Like I said in my last post I have decided that the only way to get something done is to prioritize. I have decided to focus on my house. I would like to work on each room by itself until it is perfect. I have decided to start in my living room. This is the first room you see when you come into the house and it should be where we spend most of our time, but this is not the case. There is not much inviting or comfortable about our living room. This room is a hodge podge of things that have been given to us or we combined when we got married from our lives before each other. Nothing matches and in general there is not much that I care enough about to keep. We live in a typical ranch home built 30 years ago. The living room is a long skinny rectangle. The front door goes right into one corner of the living room and then there is a door leading into the kitchen and another leading into the hall. Years ago my husband cut out half of the wall between the kitchen and living room to form a little peek through. Please disregard the mess, in this picture we were decorating for Christmas. That is my hubby and Dad hanging out in the kitchen!
So in this picture you are seeing several of the problem areas all in one picture. Obviously the first thing that draws your eye in this picture and when you walk in my front door (I was standing in the entry way when I took this picture) is the worlds ugliest couch. This bright orange, fake velvet monstrosity was given to me by a friend. It looked very retro and cool in her house and to be honest is better than the one we had before so when she said she was getting rid of it when she moved I offered to take it off of her hands. I had the idea of going 70's retro in the living room, but no sooner got it out of my mouth than the hubby put the brakes on that idea. He HATES this couch, and sadly I have to pretend to love it since I fought so hard to get it into the house. The truth is I probably hate it more than he does at this point! So I think the solution is going to be to make a slipcover, but I have not even began to think about that project.
Another problem area you can see in this picture is the cut through to the kitchen. Before this was done I can only imagine how small and closed off the living room seemed, however because of the way it is done it has two main problems when considering the living room makeover. First there are only so many ways you can arrange the furniture since half of the wall is missing. This would be my choice for the t.v., however it looks really stupid with only half of a wall there. Also the living room and kitchen are visible from each other so while I don't feel the need to be all matchy match with the two rooms, I do feel like they should at least not clash with each other. The kitchen will likely be the last room we do (it needs a new floor and counter-tops among other costly items that keep this room pushed to the bottom of the list.) and I am not fond of the color scheme in there. It makes the couch look cute.
This picture was taken from the hall doorway. You can see how long and skinny the room is. This takes you to my next problem area. The back wall. The ugly dorm room curtains are hiding two ugly book cases made out of brown particle board that someone gave us. I have tried to throw these away several times and the hubby has stopped me giving the very real excuse that they are very functional even though they are ugly. Why you ask do we have those curtains hanging up? To cover up the mess of course! I don't have a picture of the mess, but it is bad. There are books, photo albums, craft supplies, games, toys, home-school supplies and office equipment back there. Space is REALLY limited at my house. Also we have the enormous television. This is our fourth one like this. All of them have been given to us. This one is actually quite an upgrade from the rest so I was happy when we got it, however since space it so limited and this thing is HUGE I would be so much happier to get a smaller version, maybe one of the wall mounted ones! Bigger is not always better.
In this picture of course the tree is right in the middle, however normally this is just unused space. The shelf on the back wall in this picture is holding Christmas figurines and nick nacks, however usually this is a shelf that I put things on and forget about them. I have spent hours looking for my keys, purse, phone or drink only to find that I put it on the shelf when I walked in the door. Again this was given to us and seems like a waste of space. The wall looked really empty right here before we put it up though. I had hopes of following the Christmas tradition and decorate this according to season (Easter, fall, thanksgiving etc.) but not only do I not decorate for those things, I don't own any decorations. I do have one for Easter, however last Easter I put it up there and then took it down when I went to put up the Christmas decorations!
This is a really old picture, this was my daughters 5th birthday. She is 8 now! Other than that not much has changed. There is the huge fish tank up against the wall. This fish tank drives me crazy. I do like fish, don't get me wrong. I don't however feel a huge desire to have such a large fish tank taking up valuable space in my living room. Hubby however feels much differently. He loves the fish tank, and does not want to move it so I guess I will have to work around it. Also this recliner (surprise surprise, given to us) has been replaced with it's beige twin (also given to us).
So as you can see there is a lot of different issues, the biggest being a difference of opinion between the hubs and I. He could care less what something looks like, he just wants it to be comfortable and functional and I want more than anything to have a room that looks put together and shows my families style and personality off. So basically I need to make things look good, remain comfortable and functional and do so without spending much money at all. I have a bunch of projects in mind and have started on a couple, stay tuned!
Love,
Mary Gina Carr
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