Our Living Room Before + After Reveal with Amazon Home
You don’t know how INCREDIBLY happy I am to finally title a post on this blog with “Before + After”. After almost 10 months of renovations and updates, it was getting hard to swallow that we hadn’t actually finished anything. And I’ll be completely honest, while this room may look complete in pictures, it most definitely is not. I just have a good photographer, haha;) MOST of the room is done though which was why we decided to go ahead with decorating it. Our fireplace still has a few pieces waiting to be applied and the wall where our windows are will be completely torn out to be replaced with a panoramic door that opens to the backyard. But these changes won’t impact the layout or how we use the room.
(PS. If you want the full recap of where we started with the room, check out my first post here sharing the concept + inspiration)
So let’s get on with it already. Keep reading to see how we partnered with Amazon Home to completely redecorate our living room from scratch.
THE BEFORE
(in case you needed a reminder…)
BEFORE // Furniture and rugs destroyed by dogs, electronics EVERYWHERE and a constant pile up of laundry (at least it was clean)
DURING FLOOR UPDATE + PAINTING // even this was better than what we were living in before;)
THE AFTER
To start the update, we completely cleared everything from our living room (getting rid of almost all of it). We tore out the floor ourselves, had the walls retextured and painted, had the cabinets sprayed, replaced the lights in the ceiling, had the floor ground down and sealed, and had new baseboards put in. So basically we lived in some lawn chairs I had moved inside and a side table. It was actually miserable but the end result was SO worth it!!
How I chose pieces for the room
As I mentioned in my first post here, we were going for durability and functionality. This mostly came into play when I was choosing the couch. And since Amazon Home’s Private Brands all have warranties of at least a year, I knew I wanted to go with one of those. Add dogs to the mix, and if you’re smart, you go for leather. Their private brand Rivet was one of my favorites (and where many of the pieces came from) and had so many leather options. We opted for a sectional because we’ve never had one! Our living room has a bizarre layout so this was also going to be the best option rather than having to purchase several different couches to create a layout that worked.
The next thing I decided on were the chairs. For so long I have dreamt of a cozy spot I could enjoy a glass of wine or read a book. A place that dogs aren’t allowed and that I could have all to myself. These velvet chairs were the perfect find. They are HUGE and perfect to curl up in. I cannot wait until winter when we can use the fireplace and these will be even more cozy.
After these pieces were decided on, it was time to accessorize. I chose a neutral rug since our floors (which we had just re-finished) are a darker concrete. I incorporated pops of gold into the lamps as well as a few accessories on the bookshelves. For everything else I tried to stick to wood, rattan, concrete or black. I am still working on the shelves (are shelves ever done?!) but I love the new clean look!
One feature that really helped me narrow down my choices, and find new ones I didn’t know existed, was the “Discover Your Style” function (shown above). You give products a thumbs up or thumbs down, then they select more items in your category based on your style. Here, I clicked on a few velvet chairs and ended up with pages and pages to browse!
How I styled our shelves
I feel like this was definitely the biggest eyesore in the room before because it was the first thing you saw. So it was my main priority after updating the furniture to get these looking organized and stylish.
This did not all happen at once, trust me. It’s shocking how much 2 bookcases like this can hold! I placed an initial order for my bigger items like the concrete lamp, art/frames, vases, trays, and a few books. Once I got all of that into place, I went back online for round 2. If I could’ve envisioned it and purchased all at once that would’ve been ideal but it’s not how my brain works. Having Amazon Prime has saved me both money and time when working on a space like this. I can place a new order for a few accessories and have them shipped to me for free within 2 days.
The hardest part was the shelf with all of the electronics we “need” (man, I cannot wait until those cable boxes are obsolete!). I tried to balance it out with color adding black on the opposite shelves as well as using books and baskets to hide the ones I could. This only effected our wifi signal a little bit (ha!). I think the key was taking the focus off what you can. Bring the eye up or down one shelf with cool art, pretty ceramics and shiny metallic elements.
The entire shopping experience was a breeze and my expectations for quality were exceeded. I didn’t have to be convinced to shop on Amazon before, but this sealed the deal in the home department. Before I partnered with Amazon Home, I hadn’t given their furniture much thought. And now that we’re updating more of our house as our renovation continues, it has become one of the first places I check for new items. It’s the impatient girl’s dream to have a site full of great items that can be shipped to her in days.
I recapped all of the items we decided on from Amazon Home for our living room below if you’re in the market for home decor as well!
Click on each image to be taken to the product page
I can’t wait to continue sharing more of our home here as we finish it room by room!
If you have any specific questions on pieces we decided on or processes we used for this room, let me know in the comments.
Post in partnership with Amazon Home
Images by Kimi Domino
