Painting and Re-arranging

Do ya’ll love to see pictures of the inside of people’s houses as much as I do?  How they decorate.  What colors they paint their walls.  Furniture style and arrangement.  What they hang on their walls.  Colorful accents.  Lamps.  Pillows. Rugs.  Throws. Curtains. Patterns and textures and how it’s mixed and matched to coordinate.  I love it all so much and I get so much inspiration from seeing what other people do and how they put it all together to make their house a home for their family.  
I hope you guys like seeing those things as much as I do because I’m about to overload you with pictures of my freshly painted and newly rearranged living room. 
So come on in!

But first, let me rewind just for a minute.
Since moving in to our house a few months ago, the living room furniture arrangement that we originally settled on has continuously bugged me.  This living room has been a real challenge because it only has one complete wall.  And naturally, we thought we should put the t.v. there.  So we did.  But that meant that the only place to put the couch was then straight across from the t.v., in the middle of the room.  And then there wasn’t enough room for side tables (because the room is so small cozy), so I stuck them behind the couch.  Kinda weird, but it worked out okay. I didn’t like how the entire room was centered around the t.v though.  And overall, the room just felt off to me and I felt unsettled with it.  I kept looking at it and trying to re-think it. In my mind, I would move everything around and try to brainstorm better ways to make the room work for us.  I’ve found that it often takes time living in a home to figure out what furniture works best where. And you kind of have to be patient with the process and keep trying until you get it.
Some before pics from my iphone: 

This picture was taken back at Christmas time.



After taking a few weeks off to recover from all the kitchen renovating madness, we finally worked up enough energy to paint the living room. (And when I say we, I really mean me. Tim doesn’t paint. I fired him from that job years ago. I’m a perfectionist and He’s not, so I do all the painting so it will meet my standards in the end. He does spackle all the holes for me though and he also takes over full-time kid-duty when I paint. So he gets kudos for that.)
So since we already had the room in disarray that day from painting and everything was already pulled out away from the walls, Tim agreed to help me try out some different furniture arrangements.  I just had to see if there was a better way to do it.  In the end, every piece of furniture was relocated to a different spot in our living room/dining room, except for the coffee table.  And the room looks and feels so much better to me now.
I always know when something is right in my home because my mind stops thinking about it and I can just relax and enjoy the space. 





Now that my picture window is finally hanging up above the couch where it belongs, it feels more like home here.  Before hanging it back up, I switched out some of the pictures for more recent ones of the kiddos.  I still kept some of my long time favs in there though.


The t.v. got moved over to the corner.  Initially, we thought it wouldn’t work well here because of the half wall (and being able to see the back of the t.v.), so we never even tried it out. But after moving it over there ‘just to see’, we decided we really liked it there.  And since the stairs going down to the basement are on the other side of that half wall, the back of the t.v. is barely noticeable. Now the t.v. isn’t the main focus of the room, but it is still comfortably and easily viewed from our couch.


Here’s a peek at the other side of the room; directly across from the couch.  This entire layout feels much more open and spacious to me.  And by moving the chairs over directly across from the couch, it is also better set up for entertaining.
One of the main ways I want my home to feel, is bright and happy. It’s why I like turquoise and yellow.


I don’t think this vintage typewriter could be any happier.  It was a birthday gift from Tim last year.



Did I ever show you guys my lockers?  I got these months ago when we still lived in Alabama.  I took off a few rows of doors to make open shelves and then spray painted the whole thing glossy white.  It’s now one of my favorite pieces of furniture.  I use the open shelves to display things I really like and I keep things like the kids Dr. Seuss and Berenstain Bear books behind the closed doors. 





I obviously have a thing for old books.  These (below) belonged to my Meema.


And although we have a real fireplace now downstairs in the basement, I still love my faux fireplace too much to get rid of it.  All winter long I turned that little space heater on to warm up our living room.  It always makes the room feel cozier.
Eventually, we plan to switch out that chandelier to something less “dining room-ish” (plus it’s a hazard to tall people’s heads).





And I still love my Katie Daisy print. It’s an especially good reminder to me when we’re having a rough day around here.  Because in reality, we have so many reasons to be filled with joy.