Home Tour - Living Room

Our home has sold!

We are under contract, the inspector came last week, the attorney called and we told our buyers we can be out of this house the last day of school (June).

These next few months will surely fly by so in that time, before everything comes off the walls, and is packed away I want to remember and record this house.

Once we move we'll be looking forward and it's funny how quickly you can forget what you just lived in/came from, despite the years and time you spent there.

I'll do two posts for each room.

Where it is now, before we move, including things I like and things I won't miss.

As well I want to look back at where we started.  We have renovated almost every inch of this house and I want to remember this part of our lives, what we put into this place to make it our home.

Today I'll start with our living room.  

I am of a dying breed that actually appreciates having a living room!

In our new home it's not the living room that I'd choose to forego, it would be the formal dining room!  I hope to have a living room, still in our new home... and a large area for a huge table that can accommodate a ton of people, right there in the hub of the house.

In this home our living room is just to the left of our entry.  It is a good sized room, especially for a living room.

It is long and rectangular and has been the most challenging room for me to arrange my furniture in!

Seriously, I had tried every thinkable, and non-thinkable option in here!  I'll talk a bit more about layout and colors in the 'renovate' post.

This is the view from the front window looking into the dining room, entry to the right.

Little reading corner... this is a high traffic walkway from the front hall into the dining room, no furniture can stick out past this! 

Here is a closeup of this collage area.

And the crate... this is where the backpacks go after homework is done.

The kids come in the front door, we use it all of the time (vs a backdoor/garage door mudroom).  

We do homework in this room and in the dining room right now.

Many people don't use their living rooms, but we totally use ours, a lot!

We play games in here (Uno is the game of choice right now), puzzles, homework, reading, family meeting, visiting with friends etc.  

It gets great light and I often spend my Sunday afternoons in the slivers of sun that warm the floor in here!

I also do my newborn shoots in this room.  I have to move some furniture around, but it gets the best light and the rectangle works as far as photos go!  I can back up off my subject no problem!

I've had several different things in this little area right here.

This white book case is the most recent. 

I have a good supply of puzzles in there as well as scrapbooks and the kids school books.

This is the view from the dining room.

This big piece used to be where the white bookcase is.

I like it here best, of all the places I've had it.  I can store stuff in it, you can see it from the couch and it is good filler.

This is one of my facelifts, one of my favorite yard sale finds!  See what it used to look like HERE.

I've been pulling stuff out of this, off the top, to pack, but this it the general idea. 

This is the perfect spot to house all of my little mini scrapbooks and display photos and trinkets.

Here is my shutter/magazine rack.

I do intend to keep this system in the new house as well. 

Across from this wall, behind this chair is our little electronic keyboard.  It sits on my glass sofa table!

Whatever... I wasn't using that table anyway!

Someday I'd like to have a piano, but our house couldn't hold one now anyway.

This little guy has been perfect!  Matt has taught himself to play and Q uses it all the time.

View from the entry into the living room.

This center wall has been changed so many times!  You'll see as I show the renovating of this room!

I enjoy the simplicity of this mirror and my kids photos.

Other details from this room include this oak coffee table.

We bought this when we were first married and a few years ago I sanded it down and painted it this soft yellow.  I love how it turned out.  

We used to have our glass coffee table in this room (I'll show that in the next post for this room).  It has been sitting down in our storage for years!

It will be interesting to see where everything ends up in the next house!

This would be the trim that still hasn't been replaced in this room!

Pathetic right?  It won't get replaced until we move!  As we updated the heat registers, we couldn't find the old size, we were fine with updating the trim, we have all over the house... however you can't really see it in this room, thus it has never been done! 

If you look close you can see I painted over the old trim, because we were going to tear it out and replace!  Like I said, still will, too bad we won't be enjoying that!  It is for the new owners to enjoy! 

Things I like about this room:

- gets great light

- is large enough that we all can gather here

- gets a ton of use, maybe more than our family room

- I have been able to use it for photography

Won't miss:

- old windows (didn't replace these)

Look forward to:

- a living room that is a little more formal with less family traffic

- a fireplace in this cozy room