We'll continue the before and afters of the Myrtle House renovation with the first room in the house - the living room! When we first started on the project, the living room was a little scary. Windows were busted, the fireplace had fallen in, there was terrible shag carpeting and faux wood paneling, and mountains of debris that needed to be disposed of. The scope of construction work in this room was as follows:

Remove drop-down ceiling to reveal original beadboard
Remove shag carpet to reveal original hardwoods (no carpet staples, hooray!)
Remove wood paneling and wall beadboard due to termite damage
Re-frame living room
Create cased opening into new dining room
Sheetrock
Add new door and window casings along with crown and baseboard
Prime and paint
Refinish hardwoods
Repair original windows
Demo original fireplace and create

**Click on any photo below to enlarge :)**

In the photos of the original door below, you can really see how low the dropped ceiling was. By removing it, we gained about a foot of ceiling height and exposed the beautiful beadboard.

The door off of the living room used to lead to a bedroom, but with the new floorplan, we made that room the dining room. We removed the door and created a 7' cased opening.

We ended up gutting the house down to the dirt for the most part, but we were able to save the original hardwoods in two rooms (living and office). Lucky for us, that lovely green carpet was simply laid on top of the floors - not nailed in - so we simply had to peel it back to reveal the gorgeous wood. After refinishing and adding new oak hardwoods in other rooms, they are stunning.

The original mantle didn't fit between the two window casings, so we repurposed one from another room. You can read about the DIY faux fireplace in this post, if you'd like.

This little room has quickly become one of my favorites in the house. When it came time to furnish it, our budget was very limited so most things came from HomeGoods, Target, and TJMaxx. I'll try to list any source still available below. Annnnddd, just for fun, here are some glamour shots. Told y'all I was going to milk this reveal for all it's worth. ;)