The Living Room

First, a note about color. I am from the Southwest, where everything is colorful. I love wearing colorful clothes, having colorful things around me, and one of my favorite things about this part of Boston is that it's full of houses like this one -->

(photo credit to Erika Diaz)

All the "painted ladies" were a bit out of our price range, however, so we moved into the BEIGE PALACE, where every room is a different color of not-white-not-yellow-not-brown. It's like a painted lady, but really, really boring. Even the trim is painted different colors. I'm not sure what was wrong with these people. At any rate, in a climate where it is rainy or wintery almost all the time, a girl needs some color in her life. Apart from the weird kitchen and the weirder bathroom (more on that later), painting the entire house, top to bottom, was the first priority.

The first room we tackled was the living room. Here it is before we painted it:

Drew realizing the doors don't close all the way

The entry way is to the right

From the dining room into the living room

Note the beige everywhere. It makes me want to take a snooze right there on the wood floor. But those french doors! Swoon. The doors are beautiful and add character BUT, they make the room super awkward. The left door covers the room's only light switch and makes an entire corner of the room virtually unusable. We took off the doors and, until the furniture arranging fairy gives us advice as to how to make the room work with the doors on, they're staying off.

The night the movers deposited us and our stuff in the house, we painted the entire living room (including trim and ceiling). It was raining and we were exhausted and hungry, so you can bet it was not the most fun evening we've ever had. But the finished product makes it seem worthwhile.

The walls are Benjamin Moore "Spiced Pumpkin" and the trim is "Simply White."

We had a little trouble with paint bubbling up in the corner - I think it had something to do with all the moisture in the air. Our choices were either to chip off the bubbled paint and start over, or to put a bookshelf in the corner so no one will ever notice (guess which option we chose???)

Then came the part where we had to arrange the furniture. I have never been good at arranging furniture. In my last apartment, my friend Jason put the couch on an angle, totally revolutionizing my life, but I escaped without having to learn how to arrange furniture. In the apartment before that (a Manhattan bowling alley - with exposed brick!), the furniture was awkward because no one helped me arrange it. In the apartment before that (a Manhattan bowling alley - without exposed brick!), my roommate and I had such an astoundingly large futon that there was really only one way to arrange things. The point, then, is that I am incapable of doing this myself. Enter the reinforcements! My dear friend Michelle and her boyfriend Jon came over briefly to see the place and I cajoled them into helping me move the couch into the living room. Both of them immediately said the couch should go in front of the three windows. I balked. My back towards the window? So the bogeyman/burglars/pizza delivery man can sneak up on me? Even so, we tried it. Far be it from me to turn down design advice from people who know what they're doing. And you know what? I think it works! (Sidenote: Please do not judge the piles of stuff in the entry way and the dining room. We're moving in one room at a time. It's driving me nuts, but we want to paint everything and can't do it any other way).

View from the dining room 

The first photo captures the couch in all of its under-the-windows glory. The table with the vase on it needs help (it's got one foot off the carpet and is a little tilty) but we'll figure it out. The bookshelf in the corner between the windows has our "fiction" library on it.

View from the entry way

The photo to the left shows the television and what is now known as "the awkward chair." I wanted the room to facilitate television-watching because, let's be honest, that's what we do in our living room most of the time. BUT, I don't want the living room to be "all about the TV" either because that makes me feel like a couch potato. I think I saw something on HGTV about "conversation clusters" and I want one of those. If there's a way to do it without the awkward chair being so awkward, I'd love to hear about it...

Never mind the messy other rooms...

Between the entryway and the dining room is the "nonfiction but not Nazis or World War I" bookshelf, which is covering up the bubbly paint like a charm.

Speaking of books and bookshelves, if there's such a thing as having too many books, we have WAY too many books. Not only do we have two giant bookshelves shoved full of books, but all the boxes in view in the dining room are full of the "nonfiction about Nazis or World War I" genre. Drew has even more in his office, which he has to clean out soon. We are literally drowning in books. We need more bookshelves and/or to start patronizing libraries. At any rate, the Nazi books are not not in the living room because I got tired of staring at HITLER and THE THIRD REICH all the time, so the Nazis have been kicked out of the living room. 

That's all for now! Next up: The bedroom!