House Tour: Living Room

On with the house tour already, you say! I couldn't agree more. 

Here are some old photos of our living room, they date back to about March 2011, just a few months after we moved in. In this first photo, I am standing in the stairwell looking down at the living room. This was the first of many many ways I have tried to arrange this room. What I like about this arrangement is that the rug we have is actually proportional to the set-up, it makes use of that over-sized, yet insanely comfy chair and people can pass through the living room without walking in front of the TV. What I don't like about this arrangement is that the couch was way too close to the TV and it the room only seat three people (comfortably) and there was a lot of space not being used. 

Here I am standing beside that over-sized yet insanely comfy chair looking up at the stairwell. See all that space behind the couch, it was basically just a hallway area. Not much going on.

This photo gives you a better look at what was actually being utilized in the room. Also you can see clearly in this photo that we have a whole other room off the living room. We call that room the sun room/white room/library. It also is not being utilized to the best of it's ability.

Standing in the door way of the sun room/white room/library you see how the living room flows into the dining room. 

From the dining room, one heads into the kitchen, make sense?

And the kitchen, originally looked this...

But now we are off topic. Let's go back to the living room. One of the most exciting things about transitioning from being a renter to a home owner is the power to paint a room. To paint it whatever color you want, and to not have to worry about painting it again, until you feel like it. So that's what we did. And it went from this...

To this...

And for a while that held us over. But soon, we wanted more improvements. And also, we needed somewhere to put all the books piled up around the house...(see the very bottom right corner of the photo above...piles of books, books, and more books.) 

Which meant our living room went from this (please refer to the green above for a more accurate depiction of what the room really looks like)...

To this! Yes, we love books THAT much. 

Since these photos were taken, we added new floor to ceiling curtains, got a real entertainment center/tv stand, rearranged the furniture about 50 times, bought some shelves from IKEA for our cd's (to add much needed symmetry and storage) and now our living room (more or less) looks like this.

And this. 

So the theme of the living room now is....wait for it...RANDOM. I would love a rug that actually filled up the space. And some furniture that wasn't made for giants. My dream is to have seating for lots and lots of people in this room. But it's so awkwardly long and it's right in the center of everything that it's hard to find good fung-shway. 

Now is that part where I twiddle my thumbs and wait for you to give me brilliant comments on how to best arrange this space. Ready..Set...COMMENT!