We are “this close” to being fully moved into our new home here in Virginia.  I’ve finally taken a break from projects, setting up, and cleaning to take some snap shots of our new space – afterall, it’s been almost 3 months since we arrived!  First up – the Living Room!

Here it is the day we moved in!

This room is long and skinny, and to be honest, a bit awkward (as is the whole house, but we make do with what we’ve got, right?).  We went back and forth (and back and forth and back and forth) whether this room should be the living room or dining room.  We finally decided this should be the Living Room since there was a pendant light hanging from the ceiling in the other room (post coming).

 

Since we are only going to be in this house for a year, I told myself I couldn’t paint or spend a ton of time and money creating an entirely new decor scheme. (By the time I was finished, we’d be moving again!)  As such, I embraced the challenge of using what we had in San Diego and forcing fitting it to this new space!

Here’s where we ended up:

You may notice that the pillows, artwork, lamps, and furniture are the same as in San Diego.  However, we made a few changes!

 

  • To update the photos a little bit, we changed out some of the photos with shots of our recent trips to Mount Rushmore, the Grand Canyon, Yosemite National Park, and Arches National Park.  We also re-arranged the arrangement (hah!) and matched up the colored mats.  The effect was a much cleaner wallscape above the couch!

  • We broke apart our modular couch, putting the ottoman on the end of the couch and the corner unit out in the center of the floor.  Not only did this help define the space of this very open floor plan, but it also allowed us to free up the center of this very skinny room.  Now, He-Man has plenty of space to play without bumping into furniture!
  • New curtains!  One of the frustration pleasure of moving into a new house is that your old window treatments NEVER fit the new windows.  Oh well, must make/find new curtains (shucks 😉 I found these faux velvet taupe curtains from IKEA for $50 for a pair of 96″ – yes please – you can’t buy that much fabric for that cheep!  I didn’t want the same dark curtains on all four tiny windows…so I cut up these curtains, and made them into these valences:

I simply made two pleated panels (both out of one curtain) and trimmed them with extra orange suede that I had leftover from the pillow covers.  I attached curtain brackets to the wall and adhered the “valences” using Velco!  I simply love the tailored look of them and they bring a nice pop of color up high (especially since we’re not painting any walls)!
Admittedly, it looked a little strange that I had different window treatments on the various windows.  To fix the problem and tie the two together (pun intended!) I used the rest of the curtain material scraps to make these tie backs.  Once these were done, the room “clicked” for me – everything just worked.
All better!
We also had to buy a few area rugs (seen here and in the new Dining Room) to cover up our wood floors (poor baby’s knees!).  These are Stainmaster carpets we custom ordered from Lowes.  I really wanted to buy funky bold area rugs, but alas, that wasn’t practical when we need it to work in future homes!
Lastly, a few accessories like the ceramic stools and orange lamps were carried right over from our last living room.  The storage bench under the window was pulled out of storage to provide some extra seating along the perimeter of the room, and it stores all of our DVDs (so glad we didn’t get rid of it!).
For me, this room was a huge success and a lot of fun to do.  Not only did I make a wonderful and cozy room for our family, but I thoroughly enjoyed the challenge of creating a completely different look using on-hand items in this new space.  I’m so proud of myself for making what we had work…and boy…does it work!!!
See You Soon!
Megan