 

This is the updated fixture I picked out (see below for pics of it up and running). Also, this is the color I originally chose for our office. I love it but it was a bit too dark for selling the home so I ended up repainting. Sidebar – this is also the color I painted the powder room and decided to keep. More pics of the transformed office and powder room coming up later.
 

A before shot of the dining room window. More of a during shot but you get it.

 

The after:

  

Here are a couple of befores of the stairs and the dining room art.

 

 

You can see in the after shot that I painted the rails a cool black enamel and painted the picture frame white.

 

To back track a bit, here is a before of the hallway when it was Campground and a before of the bench (with the hall painted in the new color Castle Path). You following?

 

 The fabric I used to recover the bench is Pottery Barn’s Tara Palampore. Love it! So much. It works so well with the paint Castle Path.

 

 

As promised, we move on to the “office”. It is the formal living room but we are not formal so it’s our office. You’ll see in the before that I did not lie when I just said we are not formal. It was a dis-ass-ter (intentionally misspelled, people).

 

Nice and cleaned up. I know the burgundy (although this is reading more purple) loveseat and chair don’t match but it used to be in our living room, errr, family room. Always getting those mixed-up. Yes, this used to be our only seating. We’ve come a long way.

 

Now for my favorite, the kitchen. I went full force on the wall paint as soon as I moved in but we slowly upgraded the appliances. Below is the way before shot. Nice and messy, like before shots are supposed to be, right?

 

This is a shot after we bought the fridge but before I painted the cabinets and before we bought the stove.

 

Now the fancy realtor pic after the whole redo:

 

My faux lambrequins and the old nook light fixture.

 

A nice after of the lambrequins, the new light and more of the kitchen:

 

Our lovely downstairs powder room is in the kitchen – yes, technically in the kitchen. Weird but what are you gonna do? It was in pretty bad shape with a yucky old teeny-tiny hardly-working toilet and plain Jane mirror.

 

I painted and we bought a new toilet and mirror. At first the hubs wasn’t sure about this mirror in a bathroom. I thought it was genius as it has a ledge style frame that I was able to set candles upon. The floors are still a bit rough and if we were staying, we would redo them with tile but alas, it will have to the wait for the next home owner.

 

The design process of the living room/fireplace – first deciding on colors then deciding on tile:

 

The living room and fireplace after all my DIY hardwork. The paint color is Ralph Lauren Raffia.

 

Here is a pic of some accessories I picked out when planning the master bedroom scheme (and a painting I did inspired by the work of artist Ma Tse Lin).
 

And for the fancy realtor shot.

 

We are lucky to have his and her closets in the master. When we got married and I moved in, Mr. gave me the big walk-in closet. I just love a man who knows what’s right. Eventually I redid it, of course. Before/During:

 

It is a ClosetMaid system. Easy and very affordable. It really gave me a lot more space to work with.

 

So that’s it y’all. A bunch of DIY by mostly moi. I told my husband that I am the brawn and he is the bank. Bless his heart, he’s just not super handy but I think I am. I love this stuff but I will say that for now, I’m over it. Hopefully all that hard work will pay off with the sale of our home. And it has been a home. It will be sad to go but I am praying for this as moving closer to both of our families and friends will be a very welcome change.