The New House: Living Room

I love our new living room and how spacious it is, so much so that we've been able to add two new (to us) chairs and there is still plenty of room for Parker to run around and play. 

The ceilings are fairly tall, and since the photos below were taken we've painted and put in new floors... but there are still two things that I think need some major changes.

The first is the lack of natural light in here.It's actually not as dark as it looks in the picture (I'm sitting in this room right now and it's plenty bright to not have any inside lights on), but I like for rooms to be completely flooded with sunlight, :) so we have an obvious situation. (Sidenote: Parker looks so teensy in this picture! He wasn't even walking yet....sigh.)

The second problem is this fireplace. There is nothing truly wrong with it (besides that hideous cover), but it was a little too brown and blah for my taste. Now, we have already made a few small changes to it which I hope to share with you soon...but we still have a ways to go. 

Here is the back wall--if this picture had our furniture in it, you would be looking directly at our big couch (and me wrapped up in a blanket typing this post). The room is big enough that our couch isn't even against the wall, it's about 4 or 5 feet in front of it. This also poses another small problem because I cannot stand overhead lights and would love to get some lamps or sconces near the couches to bring in some ambient lighting. 

Here is what the room looks like from the corner with the back door. You can see a peek of our kitchen and   a hallway. Our TV is on the wall with all of the outlets.

Now, there are a lot of different inspiration images I can show you for each area of this room, but we can save those for separate posts....right now, I'm going to share the general 'feel' that I'm going for in here.

I LOVE Edie's new house. LOVE. As I've said before, I'm attempting to go for more color and texture in our new house--and this style is kinda the route that I'm thinking of right now. The high curtains, the patterns, the dressed up, yet lived-in feel of it...oh, me. I also absolutely love how the fireplace is done--we are thinking of doing something very similar to ours, too.

Another, cozy, colorful, beautiful room. Our furniture set-up is very similar as well...we have everything in the center of the room.

I don't think I could ever go this bold with my color scheme, but I really love Carmel's style and all of the layers in this room.

This room has been one of my all-time favorites for years. Although I'm attempting to be more bold with color choices this time around, I will always be a blue and green girl at heart. I also adore the set-up of this space with the furniture in the center surrounding a focal point--much like our living room is right now! Beautiful.

To remedy the natural light "situation", we are really, really, really hoping to knock out that back wall and move the back door and window to go from this...

(excuse the terminator, haha, this was taken during our inspection)

To a wall of french/sliding doors and windows similar to this...

Or this...

Or this...

(Love those herringbone floors, too.)

And wal-lah! We will have the perfect (to us) living room. Hope you enjoyed my long jumble of thoughts. Have a wonderful day!