Today, I'll focus on the living room half, and tomorrow, the dining room.
Our biggest challenges with the room are:
- It's an awkward size and shape which makes furniture layout really difficult
- Our couch is way too big for the room and there's nothing we can do about it
- Our budget is small. Like, small.
This is the awkward layout as it stands now (it's not to scale but I think I eyeballed it pretty well). The room is very shallow and very wide, and there are things like an ugly catty-corner fireplace, sliding glass doors, and built-in bookshelves which make it impossible to place furniture there.
But one of these wouldn't work for the type of lifestyle we lead: the type of lifestyle that involves the three of us (the Mister, the dog and myself) all sprawled out horizontally while watching hours and hours of Netflix. We needed something big and comfy. So, we measured our space and bought a sofa on clearance at a store that was going out of business.
The couch is giant. And it's comfy. I love sitting on it. But I hate looking at it. It looks like total crap in the room. First of all, when we saw it in the furniture showroom, it was charcoal grey, which is exactly what I wanted. I swear to you it was grey! But it must have been the lighting in the room, because when they delivered this behemoth to our house, it was an olivey greeny browny taupey color. Not grey at all.
And secondly, we measured wrong, and the couch is too big for the room. It awkwardly butts up against the ugly fireplace. I'll show you:
You'll notice that I didn't even bother straightening up before shooting these photos for the world to see. How embarrassing.
Anyway, see how the sofa is about 8 inches too long and covers up part of the fireplace? We're not sure what to do about that. There's really no other place to put the sectional, so it's got to stay there. And we can't return it. Instead, we need to work around it: the size and the color.
Let's address some other aspects of this pain-in-the-ass room.
The credenza (is that a credenza? I'm not sure what else to call it. A sideboard? I don't know). We just inherited it from my mother. It used to be my grandparents', and my mom was using it for the last 10 years or so. I actually love that thing. For the first time ever, we can put all of our DVDs in something. I always hated having them all on display, so I love that this thing is big enough for all of them. I think that it's sort of ugly as is, but it has amazing potential. My plan is to paint it black, but I might do something fun with the front of the doors.
Want a better look? Of course you do.
Moving on...
The coffee table doesn't hurt my eyeballs or anything, but it is completely unremarkable and cheap, and I don't like how the color works with our sofa. I want something much smaller and black.
I hatehatehate that giant mirror behind the sofa, but I think that it makes the room look a lot bigger than it actually is. I'm afraid that when we take it down, the room will look like a closet. A closet jammed full of too-big furniture. That framed poster behind the sofa is one of the Mister's prize possessions. We just hung it there for now because there was already a hook on the wall. We'll probably move it to the guest room at some point. And that teeny clock was just something that we temporarily put up so that we could see what time it was while we waited for the real clock, a.k.a. cable box. And we never took it down.
There are also ugly vertical blinds on the awkwardly placed sliding glass doors. We need to replace them as well. I'm thinking simple fabric curtains that match whatever color we paint the walls. I want them to blend in, not pop.
That messy end table is just a catch-all for all of our junk. We'll replace it soon. And that purple chair isn't usually up against it. I think I moved it to vacuum and never put it back.
But let's talk about that chair. There are actually two of them, and they're pretty awesome. Like the credenza, these were passed down from my grandparents to my mother to us and were made sometime mid-century. Also like the credenza, they need work. The shape is perfect but the colors are all wrong. I'd love it if the wood was stained a bit darker or greyisher (shut up, that's a word), and the purple upholstery just isn't doing it for me. I'd love for them to be black or a brighter color. I hear that reupholstering anything is super-expensive, though. So we're not sure what to do about them. I'd like to keep at least one of them in the room, though, because the dog loves them. They are the perfect size for him to curl up in.
Speaking of the dog, that's also why our couch is loaded up with blankets. He likes to burrow under his blankies and we spoil the crap out of him, so half of our sectional is really for him.
The carpet? Well, I'd rather have hardwood floors, but the carpet is clean, in good condition, and neutral, so I'll let it go for now.
Anyway, enough photos of our out-of-date and messy room. Here are my plans for an update:
We'll play off of the color of the couch and accent it with deep orange and lime green. We'll keep the accents small and black and the walls will be a light greenish-grey. Or greyish-green. Whatever. I haven't decided what I'd like to hang on the walls yet, but that'll be easy. And I'd love any suggestions on how to update that ugly-ass fireplace for cheap.
Have you ever struggled with furniture placement in an awkwardly shaped room? How did you deal with it?
Coming up tomorrow: the dining room. It's not as bad as this, I swear.
