Goodbye Orange!

Unfortunately I didn't take too many "before" pictures of my new home before I painted it but there are a couple in existence.  I mentioned before about how the overall color scheme of the place was orange, red and green.  What I didn't mention was that there were actually two shades of orange (one a yellow-orange and the other a brown-orange).  I suppose the previous owners were going for some accent walls?  Well, I wasn't having any of it.  Here is the one before picture I took of my living room just before I took my paint roller to the not-so-sunkissed walls (notice the two different colors??):

And this is what it looks like now:

The walls in the living room are the same as in the dining room (Benjamin Moore's Stonington Gray).  I love the eggshell finish so much better than the semi-gloss that was in here before.  In fact, most of my place is Stonington Gray but that kind of happened because I liked the color and was in a hurry to get the whole place painted in one weekend and really didn't want to spend time at the paint store deciding on other colors.  I'm a big fan of Benjamin Moore's ben^® interior paint which is low odor and low VOC (and it's a little cheaper than regular Benjamin Moore - bonus!).  I'm very grateful that by the end of that Sunday night as my friends and I painted the last strokes to finish the job, we didn't pass out from any toxic fumes.

Anyway, I don't love my fireplace and am hoping that maybe one of these days I'll redo it.  First of all, it's not centered on the angled wall which drives me crazy.  The molding is narrow and the mantle is just plain silly.  And the rest of seems like it's some kind of wood composite.  And it's  black!  But I'm dealing with it for now.  I have high ceilings so I haven't figured out exactly what to hang above the fireplace.  A painting?  A starburst mirror?  These are some options.  I just have to keep stalking HomeGoods for just the right thing.

I've been carrying around the Pier One trunk which holds my TV since about 1993 and I'm ready for someone to take it off my hands.  I'm also thinking about a bigger TV and I need to get some pictures on the wall.  I don't have a lot of color in here yet so that's also on the to-do list.  Yes, I know - it's still looking a little boring.

The sliding-glass door has been driving me crazy.  First of all, the curtain rod left by the previous owner is too high so my curtains don't touch the floor.  This is easily fixable but I haven't gotten around to lowering it yet.  Also, I'm reconsidering the black curtains.  I found some citrine-colored ones at Crate and Barrel that I like but they are expensive so I'll keep looking.  New curtains would be a good place to add some color to the room.  I'm happy with my Ikea rug and applaud myself for not getting a black and white one which is what I set out to get.

There is still a lot to do but like everything else, it's still a work in progress!