what a bucket of paint can do

Here are a couple of things you should know:

{1} When we moved into our house, all of the walls were a dark, dark brown.

O yeah, and so were most of the ceilings.

One more thing, the carpet was brown, too.

::i'll be doing a whole series of before and after with those pics soon::

{2} Once we signed the papers, we had a very short amount of time 

before we had to vacate our apt.

{3} This move came within our first year of marriage, and I was in my first year of teaching, too.

{4} I hadn't been creating a home portfolio my whole life...and...

{5} I was preggers, and in the business of making rash decisions to meet the deadline.

{6} I was in charge of choosing the paint colors.

{If you are into all brown decor, please don't be offended by this post}

That should give you an idea of what we were working with.

Our house was so dark and "cave like" 

that my mom said she had no idea where we saw the potential....once we already owned the house.

We, however, loved the floorplan and the neighborhood, 

and thought that painting every wall, ceiling, and trim piece wouldn't be too much work. ha.

My #1 goal was to brighten this place up, and that's exactly what I did.

I picked a creamy white for the walls in our family room,

and creamy white carpet,

did I mention we also had a white couch?

So, for a while I loved that because the result was so drastically different than before.

However, the white started to get to me,

which in part led to redecorating the family room, kitchen, and breakfast room.

It's an understatement to say that I have 

an incredibly supportive hubby who loves my creativity,

and gives me lots and lots of freedom in decorating our home.

He rocks.

He even hired painters to repaint 1/ 3 of our house once I decided I didn't like the colors

that my pregger self had chosen.

Which leads us to the family room ...

before {before we owned it}

before {before we painted it last week}

the top paint color sample of the wall is what we went with

after

it's so much warmer, and now i can decorate with white accents!

the loveseat and couch really pop

i love what a simple paint color change can do for a room.