One Room. Six Months.

After seeing Young House Love's eight month update post I was inspired to share the transformation that our living room has made over the past six months.  We made some major changes to this space in our house since we moved in.  We started by ripping out the carpet and painting the walls and trim.  

February 2011

September 2011

Our living room was a roller skating rink for two months before we could get the installers out to put in our new laminate floors.

Matching the existing floors in our dining room/library was easy due to the fact that they were recently installed and the previous homeowners still live in our town.  It's amazing how helpful people can be!  We ended up matching the dining room floors with Armstrong's laminate flooring in Fireside Oak.  Our installers from Lowe's were fantastic and got all 442 sq. ft. of living room AND our hallway finished in one day.  Thank you, Lowe's!

 

The new floors made a huge difference but without furniture we went from roller rink to bowling alley.  This is cool with me because I am an excellent bowler.  Excellent.  At least on Wii.

We worked from the floor up; naturally, furniture came next.  Thanks to our family we miraculously received some major furniture that fit perfectly in our large living room.  The couch is our haven.  For two people who were never big fans of sectionals we are all about this one.  Our room is so big that unless we bought multiple sofas, chairs, ottomans and tables the room would just swallow furniture whole.  Multiple new pieces were not in our budget so this gift of furniture could not have come at a better time.  

March 2011

April 2011

 Living Room after introduction of giant Heritage sectional.  So much seating!

When you have a large room create "areas."  We actually have four areas in our space: an area for writing, the lounging area, the reading corner and the game space.  These spaces have changed as we have settled into the house.  The addition of lamps, accent pillows made a large impact and really helped to start tying the room together.  Now for the barrage of photos!

September 2011

   

 

 

 

 

This is where I write my blog everyday.  This area also doubles as our game table area.

 

This room was not an exception for organization - all the little boxes around the room have a purpose, they are not just to fill the space.  The green box under the TV holds stationary, the white croc-embossed box on the coffee table holds all our remotes and Wii accessories, the pink box on the side table contains playing cards and dominoes for the game area.  The secretary acts as our "Bill Pay Center" and keeps us both on the same page.  
 
There are still a few projects that we have in mind for our space that include:  

1. moving the two chairs on either side of the secretary over to the game table and relocate the secretary and replace with a statement like this-
2. we have all the hardware and now we just need to hang our amazing piece of beach wood that my dad brought us from the lake
3. before Baby A starts crawling we need to replace our concrete and glass coffee table with something a little more kid friendly, it also matches the style that we are going for in our living room a bit better than the pseudo-traditional one we have now
4. Ballard Design will be getting a call from me soon to place an order for a 108" tablecloth

                                   2.

I saw this photo on YoungHouseLove and nearly fell out of my chair, think of all the great storage for hiding toys...

                                   3. 

I heart the Essex Printed Ottoman from West Elm that is the same shape and size of our existing table but it is upholstered to keep little heads from hitting sharp corners

                              

I'm thinking using two or three of these Ikea STRIND tables would be fun and break up all of the the angles in the room...at $99 you can't beat that.

                               4.

So that is where we are right now.  For now; we did just come to the realization today that Baby A could still be four weeks away which leaves this little mama-to-be with some time on her hands to get crafty.  Oh, so crafty...