How This Couple Totally Transformed Their Home’s Dated Living Room Features
While real people and stories are featured in the article below, the following parties did not receive a personal loan from Discover.
Buying a home often involves inheriting someone else’s choices. Part of the fun is seeing past those quirks and imagining the possibilities that speak to you. For Miya and her fiancé, Edgar — who just bought their first home, in Clinton, UT — those quirks included textured walls and a lot of teal paint.
On our latest episode of Apartment Therapy: Your Space, Your Story — our new series on The Design Network — Apartment Therapy Editor-in-Chief Charli Penn and DIY influencer Kylie Katich helped Miya and Edgar update their living room to better reflect their style and prepare them to host family and friends. They budgeted for some expenses that would completely transform the room without requiring major demo and construction work — things like buying new furniture and hiring skilled crews to paint and add molding. Let’s see what they did!
When planning a home improvement project like this, you might want to consider a Discover® personal loan to help bring your vision to life. Discover offers personal loans from $2,500 to $40,000 with flexible repayment terms that could help make budgeting easier. You can get started in minutes and get a same-day decision in most cases. Plus, there’s no collateral required to cover your project costs, and you could even lock in a fixed rate.
To make this space feel more modern and fresh, Kylie recommended adding skim coating to the walls. This clever technique involves applying a thin coat of joint compound over the entire wall, transforming a bumpy texture into a smooth surface. The process requires lots of sanding and reapplying multiple coats, so Miya and Edgar decided this project was a good one to outsource to hired contractors. Since textured walls can appear dated, this immediately helped to give the space new life. If you’ve been wanting to modernize and upgrade a space in your own home, a Discover® personal loan could help you realize your dream.”
While the skim coating was underway, Miya and Edgar were not feeling the room’s big blue accent wall. But Charli knew just what to do with it: match its color with the rest of the room and add a gallery wall! A neutral white made the space feel fresh and open, and its warm tones added the cozy vibe that the couple wanted. The result: a welcoming atmosphere for hosting family and friends.
Now the walls were refreshed and ready to become a canvas for even more creativity! Adding picture molding to one wall helped Kylie and Charli create instant character. The height of the molding also served to emphasize their tall ceilings, enhancing all the vertical space that was now made airier and brighter by that fresh paint job.
Charli and Kylie knew just what to do with that formerly blue accent wall: a gallery wall. Displaying some of the couple’s favorite memories and family moments (including pics with their sweet pup!) instantly made this new house feel like home. As they embark on their lives together, the gallery wall can grow along with each new memory they make. Plus, the variety of frame shapes, sizes, and textures added even more depth and lived-in character.
Finally — because a home needs to be functional as well as beautiful — Kylie and Charli made a “landing strip “at Miya and Edgar’s front door. One of Miya’s goals for their new home was for it to be a relaxing post-work retreat for Edgar: Creating a corner with coat hooks and a spot to hold keys and mail will help them leave the day behind and keep the living room peaceful.
Now, Miya and Edgar are well on their way to making their new house their own! They can use that momentum to keep creating a home that feels like them.
If you want to put a fresh stamp on your space, home improvement projects like these can make a big difference! These upgrades could even help to increase the value of your home. And, once you’ve got a project in mind, Discover® Personal Loans could help make it a reality with no fees and flexible repayment terms.
Discover makes loans without regard to race, color, religion, national origin, sex, disability, or familial status.