The Living Room

Our living room is a tricky room to decorate. There are 2 large doorways on 2 of the walls, a fireplace on another wall, windows and a furnace on the remaining wall space. In the beginning we just sort of put stuff in there–we didn’t have much. We’ve slowly added some other pieces and finally have more to work with. A couple weeks ago on a late night whim, we rearranged it all. We weren’t sure how we felt about it at first, but after moving some more things around we LOVE it. I’ve been surprised by how much rearranging changes the entire look of the room, even when you use the same stuff. So I thought I’d show some before and after pictures. Here we go.

Before:

View from the main entry

Eventually we moved the bright blue chair to our room and placed each of these chairs in the corners of either side of the dinning room entry way.

I know it’s hard to picture the entire layout, but it’s all I got.

After:

View from main entry

View from dining room

A little closer up

I really love stacking old suitcases for a side table–plus we got those bottom two off the streets of NYC… our streets finds are always a nice reminder of our time there.

And the close up of our Chairman Mao clock–definitely our favorite keepsake from China.

Just for the record, we’re not Commies.

Please keep in mind that I was rather hesitant to show pictures of the living room since it’s not completely finished-especially when it comes to color palette. We are planning on recovering the chairs eventually and I really want a different rug. Which is part of the reason I’m posting these pictures, I could use some advice. Since I don’t know when we’ll do the bigger changes, what do you see as helping us make it more polished in the short term? My thoughts are pillows on both chairs and the couch, more pictures on the walls, especially over the radiator and maybe some nice accents–vases, bowls, etc. Any thoughts, good finds or colors? I know yellow, black and teal are so been there, done that, but I can’t help it…I still love those colors.