Wednesday, February 10, 2010

Rental Remodel: La Sala

YIKES is only word we could think of to describe our living room.......that is until we Rental Remodeled it!

Have you ever heard that old urban legend about those poor kids named after their mother's first meal after giving birth to them? Jello? Is that ringing a bell?

Prepare yourselves people.................

Meet Lemonjello & Oranjello (Lemon Jello & Orange Jello!)


Now, not that yellow & orange are ugly (I actually like the idea of bright colors), but with red and green plaid furniture???? YIKES!

We had to seriously give this room some thought. It's huge - a living room/dining room combo. And considering how much paint those concrete walls swallow up........ But the final deciding factor was easy. We just weren't using the room as is. We couldn't get comfortable in there with the walls and the furniture shouting back and forth at each other. And really what is the point in paying for a nice open house, if you aren't going to use one of the biggest rooms?

Since we could hardly change the furniture on our budget (even though we would have loved to - it's not very comfortable), we had to work with what our landlord left us. And that is how our new color scheme was born. It still goes with the colonial style of the house and in our opinion is non-offensive.

Lemonjello & Oranjello got a makeover to Beige & Red
to go accordingly with the lovely plaid furniture.




In the theme of working with what your mama gave ya, my mama brought us a lovely moss green slipcover (that she found on sale for $20). It really helps break up the Christmas theme. Juan & Ninethe gave us a cute colonial coffee table (gracias a Horacio & Nicole's Guatemala stint) and with a little stain it looks brand new. We even found a really nice grass cloth rug (on sale of course) at Novex to add a little warmth to the space. Some framed textiles dress up the far wall and that's where we call it quits.

We tried really hard to find white curtains, but aside from some satin lacey 1980's leftovers, we never came across them. We found everything else, just not white (and such is life in Guatemala). Plus red is not one of my personal favorite decorating colors, so I didn't want to invest too much into more accessories and/or wall hangings since I probably won't use them in the future.

The place was all dolled up for the holidays, easily playing off the red and green, but now we're back to the basics.



Good enough for us. Good enough for now.

1 comment:

Melanie Finotti said...

Nice reno - I like!! You did a great job changing drab into fab staying w/in your Guate limitations!!)