From the Heart! A Before & After Makeover

From the Heart! A Before & After Makeover

I’ve been a busy bee this spring.  Projects galore!  Our new house!

BUT over everything else, I am so excited by one special project I’ve been working on for several months.

Meet Tricia:

This lovely lady is part of an organization called Parca, which helps people with developmental disabilities live as independently as possible.  She lives in a group home with seven other developmentally disabled adults, and thanks to Parca and the incredible people that keep the household running, Tricia and her house-mates are able to work, live independently, and thrive!

Okay and now meet another amazing lady, Cara:

Cara is a volunteer for Parca, and she asked if I would provide some decor advice for a mini-redo that she was doing for Tricia and her housemates.  I ended up partnering with Cara and diving in headfirst.  Before we knew it, we had an awesome makeover on our hands!

Are you ready to see some sweet before & after action?

Here’s the main living area before:

 

And after!

The FIRST thing we did was choose a new paint color – Classic Gray by Benjamin Moore (the color that keeps on giving).

I soon learned our clients needed sturdy!  Easy to clean!  Stain resistant!  Really comfy!  I really had to strike that balance between function and beauty.  Cara purchased the sofa and coffee table from the good people at Living Spaces, by the way – a new store for me, and some great stuff at crazy low prices.

ALSO that rug is from RugsUSA.com and a 9×12 is less than $250.  Yes, you read that right!

Here’s another shot of the sitting room:

 

The after!

 

You may already know that I am on a one-woman crusade to rid the world of brown wood furniture.  So I had a hissy fit over the TV console and ended up finding a gorgeous, whitewashed one on Houzz.com for less than $300.

 

Here’s the dining area before:

 

And after!

Okay, ignore what I said about brown furniture before – ha!  The truth is, Cara found this great option from Living Spaces and she is RIGHT that it’s a fresh, modern option for the housemates (although I STILL think we could’ve gotten away with these chairs instead…!).

The entry before:

And after:

Console and mirror scored from Home Goods, and the indoor-outdoor blue striped rug is a Wayfair find.

The four bedrooms also needed to be revamped.  Cara had new carpet put in, and she had each room painted (I chose Classic Gray for the boys and White Dove – a fabulous, creamy white – for the girls).

Before:

After:

What can I say, those ladies love their Hello Kitty.  So we had to deliver!

And here’s David and Michael’s Room, Before and After!

We ended up LOVING the wall decals, by the way.  They made the rooms so special.  We got ours from Etsy!

 

Cara really is the hero in all of this – she led the charge and worked like a dog to get this thing done.  Also, Diana and Danielle from Parca.org were so instrumental and amazing.

And we had a whole group of volunteer elves helping on install day as well – thank you, everyone, for making it happen!

I can’t wait to do more projects like this.  How amazing it feels to see peoples’ lives improved by simply transforming their surroundings.  It’s a beautiful thing.

For more information about Parca, visit Parca.org.

~I slept and dreamt that life was joy.  I awoke and saw that life was service.  I acted and behold, service was joy. ~