A Chair Rail for Easter

Scott and I had a busy little Easter weekend getting the house ready for Katie and Jason's visit last week, and decided it was about time to take the living room to Phase II of the remodeling process.

We enlisted the help of Scott Ludwig Sr. to build a chair rail for the living room, to help give the space a bit more character and to try and bring back some of the architectural details of the house (seeing as that it was first built in 1900, yet is currently a mish-mash of all different decades and styles).  

The entire room needed about 40 feet worth of chair rail -- you could buy the pieces of wood at Lowe's in 8 foot chunks, and depending on how elaborate the design you picked out, the price varied. The one Scott picked out was about $12 per 8 foot rail, so all in all the entire project cost less than $75, once you add in the white caulking you'll need for the corners and finishing off the trim -- not too bad considering what an improvement it makes! 

We also decided to give the living room a more organic, clean and relaxing feeling by picking out a medium green color for the top and crisp white for the bottom to match the trim. We  picked out a green eggshell paint called "Northern Glen" -- made by Valspar. The paint went on really well and was surprisingly affordable. We used a white satin paint on the bottom just to reflect a little light in the room and to make the space feel a bit bigger. The "before" and "after" photos are below!

Next up comes Phase III of the living room remodeling process... finding a new coffee table, end table and entertainment unit. That isn't made of plastic-y laminate wood... Trust me, it's harder than you'd think. That's what she said.