Working on the Living Room

I've been updating our living room by retro dating the furniture and looking everywhere for 50's and 60's "prissy-butt" pieces. I've been collecting them for about three years now, waiting for the big change-over when the kids were all gone and the dogs were all perfect angels (yeah, sure!)



The first picture in each set is our before... the next picture is the after (forgive the messiness... I didn't do anything but snap the pictures).



Also: All the curtains aren't hung yet (and certainly not ironed). The walls haven't been repainted. The floors aren't done. The rugs aren't vacuumed. The old rocker needs recovered. The pictures aren't hung yet. The TV is blaring... but here's what I've been puttering around with.



This first area (above) is the entry way.



This is the regular living room area (above) with my cool French Provincial couches I bought from this lady off e-bay for a hundred bucks each. Until they became ours, the only time these couches were ever "sat upon" was for a bridal shower and a wedding shower. She had had them since 1965!


Following is part of the dining room, including the humongous old china cabinet that I am remaking into a coat closet (it wouldn't fit by our front door... about four inches too big for the opening, poodle-dogs!) I've taken out the shelves and am re-glassing the doors with yellowish glass you can't see through (like old church window glass) then I'm going to put hooks for coats inside. The cabinet is from 1967 and was also in the same family since it was purchased. I bought it on e-bay for $50.


First picture is before, second is after. All are in the works still.

This is the no-mans land between the dining room and living room. We have this horrible huge bump on the floor where the "new" living room (in the 50's) was connected to the old house. I guess I'll just have to paint it. It makes arranging furniture a challenge, but I guess that's part of the character of these old houses. I love it... wouldn't trade it for a newer one and I'm sure no one with a new one would trade me either!

P.S. My cool old phone actually works. We use these old dial-up phones to call between the house and the apartment (where my girls lived after high school when they were in college and before they got married). I feel like a regular Doris Day when I talk on this telephone!


Here are some pictures of some odds and ins that are in the room, including the old color of the room and what color it will be after I (ever) paint.

My beloved Nancy Drews... several of them courtesy of baby daughter Alicia.

The prissy-butt box that serves no purpose and is made of plastic but which, for me, is pretty much as Hollywood as it gets.

One of several of my prissy-butt 50's lamps with the little night lights in the bottom. That's the best part!

Our stellar Syrocco peacocks that actually were stellar before I got them and broke the plume off the boy. Lasted in tact for 50 years in somebody else's collection... 10 minutes in mine!

Here are the frosted windows I'm working on for the china-cabinet-not-any-more-now-a-coat-closet-so-now-you-can't-see-the-coats.

And here's the paint. It's pretty much the same, I guess, just like the curtains are pretty much the same... but really it's REAL different (that's what I tell my husband).