Special Treats: Decorating a Room

The hubs and I have one room left in our house that needs help...major help. We call this room our "fireplace room." It will basically be our living room, however; we are both stuck on calling it the fireplace room for some reason. We have a TV in our family room, so this room will be used more for relaxing, reading and chit-chatting by the cozy fire. Well...not by the cozy fire this time of year seeing that it's almost 100 degrees outside...wowzers!

Here is the room when we bought the house:

Here it is now:

(That table was just in the room for a party I was having, and yes, that ginormous picture over the fireplace will be replaced in our decorating process...)

We have painted the wainscoting white and painted the walls a pretty grey-ish color. We also painted the beams on the ceiling white (they used to be the dark wood color). This room used to have a popcorn ceiling (only room in our house with this, thank the lord), but we had that scraped and removed right before we moved in. We have also added some recessed lights and a ceiling fan. This is all great and wonderful, but we have no furniture in the room. It is been like this for over a year now...just hasn't been a top priority...until...NOW! It is out goal to have this room done by this Fall so that we can enjoy the fireplace this Fall/Winter and so on.

For this room, I am thinking something along the lines of a French Country style. A modern room with a touch of country. I tried to find a picture to help you visualize, but couldn't find one that I liked.

We have special ordered a couch and it is set to arrive sometime in September. This is perfect timing as we still have a few finishing touches we need to do with paint in the room. We had to special order the couch because we special ordered the fabric. Apparently this takes a lot of time. The color we decided on is a really pretty grey/blue...should look great in the room.

We were given beautiful lamps from friends that needed new lamp shades. I think I found some that I like from Home Goods for a steal! Here they are:

I kept the receipt in case in the end, they aren't my fav. I love them now though!

I just came across this mirror the other day and am SO in love with it. I was bummed however; when I saw that it's not as large as it looks in the picture. Was hoping this would be the perfect mirror to hang above our fireplace. Hmm...may have to think of another place for this fabulous mirror to go!

Eventually (maybe this Winter?) we are going to get a mantel for the fireplace as well. I mean, Santa needs to put presents in the stockings hung from the mantel! ;)

I have been toying with the idea of painting our fireplace while. Although I think it would look awesome, I also love how it looks now. As for now...I think we will keep it as it is.

I am thinking of doing a collage of pictures over the couch. We just got this picture while at my parents beach house in Pawleys Island. I am SO in love with it and can't wait to hang it.

We are heading to Holden Beach, NC, with my husband's family in a couple weeks and I want to get more beach type pictures there to add to our wall of pictures.

My parents were getting rid of two coffee tables they had, so we took them. They are beautiful and were in great condition, yet I did not like the dark wood color for this room and they needed a little updating.

After much of the husband's dismay, I decided on painting the tables myself. I wanted to give them a whitewashed/country look so went for it. I was a little scared with this process, as I am not very good with this kind of thing. No fear...I have learned LOTS! This was the best online tutorial I found and used. I also had great help and encouragement from my sweet sister in law, Elise, who is fabulous with design!!!! :)

Here is the table with three coats of paint on it:

After putting three coats of paint on the table, sanding to give it a bit of an antique look, then two coats of water based poly to seal, it was done! Horray! I purchased two new handles from Home Depot.

Crap, not in love with these. They look a little to sleek and "new" for this scruffed up table. Instead, I splurged a little and got two handles I love from Anthropolgie.