This living room! I don’t even know where to start. It’s amazing. But it’s also by far the most confusing room for me to decorate. Most of the time I can walk into a room and envision what I would do. But this one is a real brain teaser. And I’m still developing my vision for it!
Here you can see what we started with. A lot of the natural light was dimmed by the layers of heavy curtains. I knew that had to go. And I’ll spare you my rant about butter yellow. But that had to go as well. Since this is technically the “formal” living room (I hate to call it that, though), I initially felt pressure to make it more fancy. But after living with it for a bit I no longer feel that pressure. I’m just going to do my version of fancy (which is not all that fancy, but just a little more bold than the den, which is the more cozy/television space).
The first time we viewed it, the house was still being lived in and in addition to the piano, this room had two couches, four chairs, two coffee tables, two side tables and a glass display case. It was fun to see how much furniture could actually fit because if I had only seen it like this, I wouldn’t have believed it. We’re still deciding how we want to furnish this room and haven’t purchased anything at all yet. I’m really excited to get to that stage, though, sometime in the new year!
In the meantime, I think it’s good to be able to just live with it and learn what the room could actually be useful for in our real lives. So far we’ve used it for a lot of photos for the blog and Jeremy plays piano in there almost every day (usually when he’s ready to leave the house and he’s waiting for me to put on makeup or something…).
Here’s the opposite view. You can see here where this room is in relation to the entryway and front door. Besides the actual entry, it’s the first thing you see when you come in the house. You can also see here these two spaces on either side of the door, which I am not sure what to do with. Tables? Chairs? Bookshelves?
To the left is my future office (still currently filled with tiles and paint from all our projects!), and to the right is our dining room.
These ceilings where definitely a feature that drew us to the house. I love that they were already painted white. This room is medium sized, and it’s weird to me that it seems to either look much larger or much smaller than it really is when I photograph it.
Here’s the view looking into the dining room. That “window” to the right is actually a set of French doors that lead into the sunroom. I still have no idea how the furniture is going to lay out in the room or even what furniture I need to look for! Options are endless!
Behind those giant curtains is a beautiful, but badly damaged window. The double pane glass had trapped moisture that was molding and the wood was rotting. We knew it would have to be replaced semi-quickly, but when a rainstorm revealed that it leaked in heavy rain, the new window shot up to the top of our priority list.
Hands down, our favorite thing about this space is the baby grand piano. It’s something we negotiated into our house sale. Probably not something we would have prioritized buying, but we’re so glad it worked out. It fits the room visually, but is also something really special and functional in our family. Jeremy was a piano performance major in college, which means he can play those crazy fancy classical piano pieces that impress everyone. He also plays songs to make me laugh all the time, like songs from television shows we watch and what not. Anyway—I’m rambling! We love the piano and want to decorate the room AROUND it.
This big empty wall is begging for something big and bold. And that’s my little (future) office space you can see through the doorway.
These carpets had to go immediately. We knew that even if that was the ONLY update we did, it would make such a big difference in making the house feel more modern and fresh.
When we removed the carpets, we discovered a bad water stain on the hardwoods. It was the worst stain in the house and it couldn’t be sanded out. I share the whole story and our weird, but cool, solution here.
Alright! That’s the before. These photos are from the day we closed on our home in May. With many of the spaces in our home I feel an urgency to finish them quickly, but not this space. I am enjoying decorating it slowly in my mind. Besides the color washed floor, painting the yellow white and replacing that big window, we haven’t really done anything yet. If you have ideas, I’m all ears!! xx- Elsie
This living room! I don’t even know where to start. It’s amazing. But it’s also by far the most confusing room for me to decorate. Most of the time I can walk into a room and envision what I would do. But this one is a real brain teaser. And I’m still developing my vision for it!
Here you can see what we started with. A lot of the natural light was dimmed by the layers of heavy curtains. I knew that had to go. And I’ll spare you my rant about butter yellow. But that had to go as well. Since this is technically the “formal” living room (I hate to call it that, though), I initially felt pressure to make it more fancy. But after living with it for a bit I no longer feel that pressure. I’m just going to do my version of fancy (which is not all that fancy, but just a little more bold than the den, which is the more cozy/television space).
The first time we viewed it, the house was still being lived in and in addition to the piano, this room had two couches, four chairs, two coffee tables, two side tables and a glass display case. It was fun to see how much furniture could actually fit because if I had only seen it like this, I wouldn’t have believed it. We’re still deciding how we want to furnish this room and haven’t purchased anything at all yet. I’m really excited to get to that stage, though, sometime in the new year!
In the meantime, I think it’s good to be able to just live with it and learn what the room could actually be useful for in our real lives. So far we’ve used it for a lot of photos for the blog and Jeremy plays piano in there almost every day (usually when he’s ready to leave the house and he’s waiting for me to put on makeup or something…).
Here’s the opposite view. You can see here where this room is in relation to the entryway and front door. Besides the actual entry, it’s the first thing you see when you come in the house. You can also see here these two spaces on either side of the door, which I am not sure what to do with. Tables? Chairs? Bookshelves?
To the left is my future office (still currently filled with tiles and paint from all our projects!), and to the right is our dining room.
These ceilings where definitely a feature that drew us to the house. I love that they were already painted white. This room is medium sized, and it’s weird to me that it seems to either look much larger or much smaller than it really is when I photograph it.
Here’s the view looking into the dining room. That “window” to the right is actually a set of French doors that lead into the sunroom. I still have no idea how the furniture is going to lay out in the room or even what furniture I need to look for! Options are endless!
Behind those giant curtains is a beautiful, but badly damaged window. The double pane glass had trapped moisture that was molding and the wood was rotting. We knew it would have to be replaced semi-quickly, but when a rainstorm revealed that it leaked in heavy rain, the new window shot up to the top of our priority list.
Hands down, our favorite thing about this space is the baby grand piano. It’s something we negotiated into our house sale. Probably not something we would have prioritized buying, but we’re so glad it worked out. It fits the room visually, but is also something really special and functional in our family. Jeremy was a piano performance major in college, which means he can play those crazy fancy classical piano pieces that impress everyone. He also plays songs to make me laugh all the time, like songs from television shows we watch and what not. Anyway—I’m rambling! We love the piano and want to decorate the room AROUND it.
This big empty wall is begging for something big and bold. And that’s my little (future) office space you can see through the doorway.
These carpets had to go immediately. We knew that even if that was the ONLY update we did, it would make such a big difference in making the house feel more modern and fresh.
When we removed the carpets, we discovered a bad water stain on the hardwoods. It was the worst stain in the house and it couldn’t be sanded out. I share the whole story and our weird, but cool, solution here.
Alright! That’s the before. These photos are from the day we closed on our home in May. With many of the spaces in our home I feel an urgency to finish them quickly, but not this space. I am enjoying decorating it slowly in my mind. Besides the color washed floor, painting the yellow white and replacing that big window, we haven’t really done anything yet. If you have ideas, I’m all ears!! xx- Elsie
