Plaster & Disaster

In our apartment, we had a gallery wall in the bedroom, and I was always a little sad because I loved it but no one other than Sam or I ever saw it. So when I was debating what to do with the large walls in our living room, a gallery wall was top of the list. One weekend afternoon, I finally buckled down and created one:

One of the great things about a gallery wall is that takes up a lot of space, but it’s a lot of little items which means you don’t need to fall in love with/pay a pretty penny for a single large piece of art that would take up a similarly-sized space. Most of the things I put up in our living room gallery wall we already had on hand, though a few were new to celebrate our new hometown, Malden.

Best practice for creating a gallery wall is to cut out scrap paper the size of each frame you have and then arrange the paper on the wall so you can play with the spacing without making a lot of unnecessary nail holes. I did not follow best practices, because I’m lazy. Instead, I played around with a layout on the ground, and then snapped a photo to refer to as I transferred everything to the wall.

So, that’s the gallery wall.

But wait, this post is also my chance to tell you about the rest of the work we did on the living room!

One of the first things we did after moving into our house (indeed, on our first day living there) was paint the living room. I knew it was the first room I wanted to paint, and since all our furniture was still in the basement where we’d had it moved when the seller was still living there, we thought we’d take advantage of a few furniture-free days (we had movers coming back in 48 hours to move everything upstairs) to get some painting done.

Here’s where we started (photos are from the listing sheet):

Pantone may claim that this is the color of the year (“dramatic and at the same time grounding, the rich and full-bodied red-brown Marsala brings color warmth into home interiors”), but it wasn’t the color for us.

While still at the hotel, I’d purchased all our painting supplies, including a gallon of Zinsser primer and a gallon of Olympic paint in eggshell, color-matched to Benjamin Moore’s Moonshine. This is a light gray color that I thought would be pretty neutral to help the living room feel bigger and make our colorful accessories the focal point, but also give the space more interest than just plain white. It’s super risky (and ill-advised) to buy paint without being able to tape up swatches in the actual space to observe it in different lighting situations, but we had a major time crunch and I felt pretty optimistic that it would look good.

First we did a coat of the primer. Even though the paint is technically “paint and primer in one,” when painting a light color over such a dark color it makes sense to prime first to avoid having to do endless coats of paint (primer is cheaper than paint).

Then we did a coat of paint, which pretty much did the trick except for having to add some extra coverage in a few places where the roller missed the first time (it was getting dark and we didn’t have much lighting set up yet). That left us here:

The next step was getting a new sectional sofa — it’s something we’ve wanted for a long time, but it wouldn’t have worked in our apartment. Now we have the perfect layout, with two relatively long walls framing the central living space. We decided to go with the Karlstad sectional from IKEA — we already had one of these but in sofa form (see it in the sunroom now), and we’ve really liked it. Plus it’s relatively inexpensive for a large sectional, while still feeling and looking fairly nice.

We’d originally planned to buy one new and have it delivered, but then I saw one on craigslist that was only 2 months old for a few hundred dollars less so we scooped it up ($600 slightly used compared to $800 new plus $150 for shipping). We did have to rent a uhaul truck to get it (which cost $45), but we still came out ahead (and I like to buy used where possible for sustainability purposes).

Before setting it up, I painted the legs just like I did for our Karlstad couch — I just detached them all and took them down to the basement for a few quick coats of spray paint in oil rubbed bronze. (It’s hard to tell, but they’re set up on a clear shower curtain that I use as a dropcloth for spraypainting.)

The darker legs make it feel so much less like a generic IKEA piece. The oil rubbed bronze looks like dark wood from afar, and is an easy alternative to sanding and staining.

The other thing we did was put on a new cover. We love the dark gray (called Sivic Gray) that the couch came with, which is the same cover we have on our sofa version, but we found that it gets scruffy looking fast because our cat sheds light-colored hair. (More about my decorating-for-cats genius advice here.) We picked up a new cover in Isunda Gray when we were at IKEA a few weeks before in anticipation (we knew we’d be buying the couch a few weeks before we actually picked it up), and then swapped out the covers when we finally brought the couch home. It’s relatively easy to swap out the covers, but still took awhile to do the body of the sectional and all the cushions.

With some additional decorating, we had a completed room! Let me take you through it:

In addition to the gallery wall, I added a large mirror that I grabbed from Bed Bath and Beyond for $50, which seemed fairly reasonable for such a large mirror.

I also put up some curtains, which I sewed using fabric I ordered from Fabric.com — it’s called Alex French Grey by Premier Prints, and I got enough fabric for four thin panels for $53. The panels just sit on either side of the semi-sheer privacy curtains we have up over both windows. We have blinds that we can use to darken the room, so the new curtains are more decorative than functional.

The TV stand is an old dresser I found on craigslist and painted a bright coral color.

Since we don’t have overhead lights in this room, we also had to stock up on lamps. The silver lamps — one a table lamp, one a floor lamp — are from Target. I like that they’re the same style but not too matchy-matchy. The lamp by the TV used to be gold, and I spray-painted it ages ago. It actually plugs into an outlet on the other end side of the long window that connects to a light switch, so we can turn it on with the switch when we walk into the room — so convenient. I hid the cord completely, by taping it to the back of the table as it comes out of the lamp, then running it under the radiator, and hiding the outlet where it finally plugs in under the curtains.

So that’s the living room! Some day I’d like to get a chair or two for under the window (I have dreams of getting a beat up old armchair and then using it to learn how to upholster). But in the meantime, it feels finished — which in a house with a long to-do list is a great feeling. In a few short months, we’ve really come a long way:

(UPDATE: Be sure to check out some subsequent living room updates including: my dream chairs under the window, cat shelves, and some rug tweaking.)

(FEATURED at Tatertots and Jello and Thrifty Decor Chick! – and sharing at I Heart Naptime, A Bowl Full of Lemons, Thrifty Decor Chick, Designer Trapped, Remodelaholic, and That DIY Party)