my lounge room before & after

Thought I'd start the ball rolling with room makeovers by showing you one of my own. Unfort I can't find a before pic of what this room really looked like untouched (think spew carpet, wood panelled walls and concrete spray-on stuff on the ceiling with a huge window where these two smaller ones have been put instead) but these are "during" pictures! And seeing as the room was half clean today, I figured I'd tidy the rest of it and take a few snaps with the camera I stole from my parents (thanks guys!) for the week while Dad tries to resuscitate my own.
Now, this room is never totally finished - we still have bits and pieces to do and I'd love to add more colour, but it's getting there.

BEFORE: The bi-fold doors are our addition. You used to go to the room next door through the toilet (!) which has been sealed up to the left of the TV (which for some reason is on in every single of our reno pics!)

BEFORE: These two windows replaced on big one and a tiny air conditioner. The lighter gyprock is where the window was - the different colour paint swatches is us testing the multitide of white paints available. We chose Dulux Whispher White. The hand-me-down couch had a good long life and certainly did the job, but was thrown out in our last council clean up. RIP.

AFTER: Two Freedom coffee tables pushed together make up our entertainment unit, my zebra rug makes the floor a little comfier for Zak and Steve to wrestle on, and the wicker chair in the corner is usually home to Zak's pram, bike and push-a-long car!

AFTER: I'm still undecided about the brown architraves around the window. Steve loves, I can't decide... Through the window you can just see a hint of our cabin - another project on our to-do list!

And before you get cross at me for making it look like I live like this with a small child all the time, I'm here to happily tell you I completely cheated to get it looking this way and I'll post the pics of what I left out of the shots tomorrow (so you have at least one day thinking my house looks relatively nice)! Isn't photography a brilliant thing? So before you scold yourself for not having a magazine-perfect home when you flick through them, remember it takes a whole day (sometimes two!) to get the home looking that way and all their toys, scrap paper, bills and signs of normal family life are carefully tucked away to the left or right of the shot! Unless of course it's my sister, Kristie's house. She really lives tidily. I think the only reason she can handle visiting my place is that she gets to play with Zak! haha
Bx