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Living Renovation Before and After

We’ve renovated, top to bottom, the little brick cottage. Here is the living room renovation before and after.

Taking it back to the beginning, here are a couple of pics showing before and after. On the left is what it looked like the day we bought this brick house in December, 2011, and on the right is what it looks like now:

These are taken from the arch doorway between the living room and dining room looking Southwest.

And this angle is in the middle of the living room looking toward the gorgeous curved wall with the dining room on the right and front entry on the left.

Here, in a nutshell is what we did to get ourselves to this point of a finished room, in about 3 months:

  • Carpet: all gone
  • Wood floors: refinished
  • Wallpaper: gone
  • Plastic trim at the ceiling covering a big gap between wall and ceiling: gone
  • Old cracked windows: gone and replaced
  • Missing trim from windows: replaced
  • Dingy Radiators: cleaned and repainted
  • Plaster walls and ceiling: patched, skimcoated, primed and painted
  • Old brown trim: primed and painted

Doesn’t look like much written on this, but it was a lot of work, and I didn’t even mention replacing and updating all the electric in this room as well as the whole brick cottage.  Here are a few pics of the progress along the way:

At the top you see it with the carpet in, then these two bottom pics show the carpet ripped out. All along the West wall in the living room, there were 2 strips of flooring missing, also you can see how the old finish bonded with the rubber padding that was on it, so it had to be sanded in the refinishing process.

In this pic you can appreciate the wallpaper removal and sort of see how now that the brown plastic trim haphazardly installed at the ceiling has been removed to reveal the large gap it was covering.

And see the trim missing from the top of the windows? Sadly, that’s what we found when we removed the box cornices installed in the 1970’s. As bad as this picture looks, there was still one more step that made the room look even worse!

This pic shows it at its worse! When they replaced the windows, all the trim from the windows needed to come off, that’s it, piled on the floor. At this point my husband had still not stepped foot into the cottage, he had totally trusted me to select, purchase and re-do this piece of property. I must admit, I slightly panicked at the thought of him seeing it in this condition, it was not for the faint of heart, that’s for sure!

Whew! Off with the old, and on with the new! This pic shows it in the stage with the floors refinished, the walls patched, skimcoated and primed, the new trim on the windows, and everything ready for me to paint.

Here’s that curved wall, showing the top gap at the ceiling all patched up!

And now all painted!

This is looking toward the front entry from the center of the living room, it was here to the left along the floor where those missing floor boards were…can’t tell now, can you?

Even though I was sad the day the all the old trim had to come off, along with all the old windows, I love the new farmhouse styled trim, and the sacrifice of the old trim to gain working, insulated windows was well worth it.

From the front entry, this gorgeous maple floor beacons you to come in. We were so fortunate to find quality wood under all the carpeting and linoleum flooring when we tore it out.

One last look of the living room…aiming toward the dining room, and beyond….

Here are more posts featuring this little brick cottage renovation projects:

front entry sdtips
 living room before and after SDTips
SimpleDecoratingTips.com Little Brick Cottage Dining Room Before and After
front bedroom reno before SDTips
Bedroom Redo Before SDTips
simpledecoratingtips.com little brick cottage bathroom before and after
little brick cottage back entry SDTips
DIY canning jar lights SDTips
Mixing Hardware Styles SDTips
SIMPLEDECORATINGTIPS.com Antique Brick Cottage Farmhouse Style Kitchen Before and After

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Welcome to Simple Decorating Tips! I’m Liz, the author, and I’m so glad you’re here!

My goal is to encourage you with DIY tips, techniques and tutorials so you feel empowered to join in the fun! Along with this DIY blog, I have a DIY shop, Frame and Frills!
Frame and Frills is in Wisconsin. I stock amazing DIY products! Fusion Mineral Paints, ReDesign Transfers, Decoupage, Waxes, loads of DIY Goodies, re-done Furniture and more! Even if you're not close to where the shop is in Wisconsin, good news... I ship nationwide, (USA) daily! Check out the link here and let's get your DIY on!
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Welcome to Simple Decorating Tips! I'm Liz, the author, and I'm so glad you're here! My goal is to encourage you with DIY tips, techniques and tutorials so you feel empowered to join in the fun! Along with this DIY blog, I have a DIY shop, Frame and Frills!
Frame and Frills is in Wisconsin. I stock amazing DIY products! Fusion Mineral Paints, ReDesign Transfers, Decoupage, Waxes, loads of DIY Goodies, re-done Furniture and more! Even if you're not close to where the shop is in Wisconsin, good news... I ship nationwide, (USA) daily! Check out the link here and let's get your DIY on!


Disclosure Policy: According to FTC guidelines, I want you to be aware that some of the content of this blog may be a source of income and therefore may be used to promote products, services, or other businesses. I will only choose to promote products/services/businesses that I feel will be beneficial to my readers. While I hope to generate a small profit for my time and effort to create this blog, I hold myself to the highest standard of integrity. I appreciate my readers, and make it my goal to deliver quality, honest material on this blog through each post. Thanks for reading along, Liz

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Sharing is great! Please feel free to share this blog with your friends, as well as on Facebook and Pinterest and Flipboard and Houzz and YouTube the more the merrier! I appreciate you stopping by. But please remember that all photos, images, text and content are owned by SimpleDecoratingTips.com. So anything you share, please be sure it always links back to my original post it came from. Please do not remove watermarks, crop or edit anything without written permission from me first.

Disclosure Policy: According to the FTC guidelines, I want you to be aware that this blog is a source of income and may occasionally incorporate endorsements or testimonials and shopping links. It is important to me to disclose this to you. The content of this blog is a source of income and therefore may be used to promote products, services, or other businesses. I will only choose to promote products/services/businesses that I feel will be beneficial to my readers. Products provided to me by my advertising partners for my review are given to me free of charge with no cost to myself. This does not ensure a positive review of the product in any way. While I hope to generate a small profit for my time and effort to create this blog, I hold myself to the highest standard of integrity. I appreciate my readers, and always make it my goal to deliver quality, honest material on this blog through each post. Thanks for reading along, Liz

Disclosure Policy According to Federal Trade Commission guidelines, I want you to be aware that this blog is a source of income and may occasionally incorporate endorsements or testimonials. It is important to me to disclose this to you. The content of this blog is a source of income and therefore may be used to promote products, services, or other businesses. I will only choose to promote products/services/businesses that I feel will be beneficial to my readers. Products provided to me by my advertising partners for my review are given to me free of charge with no cost to myself. This does not ensure a positive review of the product in any way. My truthful opinion will be what I state, no matter if I'm getting paid or not. Accuracy and truth are the priority for me on this blog's information, no matter if it's about a product or anything else. Not every product or service or store etc. may be mentioned in each and every post as an affiliate. While I hope to generate a small profit for my time and effort to create this blog, I hold myself to the highest standard of integrity. I appreciate my readers, and always make it my goal to deliver quality, honest material on this blog through each post.

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