Living Room Reveal

I'll be honest. I love to decorate, but when it comes to living rooms, I'm totally stumped.

Maybe it's because our furniture doesn't really "go" together. We're in the stage of life when you either use whatever you can find for free or at Goodwill.

Or maybe it's because our living room doesn't have any empty walls. It's surrounded by windows, doors, and entries, which makes any furniture arrangement slightly awkward.

Even though I don't really have any idea if this is how I want the living room to be, I thought I'd go ahead and share what it looks like today after a little bit of a makeover.

Other than the window treatments, it wasn't bad at all when we moved in.  This is the view from the dining room.

Before:

After:

I warmed up the room with a coat of paint in Encompass by True Value and made curtains out of drop cloths.

Why would I use drop cloths? Well, we have really high ceilings, and to buy enough fabric to make curtains would have cost a fortune. I bought one 15 x 12 foot drop cloth and had enough fabric to make four panels.

I trimmed the long edges with some white fabric to give them a more tailored look.

This is our Goodwill rocking chair.  It is extremely comfy.

I love our basket of cozy blankets.  The wool plaid blankets came from... you guessed it!  Goodwill.

I really am going to hang things on the walls. Someday. Maybe. They're plaster, and it's nearly impossible to get a finishing nail into that stuff.

The wingback chair was my first slipcover project.  More on that another day...

I still have my Christmas plaid pillows out... I'm pretending that the red in them works for Valentine's Day.

Our biggest obstacle was figuring out how to arrange the furniture so that everyone could visit and still be able to see the television. This is an old house, and we don't have many electrical outlets. We started by putting the t.v. in its place.  By putting the couch at an angle, we were able to make a "square" with the other two chairs.

The door to the left side leads to the office, and to the right is the entryway to the dining room.

This is the view from the front door.

That end table is getting a makeover soon (hopefully).  It's one of my favorite Goodwill finds: solid wood, Ashley brand, tags still on (you can see them dangling underneath, actually...), $15. We're going to refinish it to match the darker wood of our other furniture.

There you have it!  I wouldn't say our living room is wildly spectacular, but it's cozy. There is something nice about a "collected" look as opposed to an I-just-ran-to-Target-and-bought-their-entire-home-section look.

Tatertots & Jello