While we're at it...

Why tackle one large project when you can do two?  Operation Dining room started this week and we figured it was as good as a time as any to redo our living too.  So while I stress that the seamstress will take too much off the drapes wait for the dining room drapes to be ready we decided to take on a pretty major project in our living room.



This is our living room before.  A nice shell but the windows were so rotted and full of carpenter ants I almost put the house up for sale the day I walked in to find hundreds of carpenter ants flying around the room and my then 1 year old attempting to eat one.

We replaced the windows, put up the drapes from our 1st home (like our dining room not a perfect fit scale wise but has been good enough), replaced the detail molding with something a bit simpler and scale appropriate, and painted the room Behr's Gray Ghost.  The piano was given to us by our extremely generous life-long friends and neighbors.  Sean is currently working on a woodworking project while taking breaks to teach himself to play Hakuna Matada on the piano for the boys.  #sorryladieshestaken. Then it became a dumping ground for all of our mismatched furniture.

That got us to "good enough" to get us through the past 5 years.  The room is fine.

My issues with it are:

1) Too dark (the only time the room gets light is between 3-4 PM) - need to find a way to brighten it up (windows?  furniture/fixtures? lighting?).

2) The furniture is a bit too large for the room.

3) A furniture placement I can't figure out.  I've tried almost everything.  Anyone have any ideas?

5) Not much architectural interest.  The doorway for example needs something.

Oh and we have no idea what that stain is in front of the doorway.  I'm thinking either:

-a very strange place to put a potted plant and end up with water damage from overwatering?

-a sanding accident from floor refinishing?

-cult worship?

Eventually the floors will be replaced and refinished to a less orange color but for now we no longer see it.

Our first plan of attack is to put up some wood paneled wainscot around the room.  Hopefully that will solve problems 1 and 5.  This will definitely require a lot of fraction skills, patience and babysitter hours.  

Things I don't have a lot of lately...