I’m one of those people who likes to rearrange. Furniture, decor, organization, anything. When I get a new piece of furniture I rearrange to make it fit right in with everything else. When the seasons change I add different decorations. Sometimes I just get bored with the arrangement of a room, so I switch it up. My living room is probably the most versatile room to move around the furniture. After cleaning the carpets I figured it was time for a change in the living room.
Above is how the living room was set up beforehand. I liked the couch set up because it made a more social space for when we had company. We could comfortably chat with each other or watch television. On the other hand I felt like the set up made our living room feel much smaller than it actually is.
Here is a panorama of the new living room set up.
A closer up of the couch set up.
Here’s the fireplace and T.V. You will notice a T.V to the left and the wall mount behind the T.V. on the fireplace. The wall mount T.V. is waiting to be repaired, so the T.V. we are currently using is from the bedroom. I’d like to rearrange the fireplace once the T.V. is fixed so it looks more even. The left side looks really cluttered because of books and DVD’s, whereas on the right the PlayStation and internet router almost blend in.
For now I put my trunk table underneath this painting. I could put it on the other end of the couch as an end table, but for now I think putting it here shows off it’s charm a little more. When we decorated the living room I didn’t even realize it, but the colors in our throw pillows and blanket go perfectly with the blues and browns in the painting.
I have two of these penny vases that I DIY’d over on our movie cases. Typically I put them on the fireplace, but right now that space is taken up. I got two almost identical vases at goodwill, (they were the same shape just a different shade of green and one was slightly heavier) and I spray painted them black and hot glued pennies to them. Such an easy decor item and you can hardly tell they’re pennies from far away!
Another simple update to the living room was changing out the plain white rods and nasty curtains for nice oil rubbed bronze rods and long curtain panels. We left the original hardware and kept the old curtains so we can put them back when we move out.
Project Plans
My goal for winter break is to repaint all the window trim. As you can tell in these photos the paint is peeling (just like the rest of the trim in the house was), and it is yellowy underneath. The biggest reason the window trim started majorly peeling was we used plastic over the windows throughout the winter to seal the heat in. When we pulled the plastic off in the spring the paint peeled with it. On the windows that the locks are broken we also have wood pieces to keep the windows “locked”. All the boards are plain wood and I want to paint them white so they blend in. The next best thing would be replacing all the locks, but that costs money.
I want to paint the ceiling trim too as I noticed it is quite nasty in comparison to the baseboard trim that I repainted (you can really notice it in the third picture from the top). I also need to go back and sand down some spackle spots that the boyfriend forgot to sand before we painted. There are also some spots that look a little streaky that we will go over again.
A few other small projects include cleaning the electrical outlet covers, sprucing up the fireplace mantle, and hiding the cable cord and internet routers.
Which set up did you like better: up close and social, or the wide open spaces?
See You Around!
Lauren <3
P.S. If you missed the bathroom tour – check it out here
