Living Room Updates

Updating our home to suit our style and taste is sometimes a frustrating experience.  It's a long series of starts and stops.  Paint the walls.  Stop.  Buy a new piece of furniture.  Stop.  Frame a photograph.  Stop.  Hang photograph three months later.  Stop.  Fix leak in roof.  Stop.  Repaint walls.  Stop.   Reevaluate color choice.  Stop.  Search endlessly for the perfect curtains, which do not exist...Stop.  What's the deal with curtains?  Does anyone else have this problem, or am I just the pickiest person on the planet?   

Finally, after nearly two years of home-owning bliss, we are turning our attention to the living room, which is good because we spend a lot of time...living...in there.  When we first moved in, we basically slapped some paint on the walls before haphazardly dumping our old furniture in it.  

Before...

After...

 Really After... (keeping it real, folks.)

Although we've come up with many different plans for the space, I've had a hard time pulling the trigger on any of them. There are a lot of options out there, but if we're going to spend chunks of money on decorating, those options better be a.)  functional for our lifestyle and b.) something that I love.  

A few weeks ago, I decided I wanted one wall of our living room to look like this:  

Yet, the only item from that Photoshopped dream that we already owned was the rug.  So, I got busy doing what I do best...copying other people's great ideas.

I decided to make myself a chalkboard map.  

The image of the chalkboard map above is from Dirtsa Studio.  Her work can be found on Etsy, and I've seen it featured on websites such as Fab as well.  

My original intention was to add in other "stuff" to make my creation look like an old-fashioned school chalkboard.  (It's a teacher thing.)  But I got lazy, and without realizing it, I basically copied exactly what I had seen on the Internet.  Except, I like the size of Dirtsa Studio's map better, and hers is printed on canvas.  Mine is on wood.   

Still, I love the final product.  (Thank you, Eric for your handiness with a saw and drill.)   Unfortunately,  it looked ridiculous hanging above our television set....

Watch out, Donald!  

Even though it looked stupid to have one black rectangle hanging directly above another black rectangle, that's the wall that I want to eventually look like my inspiration picture.   I decided to try to ignore the irritation it gave me and get on with my life.   But by Sunday, I had had enough.

I started off cleaning the living room and ended up rearranging everything.

So what used to look like this:

Now looks like this:

And what used to look like this:

Now looks like this:

That chaise is not going to live there forever.  We're brewing up a love seat to take it's place.  However, I am not copying one I see off the Internet.  I am buying one.

And what used to look like this:

Now looks like this:

And will someday look something like this:

And the wall that used to house our TV, now looks like this:

Eric had to drill a hole in the floor to reroute the cable wire from the basement.  I was very scared that the new half-inch hole would send our 1870's floors crashing to the ground.  I am paranoid like that.  Luckily, it did not.  

The furniture in the room is much less spread out than it was before, but I actually like it.  It's cozier, and the area by the windows is now a nice, separate, play space for Madeline.  

I also feel a lot better about our future plans now because the furniture is situated where we ultimately want it to be.  It's giving us a much clearer view of what we can, and cannot, actually fit in the room.  The plan is to tackle some shelving solutions over spring break in a few weeks.

So maybe my random urges to create things I see on the Internet isn't so bad after all is said and done.  In this case, it gave us the push we needed to work on this room.